Just got back from 2nd archery NM. I skipped last year but hunted, and was fortunate to be successful, in 2017 (340" bull) and 2018 (330" bull). No luck this year despite several close encounters and a couple of passed sub-300" bulls. This year was tougher than 2017 and 2018. Both of those years I harvested great bulls I'd take every time, but the bulls I killed were 30-50" smaller than the biggest I saw (still have dreams haunted by a couple that I saw and just couldn't close the deal on for one reason or another). This year I got eyes on half a dozen herd bulls that had 7-15 cows with them and the biggest was about 330". Felt like a lot more hunting pressure this year, I gather because the drought limited water sources so hunters were more concentrated. Lots of hunters with lots of ATVs. My prior two years I hunted the same herds in the same areas for days until conditions were finally right for me to get a shot. This year I had to find elk multiple times, would find an area with elk going crazy one day and then complete silence the next. In general, the elk shut up shortly after daylight and didn't get moving until an hour or so before dark so it was tough hunting relatively speaking. But we were still in elk most of the time and had another great hunt despite not getting a chance to draw the bow.
