Late season elk advice

[Wesmorr]

So I don’t make the same mistakes this year (1st year hunting), please give any advice on how youd handle the situation, 3rd season CO rifle in Nov. Packed in about 6 miles the first night into OTC Wilderness in CO 2 nights before opener. Morning before opener, while walking up N slope to glassing knob I saw beds and droppings, but with weather being freezing at night, couldn’t tell how old. Bumped a couple legal bills around 8 AM most likely coming back from feeding on the knob or S/SE side. Seems like they didn’t book it too far or run away too fast so we tried to hunt that meadow the next 2 days keeping wind in our favor. Never saw them again. Snow hadn’t started and they were still at 10.5k feet. After that some outfitters came in and saw the same herd we spotted later that week down low in a hell hole. Pressure pushed those bulls out. Should we have moved initially when we bumped them or moved once the outfitters came in? How far will they typically move if bumped in their home range? A ridge, or miles? Was a tough 7 day hunt with lots of animals but couldn’t get in the right place at the right time. Thanks

Photos of the cows we saw, unfortunately no tag for them!

 

[nphunter]

Elk love hell holes. Not trying to be mean but if you’re not willing to go into a hell hole after them find a different spot. Finding elk in rifle season is usually the hard part.

As far as what happens when bumped it depends on the elk. Some areas I hunt I can bump elk all day long and they never leave the drainage because it’s super thick and they are safe. Other areas where it’s more open they will go 2+ miles and never break stride until they are out of sight. Most of the time when a drainage is blown up often it’s due to not playing the thermals correctly.

Did you do a drop camp? 6 miles is pretty deep without having the know how to deal with a dead elk.

 

[Wesmorr]

Elk love hell holes. Not trying to be mean but if you’re not willing to go into a hell hole after them find a different spot. Finding elk in rifle season is usually the hard part.

As far as what happens when bumped it depends on the elk. Some areas I hunt I can bump elk all day long and they never leave the drainage because it’s super thick and they are safe. Other areas where it’s more open they will go 2+ miles and never break stride until they are out of sight. Most of the time when a drainage is blown up often it’s due to not playing the thermals correctly.

Did you do a drop camp? 6 miles is pretty deep without having the know how to deal with a dead elk.

No we were willing to go in, just the morning we saw them the outfitter camp had 4 guys down low on them so I didn’t want to go in on them since they spotted those ones first and were already stalking down. I feel like once they were moving on those ones we still had 2-3 days but didn’t know if we should’ve pulled camp completely and moved drainages or not. We didn’t but didn’t see any more bachelor groups after that. It was our main camp and we debated just pulling daily and bivying until we saw another group to re set up but ended up leaving camp and just checked out other glassing knobs within a mile or two of where we were at but thinking all the still hunting from the camps we should’ve just moved completely.

Had a friend and was prepared to debone and hike all the meat out in 2 trips or so. Also had a contact to an outfitter willing to pack out via a pin if we felt like it would’ve been cutting it close with incoming weather as a backup.

 

[Wesmorr]

Elk love hell holes. Not trying to be mean but if you’re not willing to go into a hell hole after them find a different spot. Finding elk in rifle season is usually the hard part.

As far as what happens when bumped it depends on the elk. Some areas I hunt I can bump elk all day long and they never leave the drainage because it’s super thick and they are safe. Other areas where it’s more open they will go 2+ miles and never break stride until they are out of sight. Most of the time when a drainage is blown up often it’s due to not playing the thermals correctly.

Did you do a drop camp? 6 miles is pretty deep without having the know how to deal with a dead elk.

Second paragraph nails it, thanks. I bet they stayed relatively close because of how thick it was but they probably dipped down into a much thicker part of the drainage/creek bottom where glassing was tough

 

[WRO]

They’ll stay in the same place for a month atleast post rut if you don’t screw with them. Once you bumped them it’s over, they go on to a different hole. It’s best to scout them way off rather than try and get in with them without mal intent.


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