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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The last article on 
