Well, taking 4-wheelers was the right answer. Roads were in rough shape pretty much everywhere we went. Moreso than I've experienced elsewhere. Looking at how it all worked out, somewhat wishing we would have just taken the side-by-side, but 4 wheelers worked out well anyway.
Came back to post a report. We only hunted 4 days, had some stuff come up at work and had to head home early with neither tag punched, but still had a very fun trip with many memories made. I've never hunted 33 before, but I found it to be some really pretty country and enjoyed the ability to find a lot of good glassing spots to look over a lot of it at once.
Our focus going in was to try and find a deer for my buddy first. He's never chased deer/elk in Colorado, and we felt like finding a buck he'd like would be more doable than finding a bull that would trip my trigger. Arrived and settled into our location up New Castle Buford Rd on Thursday afternoon. Spent Thursday evening just driving around checking private, trying to get a feel for what the deer density was like down low and if we saw any rut activity. We saw a handful of bucks, but nothing older than 2 or 3-1/2 and biggest about a 140" 4x4. He turned his nose up, and that was the extent of the rutting we observed for the week.
Long story short, we spent most of our time south of Triangle Park, Coulter Mesa, and did an evening or two down on BLM around West Rifle and the hogbacks. Ranged from glassing from the 4-wheelers on the roads, to hoofing it a little more than 3 miles in. Routinely found ourselves in areas with notable fresh sign, saw a handful of elk, one legal 4x4 bull that we elected not to chase, and a decent number of does that were running solo. Never saw a buck on public, which was really a surprise to me. As expected, we saw a lot of orange, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary relative to other OTC units I've hunted, and our plans were never really hindered as a result. We did have one morning where we just chose the wrong spot to start the day. After watching it get light and turning nothing up, we hit our next glassing spot and met a couple of guys who had chosen correctly and had a really nice bull down they were about to go to work on. We shared some congratulations and got to hear their story before heading on to try to find another.
Would have liked to at least see my buddy put a tag on something, but we went in with reasonable expectations and came away just happy to have been able to spend a few days putting eyes on some animals in beautiful country.
Now it's time to start planning the next, and as I've grown tired of being 3-4 points from a 61 bull tag the last several years, I'm thinking it's time to turn them in on 76. Just have to decide whether to go with stick and string or something that goes boom.
