LAST EDITED ON Sep-26-14 AT 07:30PM (MST)[p]>Hope he gets a elk, looking
>like the hunt isn't all
>its cracked up to be
>again. I wouldn't spend the
>tag fee for it myself
>and the time .
>Go to Idaho, wyoming for the
>time and money spent and
>have a much better hunt.
>Just my 2 cents. Good
>luck to you and hope
>you score on one .
>
I hate to say it but I agree with this statement. I had the rifle tag last year on the NE hunt and scouted a total of 12 days and hunted the entire season. I passed on four bulls with the largest being a 270" 6pt. The potential for a great bull is there, but this hunt DOES NOT compare to some of the better units in other states. To compare I just got back from an archery elk hunt in UT and NV and each spot where we had trail cams had somewhere around 12-20 different bulls of different sizes hitting the water holes. Many of them were very good bulls (360-380" bulls)!
Last year on the NE hunt I had over a dozen cameras and if you add up all the bulls, both big and small I saw on those trail cams, it would add up to maybe two trail cams from my UT and NV hunts. Also, on my NE hunt last year I never heard a bugle during the season. The weather last year was incredible with an opening morning temp of 24 degrees. This year in UT and NV I started to hear bugles on Aug 25th and it was hot and dry. The NE unit just doesn't have the number of elk and especially the number of bulls that many other places have.
I'd take the NE tag again in a heartbeat because I know the potential is there, but there's no comparison to a high quality unit in another state. Last year I hunted to the last second of the hunt because it felt like at any second a big one would appear.
I have thousands of trail cam picts from the NE unit last year, but they do not compare to what we saw in UT and NV. Here's a decent bull from the NE last year. If you look close it looks like it had been shot during the archery hunt along the top of it's back.