Colorado 1st rifle: Elk transition from archery to rifle season. Wife's first hunt

[cbellosu]

Hi all,

I had a fun but "unsuccessful" Colorado archery season, and now preparing for my wife's first rifle elk hunt in unit 14. I hunted quite a few days in unit 14 during archery season and got into elk a couple of times; these elk seemed to relocate later in the month, I am assuming due to quite a bit of pressure.

My question is if the elk I found during archery season will return to their early archery locations (good food/water), with the 10 days between archery and rifle season, or if they will stay in their mysterious new area. I am trying to determine if we go to the familiar spot where I found elk during archery or focusing on a new area. Thanks for the thoughts and advice, trying to make my wife's first hunt a fun one.

 

[ScottP]

It's possible. Elk are pretty aware of human pressure and adjust their movement accordingly (this is corroborated by GPS location data). If its somewhere they really want to be, then they may slide back into the areas they were in early archery. I used to hunt near unit 14 and this was the case in some places and not others. You're going to just have to give it a go. My experience was that they were still further from motorized routes and hunting pressure then during week 1 of archery.

Don't overlook places elk get bumped on opening day. Our tactic for first rifle season was to pretty much hunt saddles and pinch points where spooked elk would travel through.

 

[Jasher]

Cows might move back to the areas where they were. Bulls will move away into areas most people don't want to go. I have seen lots of stuff from bulls though. Single bull 10 yards off the road. 4 bulls traveling together 1 really nice one, 1 that a person would shoot, and 2 legal ones. Then I have seen some 5 x 5's and smaller hanging out with the cows in fairly big herds.

 

[ScottP]

Also, elk may still be bugling those first couple days of 1st rifle. I bugled one in for my wife a few years ago on opening day afternoon. They seem to quiet down after a few days of rifle shots and getting bumped. So you may be able to locate something a day or two beforehand if you can scout it out ahead of time. We usually spent the day or two prior checking out spots to see if they were holding elk (without disturbing them obviously)