I have found the elk on public land!

[elkliver]

Chris in TN. I'm going to join in with recommending you start with skipping the backpack hunt and be open minded to not going way back in. This is for two reasons
first is the pack out. We see the same response from many new Elk hunters who are fit and willing to go the extra mile. they are going to go "deep". They don't understand why everyone is suggesting their distance estimation may need adjustment. No one is trying to belittle your or your daughters ability but the first time you have an elk down in pole patch in the bottom of a canyon it is a quick reality check. When you have a heavy pack on, a half mile of crawling over dead fall will feel like eternity Hiking on a trail is much different than rough terrain. Not saying you can't do or that you shouldn't try... Im saying go in with the idea of finding elk and not with the plan of hiking forever. which ties into part 2,

2nd, going in deep without knowing there are elk there wastes a lot of time and effort. I would start hunting from your truck . As previously mentioned, there are a lot of elk a mile from the road especially if you are not at a trail head and the area of forest right next to the road is uphill. Pick a likely looking canyon and go for a hike. Watch for fresh sign... if you cover a fair amount of ground and find no fresh sign... then you hunt somewhere else in the afternoon. If you get into fresh sign and the good area is 3 miles from the truck... that's fine but make finding elk the goal, not the three miles. Backpacking in does not allow for the flexibility of hunting multiple locations.

 

[Customweld]

Chris in TN. I'm going to join in with recommending you start with skipping the backpack hunt and be open minded to not going way back in. This is for two reasons
first is the pack out. We see the same response from many new Elk hunters who are fit and willing to go the extra mile. they are going to go "deep". They don't understand why everyone is suggesting their distance estimation may need adjustment. No one is trying to belittle your or your daughters ability but the first time you have an elk down in pole patch in the bottom of a canyon it is a quick reality check. When you have a heavy pack on, a half mile of crawling over dead fall will feel like eternity Hiking on a trail is much different than rough terrain. Not saying you can't do or that you shouldn't try... Im saying go in with the idea of finding elk and not with the plan of hiking forever. which ties into part 2,

2nd, going in deep without knowing there are elk there wastes a lot of time and effort. I would start hunting from your truck . As previously mentioned, there are a lot of elk a mile from the road especially if you are not at a trail head and the area of forest right next to the road is uphill. Pick a likely looking canyon and go for a hike. Watch for fresh sign... if you cover a fair amount of ground and find no fresh sign... then you hunt somewhere else in the afternoon. If you get into fresh sign and the good area is 3 miles from the truck... that's fine but make finding elk the goal, not the three miles. Backpacking in does not allow for the flexibility of hunting multiple locations.

Agree with @elkliver . Backpacking camp in really confines you to a specific area. Having a base camp next to or close to a road gives you the opportunity to move several miles in different directions each day if you aren’t getting in to elk. Sometimes locating hunter pressured elk requires moving a lot.

 

[azsupercub]

Hi Chris,

First and foremost congrats on hunting with your daughter. My boys hunt, but my daughter is my hunting partner.

We are blessed to hunt elk in AZ, MT, and / or CO more than any sane people should, and are enjoying it while still young enough to get up the mountains.

There is a bunch of great advice here, even the conflicting advice, because few hunters have the same desires, stamina, tolerance or tastes. I won't advise, but rather offer a couple data points.

A quartered good bull is 5 trips for the average grown man, if you packed gear, and rifle / bow in.
A boned out bull might yield a trip less, 2 if it was smallish, or you didn't plan on pacing horns.
Don't plan on a packer, if you didn't recon one ahead of time, they will have plenty to do, and you'll want your meat in a cooler not on the mountain while you're looking for help.

All that means don't calculate your trip 'in' as a hard limit, if you can't do it a few times back to back.

Most equate elk with mountains and timber, and consequently ignore glass. The only elk I've killed that I didn't glass first where ones we've ridden up on (they don't seem to be bothered by horses / mules much), but that won't be an option for you. Let your eye's do the walking. You'll be surprised how much more ground you'll cover.

Lastly, not knowing your unit, I will say that most of CO public land is loaded with flatland non res hunters. They typically set up huge base camps and start low on the opener working their way up. Between them and any road hunters, getting above them before hand with a pack in, or spike camp, and glassing usually puts you at a distinct advantage of watching them drive for you.

Take care, Rob

 

[cnelk]

I killed this bull last year 1 mile from the truck.
This pack was just the skull and one hind quarter
That weighed 95lbs. It still sucked.

It’s definitely not something to underestimate

 

[azsupercub]

Oh.... one piece of public land advice, for Pete's sake, don't get hung up on shooting a Toad. A 400 bull would be wonderful. On a first, or early on hunt, a legal bull will be infinitely more wonderful than timing out while fingers crossed for a book animal.

