elkyinzer
WKR
I'll reinforce what Elknut and bz said....
I see you are from PA also, so if you've ever rifle hunted here, you have experienced the most crowded hunting conditions possibly in the world. Even the most crowded Colorado archery conditions will be 50 times better. There is plenty of room to get away from people, you just have to be smart about it.
On my first elk hunt, we backpacked 3-5 miles into Colorado Wilderness area from a fairly busy trailhead. We saw 7 other hunters over the course of a week. Wasn't an awful hunt, we saw a lot of elk, had a couple good opportunities. We had muzzleoader hunters blow two setups on us, one of which I am still bitter about. Knowing what I know now, I would have had to stumbled into an elk on that trip, which I almost did. I must have spent 500 hours on the internet and watching videos preparing. But I made my mistakes and learned how to elk hunt pretty quickly. The backpacking experience was neat in the sense to have said that I've done it and know I am capable. I'm sure I will do it again some day. The downsides were that I, and even moreso my partner, were fairly new to backpacking, and completely new to elk hunting, so learning some things on the fly ate into our time and energy to hunt, and once you are 5 miles back and 4000 feet up, you are pretty committed to that general area for at least a couple days.
Next we hunted in Idaho, in the general part of the state Elknut hunts. We hunt there out of a basecamp (so much more comfortable) and regularly found elk within a 1/4 mile of the road (not designated wilderness) and have yet to see a single person in the woods in around 10 days hunting. Like Elknut, there were many hunters in the general area, but most were road and ATV hunters...we figured out how to use them to our advantage because we were getting into elk that they pushed into the steep nasty stuff. We were also much more mobile, due to the basecamp and truck. I know backpacking intuitively seems more mobile, but you have to know what you are doing, have damn lightweight gear, and have a location with a good amount of elky terrain within a reasonable radius to make it so. With a truck, we could draw a 25 mile radius, pick out ten spots on a map that looked elky, and get to most of them within a course of a week. Would have been impossible with a backpack style hunt.
The point in the contrast between the two hunting styles lies not within the state by state comparison, I know if I went back to Colorado I could kill an elk there, knowing what I know now. Rather, it reinforces what Elknut and BZ said...it's all about finding the right access points and figuring out where the other hunters go. Good public land elk spots are difficult and uncomfortable to get to, not purely way back in.
I see you are from PA also, so if you've ever rifle hunted here, you have experienced the most crowded hunting conditions possibly in the world. Even the most crowded Colorado archery conditions will be 50 times better. There is plenty of room to get away from people, you just have to be smart about it.
On my first elk hunt, we backpacked 3-5 miles into Colorado Wilderness area from a fairly busy trailhead. We saw 7 other hunters over the course of a week. Wasn't an awful hunt, we saw a lot of elk, had a couple good opportunities. We had muzzleoader hunters blow two setups on us, one of which I am still bitter about. Knowing what I know now, I would have had to stumbled into an elk on that trip, which I almost did. I must have spent 500 hours on the internet and watching videos preparing. But I made my mistakes and learned how to elk hunt pretty quickly. The backpacking experience was neat in the sense to have said that I've done it and know I am capable. I'm sure I will do it again some day. The downsides were that I, and even moreso my partner, were fairly new to backpacking, and completely new to elk hunting, so learning some things on the fly ate into our time and energy to hunt, and once you are 5 miles back and 4000 feet up, you are pretty committed to that general area for at least a couple days.
Next we hunted in Idaho, in the general part of the state Elknut hunts. We hunt there out of a basecamp (so much more comfortable) and regularly found elk within a 1/4 mile of the road (not designated wilderness) and have yet to see a single person in the woods in around 10 days hunting. Like Elknut, there were many hunters in the general area, but most were road and ATV hunters...we figured out how to use them to our advantage because we were getting into elk that they pushed into the steep nasty stuff. We were also much more mobile, due to the basecamp and truck. I know backpacking intuitively seems more mobile, but you have to know what you are doing, have damn lightweight gear, and have a location with a good amount of elky terrain within a reasonable radius to make it so. With a truck, we could draw a 25 mile radius, pick out ten spots on a map that looked elky, and get to most of them within a course of a week. Would have been impossible with a backpack style hunt.
The point in the contrast between the two hunting styles lies not within the state by state comparison, I know if I went back to Colorado I could kill an elk there, knowing what I know now. Rather, it reinforces what Elknut and BZ said...it's all about finding the right access points and figuring out where the other hunters go. Good public land elk spots are difficult and uncomfortable to get to, not purely way back in.