CO 3rd or 4th season?

[Brandon_SPC]

I need assistance with picking a season for a rifle mule deer hunt in CO. I got the unit picked out and the elevation is sub 8,000 feet for the average. There is a good amount of public land and plenty of area to glass but I am stuck on which season to pick. I have enough points for 3d and 4th rifle and honestly want to burn them before the 2028 change.

-3rd rifle is November 7th-15th.
-4th rifle is November 18th -22nd. If I go out there for 4th rifle I will arrive a few days early to scout/glass before the opener due to how short the season is.

For both 3rd and 4th rifle, elk hunters are a draw so I don't have to worry about OTC. With that said, 3rd rifle seems to have a higher tag allocation so there will be more added pressure due to the elk hunters. I am sure I could find mule deer in either season but it would be nice to see mule deer, do mule deer things (aka the rut). I'm not looking to shoot the first forkie etc I see. I really want to be able to sit back and enjoy either one of these seasons and just hunt/glass until I find a respectable buck. If I got to eat tag soup, then so be it. I kill enough whitetails every year for me to be completely okay with not just shooting any mule deer I see.

What season would you pick and why? I use to live in CO years ago but this is my first mule deer hunt mainly because I devote most of my time to chasing elk vs mule deer.

 

[eggerhunts]

Tough to say without knowing a lot of the other factors. 3rd and 4th rifle deer hunts in CO are so dependent on weather and the best way to hunt them in my opinion is to just cover as much country as you can, unless you know the unit well from previous seasons or scouting. With that being said, I think a lot of the better late season bucks in CO are killed before 4th season, so the best bucks could be gone by then. Also depending on what kind of hunt you are going for, you may want to think about access. The later into the season you get, the more likelihood of weather (snow), but that could also mean more difficulty with access, especially if you do not have access to an atv or good 4ws vehicle.

 

[Brandon_SPC]

Tough to say without knowing a lot of the other factors. 3rd and 4th rifle deer hunts in CO are so dependent on weather and the best way to hunt them in my opinion is to just cover as much country as you can, unless you know the unit well from previous seasons or scouting. With that being said, I think a lot of the better late season bucks in CO are killed before 4th season, so the best bucks could be gone by then. Also depending on what kind of hunt you are going for, you may want to think about access. The later into the season you get, the more likelihood of weather (snow), but that could also mean more difficulty with access, especially if you do not have access to an atv or good 4ws vehicle.

Appreciate that insight. I'm leaning more to 3rd rifle due to the weather you mentioned but the later season bucks being killed earlier definitely is something I should think about.

 

[Slickhill]

I hunt CO 3rd season at about the elevation you are talking every year. Buck tags come about every 3rd or 4th year and we hunt elk in between.

The one constant in the area we hunt is that both deer and elk activity and sightings seem closely tied to the weather. Two years ago we had snow and the elk and deer were down into our area. Someone in camp saw a good buck every day. I will clarify this to mean generally a 22”-28” branch antlered mature buck, in 70 years of hunting the area it has produced only a couple really big 180”+ bucks for our group. This past season it was hot and dry, we saw 2 shooter bucks between us the entire season. It has been fairly consistent in my experience that if it’s hot we won’t have good deer or elk numbers but if it’s cold and snowy we will.

Some years when the weather is more in between, cold at night but warming during the day with no precipitation, there will be does and forkies everywhere and suddenly it’s like the big bucks make it down and they’re all over for the last couple days of season.

With 24 3rd seasons in that one particular unit under my belt I would say that if it was just a matter of picking one season or another I’d pick 4th for a better chance of the big bucks being down sniffing around the does. I realize that’s a fairly narrow scope being in the same area and elevation forever but it’s what I’ve experienced firsthand.

 

[justinspicher]

I’m a 4th season deer kinda dude. I like the weather, less folks and the rut is usually going pretty good. So far it’s been good hunting everytime I have a tag.

 

[ckleeves]

I would say it’s unit dependent and very weather dependent. In an easy access unit and on the years the weather lines up you can be hunting gutpiles by 4th.

In a harder to access unit and no weather 4th has the advantage just on rutting activity.

It’s only 2 day gap between them, but I can’t say there isn’t a difference in behavior in those couple of days because I have seen years when it seemed like rutting activity went 0-60 in just a couple days so I would give the advantage to 4th there.

Now that 3rd is back to 9 days it makes it a harder decision. Those 5 day seasons go by real quick.

I would take a hard look at buck tag numbers for that specific unit during 3rd and see just how hard they are getting hunted before 4th and also how many bull and cow tags are issued for both seasons.