Take care, Rob

 

[spike camp]

There’s 50 years of info in this thread.
Kinda cool how it all came about.
Maybe a lesson, for the guys that just come here for a handout.

Apologies if it’s been responded too, how old
Is your daughter?

 

[JackButler]

I have dissected the unit(s) my daughter got her elk tag in. I've drawn a 1-mile buffer around every road and hiking trail, a 2-mile buffer around every trailhead or dead end road, I've shaded out all of the south facing slopes and every steep cliff face and every north facing slope that is steeper than 30 degrees. I've buffered around all of the outfitter campsites and ranger stations. I've eliminated everything below 7500' elevation because it's either private or too hot for fall elk.

The good news is, after doing all of that, all of the elk in the unit either live on private land or in a handful of six-acre blocks that are left. The Colorado hunting atlas says one of those blocks sits directly between the summer and winter ranges, so that spot should be money.

The bad news is, that spot is a seventeen mile hike from the trailhead.

Alright, just joking about all of that. Or venting. Or realizing that a lot of e-scouting conventional wisdom only goes so far and hunting can't be reduced down to a complex exercise in linear programming.


Moving on to actual serious questions:

Setting aside the problems of having to climb over dead trees that are everywhere, is there a maximum slope figure you guys use when planning approaches? I am not a mountain climber. My daughter and I did a hike in the smokies the other day - which are not nearly as steep as the rockies in general - and we climbed a hill of about 450' elevation gain that looks to average about 16% overall. I know I've hiked up roads that were pushing 40% before. But those were more or less open bare dirt. I know physical fitness plays a role in this and we are on our way in that arena, I'm just wondering what my practical safe limits are here....I'm thinking longer 40% slopes are probably the max, especially if they have any little ledges at all in them. In years past I've been in places in the smoky mountains where I was following a ridgeline cross-country and came to a near vertical cliff and had to make long detours to get off that cliff. I am trying to avoid that here.

Second question: I have AT&T cell phone service. Looking at their map, they claim service across most of the mid and high elevations in the area we're looking at hunting. Is this ridiculously optimistic? Am I correct that I should expect at very best to only have service on ridgelines? I don't *need* service but if we end up needing to call a game packer or wanting to text a picture to the folks back home, it would be nice to not have to hike back to the truck and drive halfway back to town. Yes, we plan to have an inreach (maybe two) but I'm just trying to figure out if our phones will be useable at all. I vaguely remember having maybe one bar of service the last time I was in the area on a USFS road and that area shows coverage on the current AT&T map, but I don't know what if anything has changed since I was there last. I searched and found a thread on this forum discussing cell service but it's a couple years old now and I know the answers change every year.

Also - apart from hunting pressure, do timberline elk normally perhaps feed on one side of a mountain, in one drainage, then cross back over to another drainage to bed/water? And if those elk are pressured while near the treeline would it be normal to expect them to be just as likely to go over the top and drop into the next drainage, instead of going downhill into the same drainage, away from something that spooked them? I'm looking at a couple of ridgetop saddles and wondering if they'd be productive once shooting starts.

There's just a heckuva lot I simply do not know.

If you have an iPhone 14 or higher you can send texts for free via the satellite option.

 

[Chris in TN]

that's fine but make finding elk the goal, not the three miles.

With all due respect, that is the goal, wilderness or not. I've typed out two long replies and deleted them and I'll leave it at that.

 

[Chris in TN]

Agree with @elkliver . Backpacking camp in really confines you to a specific area. Having a base camp next to or close to a road gives you the opportunity to move several miles in different directions each day if you aren’t getting in to elk. Sometimes locating hunter pressured elk requires moving a lot.

A three hour backpack trip that puts us within an easy morning stroll of two days of hunting, is a tradeoff I'll be willing to make, if needed, when we get there and see things that I cannot possible see and know until about October 11-12-13 at best.

I'm not planning a trip that hinges on backpacking deep into the wilderness. I'm planning a trip that'll hinge on a whole bunch of factors (the weather before we get there and what's forecasted while we are there and what we find in our days of scouting closer to the road and how glass-able certain spots prove to be) and we may never set foot in a wilderness, but I do see it as likely and not even the 'worst case'. I think my daughter can probably handle a wilderness hunt with all of the associated work spread out over a day of getting there, a couple days of hunting, and a day out, better than she can handle getting up in the middle of the night to climb mountains in the dark then climb back down a different mountain after dark then getting up to do it again several days in a row. If we actually kill something we have to either get it to a trail by ourselves (for the packers to retrieve) or a road by ourselves. It's work either way. I'm not going into this with a commitment to 'go deep'. I'm going into this committed to doing whatever I believe gives us the best odds when we get there, and 'going deep' requires a lot of advanced preparation whereas truck camping is easier in some ways but absolutely brutal if we shoot something in a steep nasty canyon that's 'only' a mile from the road.

