CO First Season and the Weather Impact

[Bulldawg]

How was 1st season for you guys that were out there?

We were out there Saturday before the season started and Sunday evening we were able to locate 50+ elk 10 bulls across 4 different groups of elk, hopes were high and we felt very confident as this was a lower hunter density unit and felt very good for opening day. Then monday it snowed/rained all day and into tuesday morning. Tuesday evening we were able to find one of the groups again of about 20 and 4 bulls. Wednesday morning made our way in and they were nowhere to be found, and then that evening we went to look for one of the other groups with no avail with no tracks in the snow where they were. Finally found 3 lone bulls thursday evening and made a move on them Friday morning but they had moved about 2 miles around a giant basin and we watched them go to bed in the timber and we made a big move to set up on them for the evening. They never came out that night. Saturday morning we went back into an area we had seen some elk the week prior and they still were not in there, so that was a bust. Saturday evening we were set up glassing and had a herd with a spike and small bull with about 15 cows pop up near us that we made a move on and should have killed, but I made a dumb move and the wind was crap all week so we got a wind swirl and they busted us and ruined that for us. Sunday morning tried to get back on them, to no avail.

So we went from very confident to seeing next to no elk all things considering for the season.

Couple things for us that hurt us, the weather came in and whittled our 3 days of scouting down to 2 evenings, which I can't control but it really did take some wind out of my sails because I didn't get to check out different country that I wanted to scout before going into for the hunt. Before the weather hit from a distance we could see the elk being a little rutty, there were big bulls pushing cows around, though we couldn't hear them bugle because of the distance, it was pretty clear that there was a little of that going on. After the storm there wasn't any bugling going on, and usually during the first season I do get a good bit of bugling going on, in my experience.

What did you guys see out there, how did that storm impact your area and how did it change things from what you have seen in prior first seasons?

I am interested in seeing the harvest stats from this year because while I only ran into a couple of other hunters up there, we were the only ones that had seen any animals. Heck we saw more mountain goats and moose than we did elk once the season hit haha.

 

[Poser]

I headed out in the thick of it on Saturday morning. The area we were in probably got the most rain in the entire state -approximately 12-16 inches, possibly more between Friday and Wednesday. We were entirely cut off by overflowing creeks and rivers in every direction. The elk, we estimated, weren’t moving around much at all as they were just as cut off by the unprecedented flooding.

A hail storm piled up well over a foot deep in places. We stayed completely hunkered down Sat-Tuesday keeping the wood stove rolling the entire time.

We had plans to move up to a higher camp on Tuesday but the storms were too intense. Alarm went off at 2:30 am on Wednesday morning, lots of lighting. At 3:30 it was raining extremely hard. Finally got up and moving around 4:30 but we had to take an alternate route to get to our area and it took us 5.5 hours to get there. Rain off and on throughout the day. Some more thunder and lightning + grapple and hail. Finally spotted a bull with 16 cows in the afternoon. As I was climbing the 1000 feet to get after him, the weather blew out by the way of sustained 60 mph winds. The elk were feeding anyway. I ended up killing a good bull late in the day above 12,000 feet. By the time we got the meat moved below tree line, it was 2:30 am, we were 5+ hours from camp on a difficult, alternate route with lots of cliff lines so we made an unplanned bivy out at 11,000 feet, curled up on our packs and doing jumping jacks all night. The next morning, we packed down with some meat and it took most of the day as we got cliffed out multiple times.

The first 4 days + the 36 hour effort of opening day+ made for the toughest hunt I’ve ever been on. The 36 hour push including spending the night out at 11k without sleeping bags made for the toughest 36 hours I’ve ever had hunting. I have had a couple of unplanned bivies during my climbing days, this experience seemed the most brute and stretch of the capabilities of our gear right to the edge.

After the storm moved out, the weather was quite nice and mild for the rest of our trip and the long, arduous, moderately sketchy/dangerous at times, pack out. My fiancé hiked in as well as a fellow Rockslider and a buddy of his to assist with the pack out which made for a light second trip but still extremely difficult by anyone’s standards.

Overall, I would say that it was such a difficult and challenging experience that I’m not going to bother to try and explain how tough it was to anyone because it was an unbelievably difficult experience. Good news is that every year after this experience won’t justify any complaints on my end.