61 Archery Elk Access

HntHrdr said:
Not gonna kick a dog while he is down. I can empathize with plans going off the rails, especially after waiting so long to hunt. Those seemed like some nice bulls to me. Not many guys have 2, 330 plus bulls hanging on their walls for as much as the chit talking flies. I hope to be chasing bulls into my 70’s but I get it at some point the wheels fall off. That’s why I defend my Septembers so damn hard, I know in actuality I don’t have that many.
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Yes exactly. I posted an actual account of what happened on my hunt to help others one way or another. Giving specific info selectively via PM’s to help others. Anyone with the points can certainly and realistically score one of the 330’s you mention in your post if the work hard.
 
This is an interesting topic. I've spent A LOT of time hunting. I've killed hundreds of whitetails, dozens of turkeys, handfuls of antelope, muleys, and elk. I spend my off-season chasing coyotes and gamebirds. I've ran trail cameras over food plots, mineral licks, scrapes, wallows, and pinch points. I'm not an expert, but I'm very confident that I can tip the odds in my favor. I am curious how you know that bull would have presented an opportunity? Wind, getting blown by an animal you weren't hunting, bumping something on the way in. I'm always curious what footprint I leave on the landscape and how it alters what is happening. 100 percent sure is what makes me recoil a little.
 
I'm a pretty good duck hunter, I'd say more than I let myself believe. I have ground pounded so many birds and each one "should be" a 100% kill because I watch my pellets just pepper the bird.....huh... a good amount of them get up and fly off. They should have been dead though because I've made that shot one thousand times and I know that I should 99.999% kill them...so why do so many get up and fly away?
 
Deercy said:
This is an interesting topic. I've spent A LOT of time hunting. I've killed hundreds of whitetails, dozens of turkeys, handfuls of antelope, muleys, and elk. I spend my off-season chasing coyotes and gamebirds. I've ran trail cameras over food plots, mineral licks, scrapes, wallows, and pinch points. I'm not an expert, but I'm very confident that I can tip the odds in my favor. I am curious how you know that bull would have presented an opportunity? Wind, getting blown by an animal you weren't hunting, bumping something on the way in. I'm always curious what footprint I leave on the landscape and how it alters what is happening. 100 percent sure is what makes me recoil a little.
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Hmmmm. More FBI interrogations. Lol. Super easy answer! I was tree stand hunting a poplar 25’ up in a kidney shaped sedimented in cattle tank gone shallow and turned into 12 wallows by the elk. I only hunted that megawallow evenings when the thermals blew downhill every single evening 100% money. My entry route to the tree was downwind of the tank and the direction none of the elk utilized. I never once got winded when I was finally able to hunt it late season. Wish deer hunting was this easy! The elk never looked up once. Had them all over the tank as close as 7 yards often. I am shooting from a fixed position undetected. Bull just stood there 9/16 broadside for at least 3 minutes likely much more. The bulls entered at the same two spots on the tank every time. From the South. So they were always broadside to me.

Whitetail are way way more wary and the mature ones always enter an area from down wind. Not the case at all for this tank. All bulls came off the steep slope to the East. So they would have had to circled into open timber to get downwind of me. Not one was willing to do that. It was money.
 
Zim said:
Hmmmm. More FBI interrogations. Lol. Super easy answer! I was tree stand hunting a poplar 25’ up in a kidney shaped sedimented in cattle tank gone shallow and turned into 12 wallows by the elk. I only hunted that megawallow evenings when the thermals blew downhill every single evening 100% money. My entry route to the tree was downwind of the tank and the direction none of the elk utilized. I never once got winded when I was finally able to hunt it late season. Wish deer hunting was this easy! The elk never looked up once. Had them all over the tank as close as 7 yards often. I am shooting from a fixed position undetected. Bull just stood there 9/16 broadside for at least 3 minutes likely much more. The bulls entered at the same two spots on the tank every time. From the South. So they were always broadside to me.