I can't plan to truck camp then change my mind at the last minute and safely hike six miles into a wilderness. But I *can* plan to be in the wilderness then switch to a truck hunt at the last minute.

Also - the worry about 'what if you get there and there's no elk?' sort of depends on the notion that there's a 10,000 acre block of good elk habitat that's going to be empty. I'm sure that's possible but I'm not sure it's likely.

 

[Chris in TN]

I killed this bull last year 1 mile from the truck.
This pack was just the skull and one hind quarter
That weighed 95lbs. It still sucked.

It’s definitely not something to underestimate






View attachment 904292

If we were standing together a mile from the truck and you told me you were going to tote 95 pounds of stuff out in one load I'd say something that hurt your feelings in an effort to stop you from hurting your back. I've experienced both and the back took much longer to heal.

 

[Chris in TN]

Oh.... one piece of public land advice, for Pete's sake, don't get hung up on shooting a Toad.

Take care, Rob

Man, I was secretly hoping she'd draw a unit 61 cow tag. I'm highly confident we will attempt to kill the first legal bull that gives us a chance.

 

[Chris in TN]

There’s 50 years of info in this thread.
Kinda cool how it all came about.
Maybe a lesson, for the guys that just come here for a handout.

Apologies if it’s been responded too, how old
Is your daughter?

She's 13.

 

[Customweld]

A three hour backpack trip that puts us within an easy morning stroll of two days of hunting, is a tradeoff I'll be willing to make, if needed, when we get there and see things that I cannot possible see and know until about October 11-12-13 at best.

I'm not planning a trip that hinges on backpacking deep into the wilderness. I'm planning a trip that'll hinge on a whole bunch of factors (the weather before we get there and what's forecasted while we are there and what we find in our days of scouting closer to the road and how glass-able certain spots prove to be) and we may never set foot in a wilderness, but I do see it as likely and not even the 'worst case'. I think my daughter can probably handle a wilderness hunt with all of the associated work spread out over a day of getting there, a couple days of hunting, and a day out, better than she can handle getting up in the middle of the night to climb mountains in the dark then climb back down a different mountain after dark then getting up to do it again several days in a row. If we actually kill something we have to either get it to a trail by ourselves (for the packers to retrieve) or a road by ourselves. It's work either way. I'm not going into this with a commitment to 'go deep'. I'm going into this committed to doing whatever I believe gives us the best odds when we get there, and 'going deep' requires a lot of advanced preparation whereas truck camping is easier in some ways but absolutely brutal if we shoot something in a steep nasty canyon that's 'only' a mile from the road.

I can't plan to truck camp then change my mind at the last minute and safely hike six miles into a wilderness. But I *can* plan to be in the wilderness then switch to a truck hunt at the last minute.

Also - the worry about 'what if you get there and there's no elk?' sort of depends on the notion that there's a 10,000 acre block of good elk habitat that's going to be empty. I'm sure that's possible but I'm not sure it's likely.

Best of luck to ya. Hope to hear the afterword.

 

[elkliver]

With all due respect, that is the goal, wilderness or not. I've typed out two long replies and deleted them and I'll leave it at that.

Back and forth aside, I think it is AWESOME that you are putting together a trip with your daughter. These are the kind of memories that will last a lifetime. I look forward to reading the after action report this fall.
at the end of the day... just go hunting. you will figure it out and have an adventure while doing so

 

[WeiserBucks]

Also - the worry about 'what if you get there and there's no elk?' sort of depends on the notion that there's a 10,000 acre block of good elk habitat that's going to be empty. I'm sure that's possible but I'm not sure it's likely.

10k acres of western mountains is comparatively tiny. There's probably more 10k chunks of land during elk season that don't have elk on em vs those that do.

 

[azsupercub]

I killed this bull last year 1 mile from the truck.
This pack was just the skull and one hind quarter
That weighed 95lbs. It still sucked.

It’s definitely not something to underestimate

Undoubtedly stouter and younger than I And I whole heartedly agree.

When my son killed his first CO bull. He was maybe 4' and wanted to pack out a hind. Which probably weighed almost as much as he. We took the short (read; steep) way down, to try and save daylight for a return trip, and at one point he slipped in deep leaves. Falling for his butt, he ended up hitting the ankle first (he was loaded ham up ankle down) which bounced him up and out. Him, pack, and hind rolled for about 75 yds. Thought I'd ruined him of hunting, but nothing broke, or even broke loose. A bit shook up he gained his feet and we finished the way. The rest came out the long way, and oddly enough he still puts up with me

I had posted that almost always when I'm packing afoot, it's a 5 trip deal, but I think my post didn't come up because of my FNG status.

