Unit 43 Colorado Deer and Elk

ehall · Oct 15, 2005

Anyone have any information on Unit 43 in Colorado. We leave Thursday for the second season hunt.

couesbitten · Oct 16, 2005

ehall,
I have a third season deer tag for this same unit, and would like to know what you found when you get back. I can tell you that I heard the Thompson creek area is supposed to be good, also look at Abernathy ridge. Both in 43. If your tag is also good for 47, look around Triangle Peak. Good luck to you, let us know how you do. Scott/couebitten

ehall · Oct 17, 2005

I will let you know. Thanks for the information. There has not been a lot of discussion on Colorado elk hunting on the forum this year. I guess since the first hunt is going on now everyone is out hunting. My tag is not valid in 47.

ehall · Oct 29, 2005

Unit 43 was a terrible hunt. Too many hunters and no animals unless you were very lucky. We had nine hunters in our group and all with different specie tags and no one harvested an animal. There was only one person in our group that got a shot. We hunted from top to bottom for four days without seeing ONE animal. Something is not right.

couesbitten · Oct 29, 2005

ehall, I sent you a private message.
Scott/couesbitten

sealer · Oct 30, 2005

ehall,

I just posted basically the same thing over in the Mule Deer forum...

Did you here the story going around about the 6000 head of cattle that were left grazing up there until mid-Sept.???

I can't see that helping the situation out much...

I saw more animals this morning on the 1st part of my drive than I did in 8 days of hunting.

ehall · Oct 30, 2005

I did not hear about the cattle. That would affect the elk more than the deer but they should have them out of there. The only animal that was killed in our group ran into the side of one of our parties truck on the way up the mountain. I am not going back to Colorado hunting anytime in the near future. Until they can get a handle on the wildlife numbers and hunter numbers I will hunt in the great state of Texas or one of the other mountain states.

BeanMan · Oct 30, 2005

That will be one less uninformed out of state hunter in the Great State of Colorado. You picked the unit.

BM

ehall · Oct 31, 2005

Me and the other 500 hunters in that area. You would think that the officials would limit the number of tags in the area based on the numbers of wildlife.

BeanMan · Oct 31, 2005

43 has lots of private land, that's where the critters are at, it's no real secret. How much did you pay for your vouchers?

BM

ehall · Oct 31, 2005

We did not hunt the private land. I have hunted other areas in the state and atleast seen a few critters. This year we did not even see stuff way off int he distance.

sealer · Oct 31, 2005

I somewhat disagree with the private land statement. One quick look at a BLM map will show that there is plenty of public land in 43 although some of it can take some hiking to get to the "good" (I'll use that term loosely) areas. I generally hunt the northern areas of this unit so I am in the dark about the areas south of the Maroon Belles, but I definitely saw more hunters/camps than in the past 3 years. We usually don't have any problem finding animals...this year was just tough. The DOW officer and I were talking about the early snow possibly pushing alot of the elk down on to the Crystal Valley (River?)Ranch which would back-up your private land statement, but that's such a huge ranch that everybody notices when there's critter's on it...sure is a good lookin' piece of land, though.

elmore · Oct 31, 2005

Does the Crystal River Ranch allow any hunting? If so you can a guy contact. Thanks

ColoradoOak · Oct 31, 2005

Unit 43:

2004 - Deer: 1,500 buck tags, 800 doe tags
2005 - Deer: 1,200 buck tags, 800 doe tags

2004 - Elk: 1,390 cow tags, unlimited bull tags
2005 - Elk: 980 cow tags, unlimited bull tags

This is a "float" unit, so this is the number of tags for all seasons combined. Interesting that everyone is claiming to see more hunters this year. Maybe more folks decided to hunt second season instead of third. Maybe more bull hunters decided to hunt 43 this year. Maybe some hunters are looking for an excuse for not filling their tags.

Oak

ehall · Oct 31, 2005

Filling a tag is not an issue. Seeing wildlife is the issue. We hunted as hard an onyone could and went to the far reaching boundries of the unit. I do not have to kill something everytime I go out I just like to see the wildlife.

sealer · Oct 31, 2005

Oak,

You make a very interesting comment in your post about the float seasons in this unit. It could be very possible that a majority of hunters chose to hunt the 2nd vs. the 3rd season. I hope to hear from some of the 3rd season guys with regards to hunter numbers after their season.

With all the hoopla about this being a banner year for CO bucks, it's possible that alot of hunters wanted to get a "jump" on the quality animals.

I did get a mixture of guys that either had only a buck tag or only a bull tag. Not too many that had both.

With all that aside, I talked with a guy earlier today who hunts 43 down near Snowmass and they got 2 bulls, 3 cows, and 2 bucks if I remember correctly.

sealer · Oct 31, 2005

elmore,

I've gotten two different answers to that same question when I asked some of the locals.

If the answer were yes, I'd assume it would cost a pretty penny. Then again, "assuming" gets me nowhere...

Either way, it sure is a beautiful property.