With snow on the ground they won't need to travel to open water sources often, if at all. But I have also witnessed elk dropping down to river bottoms and then climbing a mile or more back uphill to feed and bed. This is more likely in dry conditions.
Post rut bulls usually stay within a half mile of wherever you saw them and will re-use the same feed, bed, and water sources if unbothered. I usually locate bulls from a long distance away and then make a plan over the course of the next several days to get closer and my success rate is very high with this strategy. Again, they may not do the exact same thing everyday but they will be close by.
When you say mature bulls, I think some decent 6x’s I would absolutely put all my eggs in hunting those 3. Believe it or not mature bulls are getting harder and harder to come by in Co. they are out there but many hunters will never lay eyes on a true 320+ bull. I think you and your brother split up to cover as much country as possible. It sucks to split from your hunting buddy, but sometimes that is the way you turn up those animals. If unpressured they will be in the area. You would be amazed at how well they can hide, even in minimal cover & typically when you were hunting those bulls retreated to the nastiest draw near where you spotted them. Like others mentioned, “wind bumping” or still hunting with a blocker can work sometimes, sounds like you learned a lot and being into elk first time out is impressive
you came back!!!Well, we learned a lot and had a great hunt. We ended up spotting a herd of cows a mile away on morning one and got my dad on those night one. He got his first ever elk after basically crawling up the mountain. Crazy how mental toughness overcomes lack of physical condition. It was a special moment for us. My brother and I ended up traveling in on four wheeler through blm to national forest each of the following days and hiking from there. If I were to do it again, I would have set up our tipi with a stove up there so we didn’t have to drive the fouwheeler 45 minutes and could have used that time to walk. Temps were mild enough this year. Lots of hunters driving quads on blm, but didn’t see many off the roads. Glassed two different groups of legal bulls two different mornings, but did not get on them before they got in the dark timber. One group we made a big loop to get cross canyon to try and glass them bedded because it was a smaller chunk of dark timber, but it was thick and could not turn them up. We sat all day and they did not come back out to the grass area they were feeding in the morning. We still hunted the bedding the following morning after sitting on the feeding area at first lite and found a lot of tracks and beds. Used a similar approach with the other group of bulls we saw with sitting on them in the evening hoping they would come back out. Learned a lot about thermals and was really happy with the elk we located, but wondering if we should have just pushed in right away and tried to stalk them in the timber? Thermals were not super stable at that point so I was hesitant to just get on their track and go. Any advice for next time? Thanks!
Thank you! We had either sex tags, so my dads was a cow. My brother and I decided before the hunt we would focus on bulls only until day four. Which I’m glad we did because our hunt would have probably been over after day one. We could have probably shot three cows out of that big herd my dad shot his out of. Even though we did not fill out tags, we learned so much and had a great experience being able to hunt hard the rest of the season. I really appreciate this forum and all the people who are willing to help! Being from Wisconsin, I don’t know many people who hunt elk and am not close enough o get a lot of experience. Thanks for all you do!