My daughter's first fell a few yds away from one I killed. Packing 2 out mathematically only means twice as much work, ya.... try telling that to you knees .

Take care, Rob

 

[Chris in TN]

10k acres of western mountains is comparatively tiny. There's probably more 10k chunks of land during elk season that don't have elk on em vs those that do.

I don't doubt this at all. But I think I can show up 3-4 days early with a list of spots to check and find elk at at least 2 of them. I have perhaps nine 'spots' (places I can more or less cover in a day and either find promising sign or find nothing or find other hunters crowding us, and some of them I can scout 2 per day if I'm just hiking in with a bottle of water and a spotting scope) right now spread across maybe 30,000 acres and I have another maybe 4 spots within a ~15,000 acre block several miles away.

Lastly, not knowing your unit, I will say that most of CO public land is loaded with flatland non res hunters. They typically set up huge base camps and start low on the opener working their way up. Between them and any road hunters, getting above them before hand with a pack in, or spike camp, and glassing usually puts you at a distinct advantage of watching them drive for you.

Take care, Rob

We will bring our spotter but it's pretty heavy by backpack standards (and ridiculous overkill for a non-trophy hunter, I wish it was a lighter, cheaper, lower power unit) and my general plan is to use it for scouting in the days before season but leave it in the truck if we actually backpack in over a mile or so. I have marked a lot of potential glassing spots but I honestly fear that with all the beetle kill most of our unit will either be unglassable or only done from within 100-300 yards. Ironically I think the most glassable spots will be the ones furthest from the roads.

I am hoping, greatly, that you are correct, and that I'm going into a unit full of desk jockeys that just enjoy the experience of camping in the great outdoors and they'll all push elk to us.

I know how out-of-shape most easterners are. Part of me thinks the only real advantage I can give my daughter is to spend the summer building her strength.

 

[UKwildcatfan]

I don't doubt this at all. But I think I can show up 3-4 days early with a list of spots to check and find elk at at least 2 of them. I have perhaps nine 'spots' (places I can more or less cover in a day and either find promising sign or find nothing or find other hunters crowding us, and some of them I can scout 2 per day if I'm just hiking in with a bottle of water and a spotting scope) right now spread across maybe 30,000 acres and I have another maybe 4 spots within a ~15,000 acre block several miles away.


We will bring our spotter but it's pretty heavy by backpack standards (and ridiculous overkill for a non-trophy hunter, I wish it was a lighter, cheaper, lower power unit) and my general plan is to use it for scouting in the days before season but leave it in the truck if we actually backpack in over a mile or so. I have marked a lot of potential glassing spots but I honestly fear that with all the beetle kill most of our unit will either be unglassable or only done from within 100-300 yards. Ironically I think the most glassable spots will be the ones furthest from the roads.

I am hoping, greatly, that you are correct, and that I'm going into a unit full of desk jockeys that just enjoy the experience of camping in the great outdoors and they'll all push elk to us.

I know how out-of-shape most easterners are. Part of me thinks the only real advantage I can give my daughter is to spend the summer building her strength.

May be too thick for a spotting scope. Archery hunted elk in the Ky Appalachians. Rolled out first morning with my 15s on a tripod and 10s around my neck. Not long after the sun came up I figured out real fast if I could see an elk, it was already in bow range, didn't need glass. Had an elk 15-20 yds from us, could never see it. Also, the morning dew was so heavy if you walked through the head high goldenrod on the reclaimed strip mines, you'd be soaked. Needed a rain suit just to get to the woods dry. Eastern Ky is nothing like the areas I've been to in Mt, NM, Az and Mexico as far as glassing.

 

[azsupercub]

For the sake of clarification, when I said glassed up, that mostly inferred glasses (binos) on tri pod western style glassing. Not necessarily a spotter. In the pick I posted earlier she's on 10x40's and I'm on 15x56's which have since morphed in to 12x42's. Any of these will easily pick through cedars or timber a full 2 miles away.

Take care, Rob

 

[Maverick1]

A 40-45 DEGREE slope is generally the max I personally am willing to climb. That equates to 100% grade. To me, it's just too dangerous to climb down slopes much steeper than that. Good rule of thumb I follow is that I have to use my hands a lot to get up it, it's probably too steep to climb down.

Agree. Nobody is going up a 45 degree slope for any sort of distance.