NM unit 50

W

wildthings

Guest
LAST EDITED ON Aug-27-05 AT 10:16PM (MST)[p]Brother and I drew tags for New Mexico's unit 50 and are pretty excited about this season. We are hunting Oct 8-12. Any good info for this unit out there. Not looking for GPS coords (unless you want to give them up ;-) just some info about the unit.

We are planning on going up 6 days ahead of the hunt to do some scouting/glassing

Thanks in advance

WT
 
LAST EDITED ON Sep-05-05 AT 03:44PM (MST)[p]LAST EDITED ON Sep-05-05 AT 02:58?PM (MST)

Hello

I might have spoken to you before, or maybe not. Anyways, I been to unit 50 at least a total of 5 times in the last 10 years. Highway #64 from Taos to Tres Piedras, there is a public road to get to Pot mountain Montoso etc! There are a few houses at 1st, then once you get close to the 1st mountains, you can either go to them or keep traveling on the main road all the way to highway #285. Pot Mountain is big enough to take up 5 days worth of elk hunting. About 10 to 15 years ago, my friend & I on a Sunday during the month of March, we took the main road from highway #64 towards Pot mountain. We got close to Pot mountain at 1st, then we kept following the main road, which had snow on it, after following it more further north, we seen about 30 elk on the edge of pot mountain, they were on the north east side of the main ridge. We, like stupid idiots, were under the age of 21, we had no food, or proper clothing for the occassion, we ended up getting stuck into bumber deep snow during the month of March. My friend Sergio & I ended up spending the night in his truck with his pet pit bull. But before we ended up in this mess, my friend had already been in a previous incident in unit 49. He got his truck stuck & threw his knife in the rut that he was stuck in, with his luck, the knife ended up going through his foot as the tire was spinning. So we ended up walking 16 miles from unit 50, towards unit 52, My friend had was walking with crutches & had to repeatitly re wrap his foot just to be able to keep on going! Believe it or not, but I looked at San Antonio mountain from where we were & thought it would only take about 4 hours to get there. Instead, it took all day just to get to the highway by San Antonio mountain It was a 16 mile walk, not to mention the fact that we still had another 10-15 miles to go just to make it to the gas station in Tres Piedras. A person from out of state herd the news about lost hunters in the the unit 50 area from the gas station. He was already headed to Colorado, when he seen my friend & I & the dog walking to in the opposite direction. He stopped & asked us if we were the one's lost. We replied yes! So he turned around and took us back to the Tres Piedras gas station. The owners wife of the station was nice enough to feed us a nice meal from the cafe for free and give us some dry socks to wear. We were never lost, but actually stranded. One of my other friends got to take a ride on the National Guard helicopter, he told the guys where he thought we walked. They did not pay any attention to him. But what he did see was hundreds of elk all over unit 50 from the helicopter. I see a small herd evey year when I'm going home from hunting during the night off of highway #64 north. They are always by the Torrez ranch on the right hand side of the highway during the night. Last year when the elk hunts were over, I seen one cow elk on the unit 50 side at the Pilar Carson turn off by Susy's cafe during the night. Many elk cross over to unit 50 from unit 51 & 52. I don't know if because of hunting pressure. But they do it anyways.

Josh
 
The elk you saw were probably part of one of the biggest elk migrations in the states, from CO down into NM around San Antonio mnt. there are always plenty of elk there but during the winter there are way more then during hunting season.

There is even a study on the NM website about the elk in this area.
 

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