Colorado Hunting

Latest Blog Entries

Friday - January 27, 2012

Baca National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado is home to a growing population of elk. The elk are one of the largest mammals in the park, their population continues to grow, and the ecosystem is hurt by their large numbers. Elk are known to stay in one area, then over-use that area until it becomes useless to other animals.

Federal officials are working on a better way to manage the elk herds. One of four ideas that was presented is introducing wolves.

Friday - December 23, 2011

Steamboat Springs, Colorado has some new visitors in town. Moose have found a way to get some more salt, by licking vehicles. A cow moose and two calves have been seen in the residential areas. The vehicles have salt on them from the roads where salt is used to de-ice.

Tuesday - November 29, 2011

Jackie Gross, 29 years old, has had more adventures than some people have in their entire lifetime. She moved from her home state of Louisiana to Silt, Colorado after college to pursue her passion; hunting. If it is hunting season, there is little that will stop her from being in the field.

She is in the running with 9 other females for Extreme Huntress, the winner will receive a televised safari hunt for cape buffalo in Zimbabwe, hosted by Tahoe Films. To get into the running she wrote a 500 word essay, now the rest is left up to online voting.

Tuesday - November 22, 2011

For a little bit of a change of pace, let’s talk about moose hunting as a nonresident.  Because I’m trying to focus on DIY hunts, I’m going to ignore Canada’s opportunities and resident-only hunts in the US.  By limiting our scope to states that offer nonresident moose hunting we have just a handful of places to consider:  Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.

Monday - November 7, 2011

Colorado Parks and Wildlife with the assistance of Colorado State Patrol and Fish and Wildlife Division are pulling over all non-commercial cars and trucks. They are making sure the occupants of the vehicles are not poaching animals or "participating in any illegal hunting operations." It is a 24 hour operation that is located along the I-70 highway corridor. From NBC11News.com.

Thursday - November 3, 2011

A four-by-five point buck was illegally shot in Rifle city limits. A witness who was returning home from a walk, saw a blonde man that appeared to be in his 20s, kneel down, aim, and shoot. Then the man went into an apartment and when he came back out, headed back in the direction he had fired the shot.

Tuesday - October 25, 2011

I could just title this article, “why Colorado is the best overall state for mule deer hunting," but since that won’t apply to trophy research for elk in future articles, let’s just go with Record Book Research.  It had been a while since I last picked up a Boone and Crockett Record book, as my last edition was dated 1996 (Records of North American Elk and Mule Deer, 2nd edition).  I was obviously way overdue, and looking at 50 year old records from the heyday of mule deer hunting just doesn’t really apply any more.  Anyway, I did finally pick up the soon to be outdated 27th Big Game Awards book (2007-2009), which has the latest deer and elk entries, and wanted to share some of my findings and assumptions with you.

Saturday - October 22, 2011

While writing my last entry on easy hunts, I felt that doing a late season or mule deer rut hunt was just too large of a topic to cover in a single paragraph. There are many aspects to mule deer rut hunting, especially as a trophy hunt, but here I wanted to focus on finding those mid to late November and early December hunts for an easier hunt.

Three aspects make these hunts a higher success opportunity. One is the seeking phase of the rut. Bucks will be more actively looking for does, and therefore on the move a little more, increasing their visibility. Two, they tend to congregate in areas of increased visibility during the rut, as winter ranges are not usually heavily timbered. Three, there are simply more deer in a smaller area.  All of these factors combine to typically increase success by 10 to 20% (sometimes much, much more) in a unit from say a mid October Colorado 2nd season hunt to a mid November 4th season hunt.

Thursday - October 20, 2011

New Castle, Colorado resident Dudley Blaylock wasn't far from his hometown looking to fill his bull elk tag. He had traveled to nearby Meadow Lake, in the White River National Forest north of Rifle, Colorado. He left his camp Saturday morning to find that bull elk. It was almost dark when he saw a 6 point bull elk, and followed it. Then he remembers falling, and that is about the end of what he remembers. While falling the butt of his rifle smacked him in the head.

Sunday - October 16, 2011

The last article on introducing new hunters to the sport got me to thinking about what makes for an easy hunt out west.  Very few general season units have success rates above 30%, and finding units where the general public can score at least 50% of the time is pretty rare.  My focus here isn’t going to just be meat hunts, but high success, good opportunity to get into game types of hunts.  Some of these will require advanced planning and preparation and/or a few preference points.

So let’s define “easy” here. I’m talking about hunts that can be pretty close to a sure thing with only a fair amount of physical effort as long as you aren’t too selective in your harvest criteria.  Though I mostly intended an article like this for new or inexperienced hunters, these are the kind of hunts that I consider “meat hunts," with or without toothpicks (antlers).