10+ Mile Days

[Dos Perros]

I have all my elk hunting distance data logged from 2015 to 2019. I killed my first bull in 2019, figured it took me 424 miles hiked in 5 years to kill him.

Haven’t updated it since, but in 44 days for which I have individual day data, 11 of them were 10+ mile days (25%). The average (mean) was 8.3 miles.

I will say as I have gotten better at elk hunting, I tend to cover a lot more ground when I’ve got nothing going, and a lot less when I have animals located. I posit that dudes who regularly go 10+ miles must not be actually finding many elk, else they wouldn’t hike as far.

 

[Howdoyoulikemenow]

I've read this entire thing and you're all a bunch of lying sob's if you think you log 10+ miles a day, every day.

That is until my dil sent a pic of her fitbit.... Family is at Disneyland and just her alone logged 9.4 miles from the gates opening to them closing yesterday.

 

[5MilesBack]

That is until my dil sent a pic of her fitbit.... Family is at Disneyland and just her alone logged 9.4 miles from the gates opening to them closing yesterday.

Ya, it's easy to do. Your average golf course is over 4 miles just for the measured distances between each tee box and green. That doesn't include the distance between the green and the next tee box, nor any zigzagging. Years ago they were closing a military base so everything was minimum manning and very few people were on the two courses they had. I played at least one round almost every day after work, and most days was done in under two hours. Some days in the summer I'd keep playing until dark and would get two rounds in, and that was all "after" work. It would be easy to get 4 rounds in with a full day and very few people on the course. And that's with a bag of clubs on your back. I've never weighed mine, but I'd bet that it's heavier than my day hunting pack.

 

[*zap*]

I've read this entire thing and you're all a bunch of lying sob's if you think you log 10+ miles a day, every day.

That is until my dil sent a pic of her fitbit.... Family is at Disneyland and just her alone logged 9.4 miles from the gates opening to them closing yesterday.

fitbit is bs....I have a csr that his logs around 10 a day and he could not do a 3 mile walk every day.

 

[Bearshirt]

Most spots we check out are 1-3 miles in. I dont want to go any deeper the that. If we are trying to find elk and we do 2-3 loops in the morning then 1-2 after lunch it can add up quick. There is lots of seeps and areas with good sign that we ddint find in an area until we made more sweeps. It dosent take much walking to get to 8-10 miles a day if we are looking for them. If we are hunting and we think we know where they are we dont walk near that much. Then maybe 2-5 miles. There is a lot of area to explore on the side of a
Mountain and takes us a few years to flesh it out. We have 7-8 days so not much time. We have to cover lots of ground if we arent finding them.

 

[BigCountry49]

You can’t express effort in miles alone. I’d rather do 10 miles on a trail than 2 miles across blowdown.

 

[35WhelenAI]

Longest day this year was 14 miles. Shortest day was 5 miles. Longer days cover ground to check out the scene especially after a snow to see what activity is in the area. Shorter days are hiking in, posting up for the day and hiking back out.

 

[Bubblehide]

I did 10 miles today (round trip) just hiking. It included a Mountain House meal at the 1/2 way point. My pack was fairly light, but typical of a hunt.

 

[Mt Al]

I know one person who does 10 fairly regularly, dude is a beast. A very long day for me would be 6 miles and that maybe once or twice a year, much more often 3 - 3.5 round trip and shorter if possible. I honestly would have a hard time finding a place to hunt deer and antelope where you could do 10 miles without hitting private land borders. For elk or in the mountains for mulies - the elevation kills before miles do, at least for me.

My eyes roll involuntarily, can't control it, when certain people tell me they did 10+ miles, or even 5. Hats off to you backcountry beasts who can go that far in and haul a critter out.

 

[PineBrook413]

On our trip elk hunt this year we did around 50 miles in 8 days. A few of the guys did closer to 70 miles. This was confirmed with garmin GPS. I'd say pack weight for me was around 35lbs for the first 2-3 days then 25ish(fatigue set in haha) for the remaining days. Obviously much heavier when packing out elk quarters .

 

[Sixgunz]

My goodness...most people on here are world class athletes! 10 miles over mountains, per day, is a monumental feat! I've done 10 miles in a day with a pack on once - on flat ground, I was a teenager, and I slept 15 hours after.

If I hike more than 2 - 4 miles for a hunt in a day, I'm doing something wrong.

 

[Moserkr]

Ill start off by saying my elk hunt this year was not 10 mile days, only 2-3 cause we found elk. But heres a weekend solo muley hunt I tracked.

Hunted an extra 4 mile loop on this track, partly following a buck, back to the truck to grab a fishing pole and beers cause the fish were biting…. Found bucks but not the big boys I wanted.

Saw more bucks but no shooters. Im covering ground to known locations where they hang out. Deer numbers are low so you have to find them. Same thing with elk for me. Hunt hard until I find them then slow way down.

Btw, iphone 12 tracking all day on airplane mode hardly ate up any battery. Very nice. This didnt include the pack out of 3 miles, so it was a 25 mile weekend (fri-sun). I dont see the big deal of 10 mile days if you arent busting game or walking past em. If you know their haunts you can spend all day moseying along, finding where they are and are not. I dont even consider myself to be in amazing shape and im not hauling uberlight gear with beers, chair, n a pole lol. Did pack out a limit of trout too, and had a young buck walk by camp, and around the lake while fishing. Great experience - minus the does peeing IN the water right where I had been getting my drinking water from all trip…. Why do they pee IN the lake?!?!? One after the other no less!!