Whitetail are way way more wary and the mature ones always enter an area from down wind. Not the case at all for this tank. All bulls came off the steep slope to the East. So they would have had to circled into open timber to get downwind of me. Not one was willing to do that. It was
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I’ve noticed as hunters get better at killing nice critters, they feel a need to explain themselves when they don’t kill something giant. I feel like that comes from too much social media pressure. It’s really common in everyday life, everyone looks at pics of their friends on FB and their “perfect” family, big house, all the trips they go on, etc etc and they are only seeing the distilled out best of the best as no one puts up their shitty days or pics of their crap days at work, broken toilets, etc.
Hunting is going this way as well. You see nothing but success pics, you only come across stories of the biggest bull out of said unit. You don’t ever hear a story about a guy who drew a great tag and then his wife got sick or he missed etc. That’s just the way life goes and we all know that, especially western big game hunting. What bothers me is when someone plays the blame game, it was other people, I was sick, bad drought, and so on. **** happens. Sometimes the wheels fall off during a hunt and the true test is if you can put them back on and keep trucking. More so, how you respond to it after the fact. I’ve had more then one occasion where **** didn’t go right and I’ve felt like finding the nearest cliff to jump off, and I was likely a pain in the ass to be around for a day or two while I stomached my miss, bad decision etc. The real test is coming out of it and saying “man that turned into a **** show but a made the best of it and had a great time”. No one gives to fat F’s about your excuses. People are human they get sick, they miss, their equipment fails. It all happens. Coming onto a forum or dropping a video on YouTube that is full of excuses why things didn’t work, especially coming off that it was a “sure thing” had X not happened is in real poor taste and says a ton about a persons character. Of course it’s a “sure thing” had this or that not occurred. EVERY hunt is, but there’s a million different curve balls coming at you on every hunt, ESPECIALLY western hunts and the only way to a sure thing is to dodge em or soak em up and keep pushing on. I drew probably the best set of tags I’ve ever heard anyone in the history of western big game hunting draw this year. I also lost most of my vision in my shooting eye and was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis shortly after (it’s all a linked autoimmune disease). I’ve been in pretty much terrible pain the whole time as my spine is trying to fuse itself. Things just aren’t going great but a pile of pain meds and a heavy pack out makes it all the sweeter. So far it couldn’t have gone better but I know there’s more unexpected crap coming down the pipe before this fall is over and that’s why I love it. I may end up not being able to see with both eyes and I can guarantee you I will be in pain but you can bet I’m gonna be out there making the best of it. Might even end up shooting a smaller bull or ram then a given unit is capable of and I’m fine with that.
 
My buddy suddenly lost his sight last year due to sarcoidosis. No bitching, no complaining, kept very positive. He says, I think I can still fish (we travel to AZ every winter and fish trout at a state park). So, I get him set up at the pond, sitting on his three legged hunting chair. Cast out, reel the line tight and hand him the rod. He puts his finger on the line to feel the bite. Bite, he sets, fish is landed. You would have thought he had won the World Series! We’re all yelling, “Blind man catches a fish!!”. Other 20 people fishing are looking at us like we’re crazy. Just his way of handling adversity!
 
When summarizing a hunt I have only one way, and that’s a true account of what happened. Period. I don’t think it benefits anyone to candy coat, nor embellish any events. I’m trying to help guys with a later season tag or someone considering the unit for next year, to help them make a decision. Again, to summarize 2022 I’d warn potential hunters to get their seasonal flu shots NOW, and/or at minimum limit your exposure to humans. This **** is nasty this year. And secondly I’ve hunted a lot of premium units in several states and I feel the 61 archery hunt is under-rated by all accounts. It was an excellent quality hunt in my opinion. At least where I was up high elevation.

I have read a lot of negative reviews of 61, but that is not what I observed in person. Just got to get 2-4 miles back in. In some cases just one.
 
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Zim said:
When summarizing a hunt I have only one way, and that’s a true account of what happened. Period. I don’t think it benefits anyone to candy coat, nor embellish any events. I’m trying to help guys with a later season tag or someone considering the unit for next year, to help them make a decision. Again, to summarize 2022 I’d warn potential hunters to get their seasonal flu shots NOW, and/or at minimum limit your exposure to humans. This **** is nasty this year. And secondly I’ve hunted a lot of premium units in several states and I feel the 61 archery hunt is under-rated by all accounts. It was an excellent quality hunt in my opinion. At least where I was up high elevation.

I have read a lot of negative reviews of 61, but that is not what I observed in person. Just got to get 2-4 miles back in.
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What I’m really curious about Zim is this, have you ever hunted any premium units, and have you ever killed any big bulls?
 
While fiddling with my game cams during deer season, I found a few more photos I had not uploaded from a cam I’d used on my CO hunt. Did not see this guy during daylight, but he was visiting my megawallow. He’s not as big as the largest I saw, but pretty dang good bull! Definite shooter. 61 is a great unit.

0A9DC2A9-A0CA-4536-BB59-CD98DE529C7A.jpeg


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Well since I bought the camera in August for that trip, and never used it anywhere else than CO 61. Yes I’d say 100% is pretty accurate.

But I just must say, there’s just something about your “tone” I don’t like. I don’t know what it is. Just that “tone”.
 
MountainSqwabler said:
It would seem you are just digging a hole here Zim lol...glad you got a bull and all but this post is not going in your favor.
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You know there’s just something about your “tone” I must say I don’t like. I’m not sure what it is. I can’t put my finger on it. But no question 100% it’s the “tone”.
 

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