The Current state of Elk Hunting

[5MilesBack]

"what makes an elk tag worth $1000" ??

Market forces. The market will command whatever hunters are willing to pay. Just look at all the states that have raised their tag prices over the last few years, yet they still sell out every year for draw tags. I'm willing to bet that they could charge $2k for elk tags and they'd still sell out. Most hunters just figure it's a once a year expense that they're willing to spend money on.

For guys like me, well I'm going to be 54 here soon and I realize how fast things are changing for the worse, and that my good hunting days are numbered........by both crowds, and age. So I'm willing to spend more than a lot of guys for whatever seasons I have left. And some of those tags I ate........not from lack of opportunity, but holding out for the biggest I was hunting and prolonging my season. I absolutely love chasing big bulls in September. Do I see small bulls too? Sure.........but they aren't as much fun to chase and interact with. I'm willing to pay for those opportunities even if I have to eat my tag in the process. I have a blast out there. Sure glad CO's season is 30 days, and I hope they change it to Sept 1-30 starting in 2020.

 

[Swede]

I enjoy elk hunting every year, but there is something I am not seeing. I can hunt spikes every year in the Mt Emily unit and for less than the remainder of the $13,000 I could take in a high success hunt for large bulls through Cabelas. An any elk tag for Mt Emily is no guarantee either. Two friends that went there last year were skunked. For them it was a big bull or nothing. They got the nothing option.
Of coarse as a geezer, I get an almost free Oregon license and a great reduction on the cost of a resident tag.

 

[USMC22]

I’d love to but seeing these prices and odds I don’t think I could swing it justifiably speaking.

 

[juan trueno]

I’d love to but seeing these prices and odds I don’t think I could swing it justifiably speaking.

Nothing wrong with that viewpoint - but (and im the last one to beat the “go West” gong) knowing that about yourself-
You need to decide if your a once in a lifetime guy or a now and again maybe 4-6 times in your life kind of guy and proceed accordingly. And even if your a once or twice in a lifetime elk guy plenty of places you can hunt a tag for a different species in your same “elk” unit or even a less desirable elk tag in that or those same units and thereby gain your knowledge and confidence to hit it for real on a “real tag” you can do a lot of hunting every year if you pick the correct alternate tags.

Dude first catches the bug he asks all
He can about going and doing it from whoever he thinks Can help- Internet, guy at the local hardware or feed store in the unit the region bio, his buddy’s roomate from Montana etc.

That plays ok-and he gets his feet wet -figures out it’s not a moonshot after all but in reach.

Give that a couple seasons and now he knows what he likes for terrain and how he handles it-he’s starting to feel like he knows the game or at least “a (not A) game” and now he starts paYing some attention to not only his area but other areas that he thinks could pan out with his bag of tricks but maybe be more accessible in one way or another according to his personal arithmetic ... he starts really checking each unit out and soon enough he’s got “his spot” a place he can hunt almost anytime he wants on one tag or another. And then he gets another one or two of those places- and then he gets pretty jealous of whAt he knows. he gets online to check on his secret unit and verify its
Sanctity all summer long. Everyday the addict runs that same old google search and prays - Even the atheists -that they get NO HITS.

There’s a few good hunts out there still I guess. And thank good not so rare as I thought they were 25 years ago.

 

[Trial153]

Hunters are their own worst enemy and for the most part they are greedy. They will happily pay for Exclusivity to the point of Monetizing the resource( just look at leasing for whitetails in the east). And once something becomes a commodity access to it will always be treated that way. The baseline shifts and it never returns.

 

[Newtosavage]

Hunters are their own worst enemy and for the most part they are greedy. They will happily pay for Exclusivity to the point of Monetizing the resource( just look at leasing for whitetails in the east). And once something becomes a commodity access to it will always be treated that way. The baseline shifts and it never returns.

Amen to that.

 

[wymtnpounder]

Had a buddy tell me with girls "Lower your standards raise your average" I imagine it works the same with tags... lol

 

[Nickofthewoods]

Can I travel East and hunt Whitetail Deer on vast tracts of public land with OTC tags every year? My perception is that I cannot. What I have heard from Midwestern and East Coast folks leads me to believe that I must either know someone with land or pay to hunt on a Ranch somewhere. Is the current state of Elk hunting suffering from accessibility? The few times I have had whitetail deer I was amazed at the quality of the meat. If I knew i could go somewhere that offered solitude, adventure, and a shot at some whitetails without breaking the bank i would probably go once in a while just to see some new country. Maybe there is and I just don't know about it.

 

[deerkiller]

Market forces. The market will command whatever hunters are willing to pay. Just look at all the states that have raised their tag prices over the last few years, yet they still sell out every year for draw tags. I'm willing to bet that they could charge $2k for elk tags and they'd still sell out. Most hunters just figure it's a once a year expense that they're willing to spend money on.

