Colorado OTC cow hunt

[Trees91]

Anyone have any pointers? Never hunted Colorado but would like to this fall. Have had friends hunt around Craig. Some info would be much appreciated.

 

[11boo]

I’ve never hunted that area, but I know guys who have. Lots of hunters, and usually lots of elk. Lots of glassing then figuring out how to get in front of the moving elk, and other hunters.

 

[cnelk]

Go late. Hope for snow.

 

[5MilesBack]

The only OTC cow tags I know of are archery tags for most the NW CO units, and south central units. You'd have to look at the brochure to see which units are open to cows, they've made a lot of adjustments to OTC archery cow units in the last few years.

Sometimes there are leftover draw cow tags available though for rifle hunts. You'd have to check the leftover list when it comes out.

 

[Newtosavage]

I hunted on a leftover cow tag last year, in an area made up of about 5 NW Colorado units. It was a good year to do that since 10" of snow fell in my "usual" hunting spot the week before opening day. A lot of elk moved down to lower elevations, and if I didn't have all those units to choose from, I'm not sure what I would have done. But we made the adjustment and moved about 80 miles to some public land that was around 6K feet (I had previously hunted between 9-10K feet) and found plenty of elk, even in mid-October.

I'm not sure which units offer OTC cow tags, but there were literally hundreds of leftover cow tags last year that weren't hard to get online.

BTW, I've been hunting cow elk for the past 3 seasons and have yet to kill one. During that time, I've had multiple point-blank encounters with bulls, some as big as 6x6, but couldn't shoot them. Maybe it's just my luck, but this year I'm probably going for an either sex or just a bull tag. Those cows can be darn tough when there are 30 pairs of eyeballs guarding the herd.

 

[cnelk]

The OP never mentioned what weapon of choice or season

 

[Trees91]

Sorry guys. Rifle hunt. Probably later in the season

 

[cnelk]

The units around Craig have lots of cow tags that can be had 2nd-4th seasons - even tho its thru the draw, its not a problem getting one, even your second choice, sometimes 4th choice

Like I mentioned above - go late and hope for snow

 

[elkduds]

Suggest you get in the April drawing, get a point w 1st choice, and find a tag here that was available as 2, 3, or 4th choice. That gives you full access to the 2nd drawing, as long as you select leftover option "if unsuccessful."

https://cpw.state.co.us/Documents/Hunting/BigGame/Statistics/Elk/2018ElkDrawnOut.pdf