 

[Indian Summer]

What I am guessing is that the 10 mile guys are counting every step from the time they leave camp. I can see that. A 3 mile march in the morning to get where you want to be and 3 miles to get back to camp is 6 so actual hunting would be 4. Or 2 miles in and out with 6 hunting.

But half or more of those miles are on a pack trail or gated road. Not bush whacking! The other thing is that it’s not all about mileage. Elevation gain is a big factor. Bigger than distance actually. I can’t see thousands of feet in elevation gain included in a 10 mile marathon.

The other thing is where at? Or I should say what kind of terrain? Anytime people ask questions about anything from gear to tactics the feedback is always based on where people are hunting. If you’re running and gunning all gated roads connecting clear cuts in Washington state your answer to those questions will be different than a hunter navigating his way around Colorado high country at 10,000 plus feet. If someone told me they camped at 10k with no trails around and hunted up to 12k and covered 10 miles every day I’d have to question that. But if you said 10 miles was nothing chasing elk in desert country or sage flats I wouldn’t doubt it for a second. Like any question on here answers are based on lots of variables. The biggest might be who needs to cover that much ground to find elk or avoid people and who just has a good resident elk herd less pressure and knows their area.

 

[b0nes]

If a hunter walks 10 miles in a day he’s a fool. He’s running ridges or bottom trails. He’s not side hilling benches in the elk zone. He’s definitely passing up elk unless his spot sucks so bad there are none. He probably hasn’t hunted the area enough to know when to slow down. Most likely he’s in a new area and that means he’s in exploring (scouting) mode not hunting mode. No doubt that at the speed it would take to cover that much ground there’s no way a guy could see an elk before it sees him. When someone says they covered 10 miles I just laugh and think wtf did you do that for?!?!? 16 miles… lmfao… it’s time to put miles on your truck not your boots. I probably average 3 miles a day. I’m hunting.

If a hunter walks 10 miles in a day he’s a fool. He’s running ridges or bottom trails. He’s not side hilling benches in the elk zone. He’s definitely passing up elk unless his spot sucks so bad there are none. He probably hasn’t hunted the area enough to know when to slow down. Most likely he’s in a new area and that means he’s in exploring (scouting) mode not hunting mode. No doubt that at the speed it would take to cover that much ground there’s no way a guy could see an elk before it sees him. When someone says they covered 10 miles I just laugh and think wtf did you do that for?!?!? 16 miles… lmfao… it’s time to put miles on your truck not your boots. I probably average 3 miles a day. I’m hunting.

You’re a fool.

 

[AaronMColeman]

I was looking at my stats from this year. Plenty of 10+ mile days, and non seemed amazingly difficult. I had a couple very tough days due to blow down, terrain, exploring new areas etc.

One thing I noticed was I put on far fewer miles during archery season when I'm chasing elk, versus later rifle season when it's more glassing and big hikes up to high points. So the miles had really nothing to do with how difficult the day was, and seemed to get much longer as the season went on.

 

[Yellowknife]

What a 10+ mile day looks like as demonstrated by my 12 yr old this year.


Down in creek bottoms.



5 miles up the valley later that afternoon during a brief break in the rain/wind.



3 miles from camp on the way back.



It was a cold, wet, windy kind of a day so we kept moving along a sheltered creek bottom, calling occasionally as we went. Turned around 5 miles up the valley and re-checked our calling spots on the way back. Moose was hanging in camp by dark. Although I prefer to move slower and do more spotting, there are times you need to get to a different spot and pulling 10 miles round trip isn't a particularly special distance in my experience. The terrain will matter more than the miles and we had good walking that day. Obviously hunting far from camp probably only makes sense if you are using mechanized or horse transport to get the meat out (which we were).

Kid slept pretty good that night, but he didn't complain about the miles. It wasn't his first time.

Yk

 

[ridgefire]

IMO, If you cannot cover 10 miles in a day elk hunting you probably need to get in better shape or we have two complete different styles of hunting. If there is no bugling I have a hard time sitting in one spot for a half hour even if I know there are elk in the immediate area. Some of the miles are in the dark in the morning and evening but I still count them as hunting miles.

 

[Shooter28]

We had 3-4 days during 1st season of 10+ miles each day, verified by gps. The day we left, we put in 12 miles. We had set our camp up 4 miles away from the trucks. We had had to make 2 trips to carry out all our gear and the 3 elk we got. It sucked haha.

 

[GSPHUNTER]

I would think if you are actually hunting, not packing out meat and gear, moving fast enough to cover 10+ miles a day would make it hard to get close enough for a shot, especially if you are bow hunting. I know I have been out chasing chukar and covered that much ground. I have still hunted white tail and I would be surprised if I covered over 3 or 4 miles in a morning or evening hunt. Walk slow for 5 mins. stop and wait for 10, then do it again for about 2 or three hours.

 

[idcuda]

I trust the GPS miles, but anything based off your phone's step counts are likely way off (in mileage and elevation). Unless it's gotten way better in the last few minutes, those things are just bad estimates. My buddy's iphone would say we hiked 7 miles and my GPS track would say 4.