For guys like me, well I'm going to be 54 here soon and I realize how fast things are changing for the worse, and that my good hunting days are numbered........by both crowds, and age. So I'm willing to spend more than a lot of guys for whatever seasons I have left. And some of those tags I ate........not from lack of opportunity, but holding out for the biggest I was hunting and prolonging my season. I absolutely love chasing big bulls in September. Do I see small bulls too? Sure.........but they aren't as much fun to chase and interact with. I'm willing to pay for those opportunities even if I have to eat my tag in the process. I have a blast out there. Sure glad CO's season is 30 days, and I hope they change it to Sept 1-30 starting in 2020.

View attachment 99866

IMO, YOU are not part of this problem from the sound of it

 

[deerkiller]

for you guys thinking you might just as well not bother hunting for elk because of all the negative you read please understand and remember this, just because the unit you are looking at isn't a "once in a lifetime tag draw" does not for one second mean there are not HUGE bulls in it, don't be duped into that mindset - Every single year big bulls, nice bulls, decent bulls bulls of all sorts for all different sorts of hunters' expectations are killed, all over the place and especially now there are elk showing up in units and places in units where elk have never been known to be in times before - "our business is killing elk and business is GOOD" … now say it

 

[juan trueno]

Whitetails on public back east is real. Just not real productive. I see a handful of deer every outing. Don’t always see bucks. Age class in the eastern Mountain is good “lots” of 4-5 old animals available.


Hit it on a good moisture year on the second or 3rd year of ofmgood hard mast and even in ga or nc you can get a 130 out of the National forest. Which tells you a lot more about the relatively sterile and barren nature of mature hardwood forest than it does about the genetics of the herd. If these deer were eating corn and soybeans or alfalfa they’d be totally different animals. If you want. A challenging hunt- mountain whitetails in the eastern National forests is a good one

 

[handwerk]

So with so many more folks going after elk and all the info out there has it caused the success rates to go up or down in the states you hunt?

 

[ChrisA]

Had a buddy tell me with girls "Lower your standards raise your average" I imagine it works the same with tags... lol

That works for just about everything!

 

[camping1601]

Can I travel East and hunt Whitetail Deer on vast tracts of public land with OTC tags every year? My perception is that I cannot. What I have heard from Midwestern and East Coast folks leads me to believe that I must either know someone with land or pay to hunt on a Ranch somewhere. Is the current state of Elk hunting suffering from accessibility? The few times I have had whitetail deer I was amazed at the quality of the meat. If I knew i could go somewhere that offered solitude, adventure, and a shot at some whitetails without breaking the bank i would probably go once in a while just to see some new country. Maybe there is and I just don't know about it.

Just am fyi. There's countless opportunity to hunt mountain WT's on public lands in the E-NE.

 

[Newtosavage]

Can I travel East and hunt Whitetail Deer on vast tracts of public land with OTC tags every year? My perception is that I cannot.

Not sure why you would have that perception because in most cases, you actually can, depending on how you define "vast".

Having hunted in a large part of Colorado now, I can tell you that it's nearly as hard to get the "vast" uncrowded feeling in CO as it is in many national forests back east. It's all relative. But yes, you can get OTC tags every year in many if not most Eastern states, and for a lot more than just deer.

What I have heard from Midwestern and East Coast folks leads me to believe that I must either know someone with land or pay to hunt on a Ranch somewhere. Is the current state of Elk hunting suffering from accessibility?

Not in my opinion but then I hunt OTC or leftover tags in CO. If they ever do away with OTC tags then yes, accessibility will be an issue for NR's. But they would be crazy to do that (financially). Crazier things have happened though.

The few times I have had whitetail deer I was amazed at the quality of the meat. If I knew i could go somewhere that offered solitude, adventure, and a shot at some whitetails without breaking the bank i would probably go once in a while just to see some new country. Maybe there is and I just don't know about it.

There is.

 

[Newtosavage]

for you guys thinking you might just as well not bother hunting for elk because of all the negative you read please understand and remember this, just because the unit you are looking at isn't a "once in a lifetime tag draw" does not for one second mean there are not HUGE bulls in it, don't be duped into that mindset - Every single year big bulls, nice bulls, decent bulls bulls of all sorts for all different sorts of hunters' expectations are killed, all over the place and especially now there are elk showing up in units and places in units where elk have never been known to be in times before - "our business is killing elk and business is GOOD" … now say it

Great advice.

