Rookie CO Elk hunter - random observations/changes after 1st DIY/OTC hunt

[CJohnson]

Thanks for the info...
...and Go Tigers!

 

[Marble]

For water intake, I prefer bottles so I can monitor my intake. I try and drink 3 nalgine bottles a day at minimum. I try to drink at least a half a bottle before bed with electrolytes and the other half right away when I wake up. Everytime I pass a stream I drink drink drink, refill and keep going.

Chapstick like blister with SPF in it helps. It also works well to put up your nose. Clears sinus and moisturizes. That or triple antibiotic ointment helps keeps my nose in shape.

For food, I will schedule out a snack every 3 hours. Big breakfast, 620 calorie delicious granola, and a 2 serving packet for dinner. I may not be hungry but I know I need to eat. I shoot for 3000 calories but rarely get there. I still normally loose a pound daily.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

I lost 12 pounds just the last week of the season from lack of appetite and exertion. And that was from a truck camp where I had hamburgers, hot dogs, BBQ ribs, fried chicken, and a few other things. Sometimes I'm just not hungry up there. Lost a total of about 20lbs for the season which is about my average. It will take the next 11 months to get it all back. I would guess that most guys take more food than they will actually eat up there.

The beetlekill........I actually gave a buddy crap this year because he went in with his chainsaw this summer and cleared some trails. I told him "now everyone will access it". I prefer them to not look like trails at all. Most the time I don't use trails anyway.

For the water bladder, as mentioned get the quick connects/disconnects for whatever brand you have. Then fill directly through your drink tube. I don't even have to take my Camelbak out to fill it.......just pull the bite valve and snap in the filter tube and fill it.

Damn, I need to come camp with you.

 

[nantzh]

Great post. Tons of good info for someone like me looking to do this for the first time next year. Thanks.

 

[espea101]

As far as GMU 14 goes, its not all beetle kill. A lot of that area was parts of the Routt Blowdown back in the late 90s. Look it up. Several million trees went down overnight. I've hunted there, and its brutal on the quads. But, I got in a huffing match with a bull moose (up a cliff, safely, ha), so that was fun!

 

[JayTx]

Something else to checkout is saline gel instead of the spray for up there. I live in SE Texas its 90% humidity most of the year here. When I go out West the gel has helped alot. I start using it on the drive before getting dried out.

 

[mtwarden]

think of blowdown as a possible advantage- how many dumba$$'s are going to keep climbing around/over/under before giving up

 

[MallardSX2]

Chap stick, Vaseline, and Water.

These are three things I do NOT forget.

Dont get excited about the vaseline comment. It has many uses other than what your thinking.

 

[5MilesBack]

Dont get excited about the vaseline comment. It has many uses other than what your thinking.

Hey, what you do on the mountain, hopefully stays on the mountain.

 

[prm]

"4. Beetle kill - wow. We underestimated how impassable "trails" could make getting deep very difficult."

***

You got a real lesson there. We've been dealing with beetle kill for years.

This fall, we hiked thu an area with blow downs for a bout 1/4 mi. - just to get to another area to hunt. Its so bad, I put up reflector tape just so we can find our way thru it in the dark.

One day my buddy decided to count how many trees we climbed over to get thru it.

74 blow down trees we go over - one way - in 1/4 mi.

Many times I have thought about counting how many dead falls I have to step over. Then I realize I’d just get depressed thinking about it. It’s a very large number.

One trick that i have used to get back out/through thick areas is to have the bread crumb feature on a Garmin GPS turned on when you find your way through deep blow downs during the day. Then when it comes time to go back out after dark, zoom all the way in on your GPS and back track on your bread crumb trail. It works very well. You’ll avoid all the dead ends.

 

[cnelk]

As far as GMU 14 goes, its not all beetle kill. A lot of that area was parts of the Routt Blowdown back in the late 90s. Look it up. Several million trees went down overnight. I've hunted there, and its brutal on the quads. But, I got in a huffing match with a bull moose (up a cliff, safely, ha), so that was fun!

Here ya go.... Oct 24, 1997

"Freak storm flattens 6 million trees - https://www.hcn.org/issues/119/3803

For hundreds of years, the spruce forest in the mountains north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., close to Wyoming, endured everything Mother Nature could throw at it: deep winter snows, severe drought, lightning strikes and gusty winds.

But on the night of Oct. 24, the forest got hit by something new: 120-mile-per-hour winds blowing from the east. The freak winds, spun off the backside of a massive low-pressure system that was blanketing the plains in snow, crested the Continental Divide, then knocked over trees like dominoes.

Aerial surveys the next day revealed that the hurricane-force winds downed some 6 million trees in the Routt National Forest, many of them old growth, and cut a swath 25 miles long and several miles wide.

"I haven't seen anything like this since I left the DMZ. It looks like a blast zone," says Bob Averill, a Forest Service staffer who surveyed the forest by airplane. "To see 20,000 acres of spruce laid out like that ... it just touches you."

Some of the trees snapped off, while many others keeled over, lifting their rootballs partially into the air. In places, the fallen timber has created an impenetrable wall 20 feet high, says Sherry Reed, the Forest Service district ranger who oversees the area. Hunters trapped in a cabin in the blowdown area - among only a handful of people to directly experience the windstorm - spent a day cutting their way out with chainsaws. "I don't even think an elk could make it through that tangle," says Reed. "

 

[5MilesBack]

Traversing downfall is like skiing moguls......you'd better be looking further ahead than just at the bump in front of you.

 

[11boo]

Sad thing about the beetle kill. I think they could have gotten a handle on it in the late 70s, when it was first found around lake Dillon. Aerial spraying was proposed, and quickly dismissed as not being environmentally friendly. The solution was to fell the infected trees, pile them up and spray the pile. Then the pile was covered in plastic.

Pile of fail.

 

[Chief254]

Great info here. Appreciate the insight. I’ve not once considered nasal spray for my 2020 trip.

 

[ChrisAU]

Great info here. Appreciate the insight. I’ve not once considered nasal spray for my 2020 trip.

It'll be part of my kit moving forward. Didn't have an issue my first year, but after this past year my nose bled for a good month or more after we got back.