Just got home from spending several days in CO. It was a mix of summer vacation and hoping to do a little scouting for this fall (or at least set eyes on the area). Both were at least marginally successful I think.
We left MO around 5:30 am to head west and arrive at a decent time. Loaded up the wife and the road dog and headed out.
As we got closer to our destination, I noticed how vastly different the terrain in south/central CO was from the northern parts of CO we've been to in the past (north of Denver on up to Estes Park for the touristy stuff). Much more of a desert feel, but quickly changing back and forth to green pastures with mountain runoff flowing through like an old western. Pretty cool, made me want a horse and a Stetson. Saw a ton of antelope, which was neat. I should probably put a speed goat hunt somewhere on my list of to-do's.
I tried not to drag the wife all over the place against her will, but she was a good sport and hiked some places much rougher than I expected she'd want to. She's a big yoga nut so as long as I took pictures of her doing standing mongoose or whatever the pose was called on a creek rock, she was cool with hitting the woods.
She's not too bad, I guess I will keep her for a while.
I swung by an area USFS office and grabbed one of the NatGeo maps that almost perfectly covered our unit and a MVU map. Went to the local CPW office and by chance caught the biologist in the office. I re-introduced myself from a few months (and 2,000 phone calls ago for him) and flopped my maps out on the counter. He again was super polite and pointed a few places out on the map and told me to touch base with him again as I had more questions. I also picked up a flyer with a list of area meat processors in case a tree falls on and elk and we find it.
To be honest, I'm not sure if I am more or less confident after getting a look at the area. No doubt some of it would be brutal to access, both road condition and boot work wise. But we didn't sign up to hike a golf course, so I'm keeping a positive outlook! I'd considered asking some Roksliders if they've hunted the area before and had any info they'd be willing to share via PM, but that seems to go over really well or not so much when it comes to forums. I guess if it helps we haven't been sitting on our asses with 1 post on "Where do I hunt in this unit?" Haha.
Got a chance to test some gear in the mountains as well. The Kifaru T2 is super comfortable and my boots felt great!
We did some road trips around to different places and ended up on some roads we didn't intend to. I will blame her, she will blame me. Anyway, enough yapping, here are some pics from the trip.
