I hunted in the area 3rd and 4th seasons. I want to say units 12, 22, 23...east of CO-13, and south of US40 down to the Flat-tops. 3rd season for deer, and 4th for elk. Being as it snowed 2' on Halloween up high (I didn't hunt the weekends, family obligations) I hunted lower down. The area we were planning on hunting got 2' of snow. We hunted state land and although there were a bunch of critters busted in the area, we came up dry. I saw one cow, in 7 1/2 days of hunting, and she was in the sage brush, down low. I was surprised to see her there (I was looking for deer at the time). I saw a good number of does, but saw no bucks until the last day of elk, when I saw 3 legal ones, and a non-legal spike.
On 11/9, I got stuck, and then burned up the starter on my truck. That night, we went to Craig and got one, and first thing on Tuesday I put it on. Let's just say, I had a good work out that day...a whole lot of jacking w/the high lift, and carrying logs. We got back into camp at about noon. I took a nap that afternoon and then turned in early.
For deer, we had 3 in camp, w/one person getting a deer. I helped set up elk camp for the weekend, on friday and got into positon late. When I got there, I saw a guy, 25-50 yards from where I'd watched 3 does, 2 days earlier for an hour, and he was cleaning a deer. The sad thing is, he only drug it about 100 yards and he may have been road hunting. In short, he shot my deer
wahhhh. Like I said, I saw plenty of does, but no bucks until the last day of elk season.
We had 5 people in elk camp, during the week, and 3 of those saw bulls. I'm not really sure how many saw bulls on the weekend.
Personally, I think CO-DOW lies about the number of elk in CO. Although, I saw plenty of tracks, and discarded skins to indicate that several were shot.
I'm still recoverying from the High-lift Jack. It seems like I had both ends of my truck lifted to the top of the jack, 10 times each, each day (40 times total). I'm gonna start carrying about 4 times the chain/strap that I had w/me and a stronger hand-winch. If I could have pulled the PU off the jack, then I wouldn't have burnt up my starter...and I still wouldn't be sore.
I know one thing for sure, I ain't gonna hunt 4th season elk again.
I hunted some BLM for deer, state for deer and elk, and got stuck in the NF, w/no tracks seen crossing the road. I was afraid to go where we'd scouted and planned on hunting (in the NF). But, it was reported to me, that there were no longer any elk hanging out in the area. ON Columbus day, we saw 6-8 dead ones there.