looking for great public land bull

jlturner

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Jul 15, 2011
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I have never hunted elk on public land. I have been hunting Mule deer for the past several years in New Mexico on public hunting lands. Can anyone reccomend a good place to start.
Thanks so much for your time.
 
Honestly JL, as BigFin mentioned in the latest RMEF issue, good bulls + good amounts of public land = high draw odds.

The best you can do otherwise is look at the record books for entries, and then look at state regs for general hunts in those areas. By the time you eliminate the elk country that doesn't fall into those two categories, you will have about as good of an idea about what units to hunt as anybody. By the nature of general tag, public land hunting, the areas you are led to will will be rugged, remote, and have minimal motorized access.

The next step in the formula (other than the hunting part) is the toughest, and it consists of narrowing down the places you've found into a few areas to try. You'll need a little bit of elk knowledge to do this, but once you have an idea of the kind of feed and cover elk like, you can just about bet there is a good bull somewhere in the area. Then the real work begins...
 
Get on Google earth, find the steepest, nastiest, darkest hole that has water and feed. Make sure it is inaccessible by a normal human. Thats a good place to start.
 
Honestly JL, as BigFin mentioned in the latest RMEF issue, good bulls + good amounts of public land = high draw odds.

The best you can do otherwise is look at the record books for entries, and then look at state regs for general hunts in those areas. By the time you eliminate the elk country that doesn't fall into those two categories, you will have about as good of an idea about what units to hunt as anybody. By the nature of general tag, public land hunting, the areas you are led to will will be rugged, remote, and have minimal motorized access.

The next step in the formula (other than the hunting part) is the toughest, and it consists of narrowing down the places you've found into a few areas to try. You'll need a little bit of elk knowledge to do this, but once you have an idea of the kind of feed and cover elk like, you can just about bet there is a good bull somewhere in the area. Then the real work begins...

Get on Google earth, find the steepest, nastiest, darkest hole that has water and feed. Make sure it is inaccessible by a normal human. Thats a good place to start.

There's the truth right there. The only other thing I would add would be to spend some time on the harvest stats on each states websites.

Growing up in Montana we hunted the area around where my brother lived in Libby each year for elk around Thanksgiving. I think we hunted 7 straight years without seeing an elk. Now we weren't great elk hunters, but we were decent deer hunters and just couldn't figure out why we were so bad at hunting elk. We even shot a few deer while we were elk hunting but never saw an elk.

This year I'm checking into going back and hunting elk in Montana with my slightly improved hunting skills and knowledge. I started out checking out the harvest stats for the unit we hunted in as a kid. The nonresident success rate was 5.5%! The resident success rate was even worse!! The overall state average is over 20% and there are some general tag units with a success rate over 30%. By picking the right unit you can improve your chances of shooting an elk 5 or 6 times over some of the harder units.

Now there are some big bulls shot out of that area around Libby, but they are few and far between, just like the elk in that area, few and far between.

I'm not looking for a B&C bull though, I just like to hunt them and shoot them!
 
Give the guy a break, geez....

Where do you live or what state do you want to hunt?
 
It does not matter how much research you do if you do not allow enough time to pre-hunt and HUNT. I have hunted as little as hours to 30+ days to fill the freezer.
MY ELK formula (research+scouting+time+time+time+know your gun+LUCK =
a little public land bull

scan00011.jpg
 
It does not matter how much research you do if you do not allow enough time to pre-hunt and HUNT. I have hunted as little as hours to 30+ days to fill the freezer.
MY ELK formula (research+scouting+time+time+time+know your gun+LUCK =
a little public land bull

scan00011.jpg

That guy looks pizzed!
 

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