Two years ago, I was hunting with a ML cow tag in a VERY busy unit. I mean there were hunters everywhere. But lo and behold, while my son and I were glassing from a high vantage point I had found a few days before season, I spotted the largest bull I've ever seen in my life. It was in a meadow no more than 1/2 mile from where I knew a group of bowhunters were camped. That bull was a legitimate 7x7 and could scratch his rear end with his antlers if he had wanted to. On the first day of that hunt, I had a 4x4 and a mature 6x6 bull at less than 60 yards, not more than 1/2 mile from my base camp. On the last day of that hunt, I had a 5x5 bull at 40 yards.

Last year, my buddy killed a very respectable 6x6 in a valley on VERY crowded BLM land that had hunters going up either ridge as he hiked in.

Three years ago, I drove past a huge 6x6 bull with about 8 cows literally on the side of the highway I was camped next to, about 1 mile from my camp. That bull kept me up all night that night with his bugling.

So yea, don't let the chatter discourage you. If you want a mature bull, they are out there on every OTC unit I've hunted.

 

[rokclmb]

This season will be my 5th year heading out west on an CO OTC elk tag. Elk hunting was always something I thought I'd enjoy doing ONCE for the experience. Well, turns out I really enjoyed that first OTC Elk hunting experience and have been going just about every year since. Before I went on my first trip I had no knowledge of area, didn't know sites like this existed, didn't watch all the shows and had no idea on how the LE tag system worked in any state.

Over the past few years my knowledge on all fronts has increased and I've got a better understanding of what I'm doing. I've jumped on the PP train and will use those for hunts that I simply look at as a different experience from what I'm currently doing/enjoying.

I come from back "east" (WV/VA) where we have tens of thousands of acres of public land (mountains)to hunt and that's how I grew up hunting. I'm accustomed to seeing out-of-state hunters coming in and hunting my state/s. Each year is different and I see increasing/decreasing amounts of pressure on public lands in the East and West.

I don't look at myself as part of any particular trend/newbie/hip group that is hunting elk because its the cool thing to do right now. I hope folks realize that most people hunt because its awesome and fun and challenging. The ones who do so for other reasons wont stick around long.

 

[md126]

The internet and hunting shows changed everything...

Mostly it changed people's perception, both in a positive and negative way.

 

[Newtosavage]

The internet and hunting shows changed everything...

Mostly it changed people's perception, both in a positive and negative way.

Agreed.

Perception becomes a person's reality.

Having said that, I can give you at least one example of how the internet changed public hunting on one area I used to bowhunt for whitetails in W. Texas - The Amistad National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service.

The difference in that area pre and post-internet is like night and day. I rarely go out there anymore (haven't been in at least 5 years now) because of the crowds and because there are no "secrets" anymore. Herd locations of exotic sheep are broadcast almost daily online. Parking areas that used to offer little-known access points are now clearly illustrated on maps online. Even the little-known option of camping along the lakeshore, which the NPS has NEVER promoted, is now common knowledge. That used to be a little nugget you could always count on if things got too crowded. No more.

In the early 90's, it was nothing for my brother and I to go out there and see 40-50 deer in a single day. We would spend the entire day hunting, sitting on trails early and late, and glassing bedded deer mid-day to figure out which trails we were going to hunt in the evening. It was a very unique whitetail hunting experience that was as close to hunting muleys as one could get on a budget and within a reasonable drive.

I'm sure there are a lot of examples of this same thing in the West, where locals or even NR's who had done their homework, had discovered little-known tracts of land or access points, etc. Well, there are no secrets anymore, thanks to the internet. So the folks who had those little known places are the ones who are surely being upset by all the new information. Those who have always hunted the obvious places aren't going to see any difference. In fact, they might see less pressure. LOL

What I realized after a few seasons is that there are parts of Colorado that hold so many elk, it doesn't really matter how many people I am seeing, and that a lot of those elk are so used to people being in their space that you can successfully hunt them within 1/2 mile of a very busy road and be in elk over and over again.

 

[Nickofthewoods]

Not sure why you would have that perception because in most cases, you actually can, depending on how you define "vast".

Having hunted in a large part of Colorado now, I can tell you that it's nearly as hard to get the "vast" uncrowded feeling in CO as it is in many national forests back east. It's all relative. But yes, you can get OTC tags every year in many if not most Eastern states, and for a lot more than just deer.



Not in my opinion but then I hunt OTC or leftover tags in CO. If they ever do away with OTC tags then yes, accessibility will be an issue for NR's. But they would be crazy to do that (financially). Crazier things have happened though.



There is.

Awesome, I'm going to have to start my Whitetail research soon, it sounds like I may be missing out! In drawing a general comparison of perceptions (mostly my own misguided ones) between Eastern and Western hunting I was trying to point out that maybe the West is seen as a land of opportunity within ever diminishing natural resources and public accessibility.