Locating elk with high pressure

[BustedRagHorn]

start glassing like mad but this time for tracks,

This is a great strategy. As mentioned elk will stage if they haven't already started their migration. I find that often when they are staging they are in much bigger groups than deer. You can go days with just cutting one or two tracks then you get into the right basin and there they all are. They will sit in the area where no one messed with them. They can be fairly predictable from year to year once you have their migration routes and staging areas pegged.

 

[HookUp]

find the freshest sign you can and stay in the area. Elk move cylical like hands of a clock and wil be back. They may be running 5-20 mile loops so good luck tracking them down.

 

[Colorado Cowboy]

What happens around here in western Colorado is the elk go where there's the least pressure. In the bottoms of the deep canyons, slope with the thickest oak brush or private.

 

[NorthIdahoDude]

I knew an old guy (90 something when I met him), who had probably 70 or more sets of just monster elk antlers hanging in his huge shop. Those were just his personal ones, he was an elk guide most of his life. I have had more frustration hunting elk than you can imagine, and so I of course asked him how he did it every year like that.

He said it's really easy. You own a couple of good mules. You ride up to the highest mountain you can find in the area, where you can survey the country with some really good binoculars. You then pick the deepest, darkest, nastiest hole you can find, as in, the one that makes you shudder and pray to God you never have to haul an elk out of that hole. Get back on the mule, and down that hole you go, and then shoot the first big ass bull you see when you get there (because there will probably be more than one).

Hard to say how much of that was an old dude poking fun at my sorry ass who's hunted elk for 20 years and only killed a few (none of them very big), and how much was legit good advice, but he seemed sincere.