Colorado Help

[Red-Team 98]

Uncompahgre National Forest

he Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests are a combination of separate National Forests located on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies.

stateparks.com

 

[Robwinton79]

I know most posts start with ‘not looking for honey holes’ because they are afraid of getting cussed out, but I have no other options. So yes, I am actually here asking for a honey hole. Before you yell at me, please read why. I’m going on a Colorado OTC DIY with my father this fall for the 2nd rifle season, and it will most likely be our last. We’ve been to many different states and have bagged many different animals, but he is about to turn 76 years old, and I’ll honestly be surprised if he’s able to hunt the entire season. We are in Wisconsin and don’t have the time to scout for weeks, or the money to lease out a high dollar ranch/hire an outfitter. Honestly though, he’s old school and prefers doing it ourselves anyways, even if he knows it’s a lower percentage chance of getting something. I’m just asking for a few tips on where we might be able to go that isn’t too crazy of terrain for him but still at least has some decent possibility of seeing some bulls. He can still walk the woods just fine, but he’s not climbing any huge mountains. If anybody has some land for lease that’s not more than a couple thousand bucks for a season then we could probably swing that, but I’m guess public will be our only option. We do have a hunting cabin and a few hundred acres of land in northern Wisconsin if maybe anybody is interested in doing a hunting swap and wants to let us use your land for elk and you can come hunt/fish ours for whitetail, black bear, turkey, trout etc. Just seeing what’s out there to maybe give my dad a shot at bagging himself one last bull to end his elk hunting career. Thank you and I appreciate any advice you’re willing to share.

I hunted OTC in southwest Colorado last year. Happy to share my spots and where I saw/killed elk. Your biggest challenge will be all the other orange people walking around.

 

[Horse]

Depending on budget may want to check out rocky mt elk ranches, if I remember name right. I may be wrong. But they lease out ranches, to 2-6 people, per season. Some ranches are better early and some later seasons.
Or may want to grab voucher for private.

 

[colinstewart]

OTC can be a shit show. I’d recommend holding off on the tag purchase until after the secondary draw. You could still pull a decent tag and hunt a unit with higher success rates and significantly less hunters.

If you do end up on OTC I can send some recommendations.

 

[venison]

Terrain in the NW quadrant of the state tends to be a bit less vertically challenging relative to some other places... and there are for sure a lot of elk up that way; check out the units along Hwy 40, roughly speaking. There's a lot of private but ask around you might get lucky and have someone give you permission. There are also the three "parks"... North, Middle, and South. All of them have some flatter terrain, but as I expect you know there are tons of variables when it comes to actually finding elk and getting close enough to take a shot, not to mention getting the meat out. Get on google maps/earth and use the terrain/topo feature (or any other topo type mapping) to get a sense of the terrain in the different parts of the state, and the CO DOW has a good "hunt atlas" on their website that gives some idea of elk range. You can find quite a bit of info on youtube as well.

 

[RemingtonRules]

And just like that, Kaiser Sosse vanished

 

[NERedlegz]

“Rocky mountain ranches” might be a good option for ya. Reasonably priced for 5 day hunts. Depends on budget though