Rain, rain and more rain
/Bow season has been one wet boggy mess. The roads are wet and slick and the forest damp and cold. With the seemingly record rainfall since June, the waterholes and even dry creeks are running over and the elk and other animals don't have to travel far nor on regular paths to their feeding and water areas.
I was up on some normally dry benches this week looking for a spring I know of hidden away back in there. It was not only wet, it was running over. The grass up in there is over knee high and ungrazed so will be super winter range for the elk and deer. Normally, its dry up there and they are patterned pretty easily but not this year. They can live and eat and drink pretty much wherever they want.
There have been some decent elk and deer shot here in the SW part of Colorado up near timberline but it takes young legs, strong hearts and powerful lungs to access those areas day after day.
I walked back into one of those hidey holes last week and there was a lot of elk sign there. So encouraged until I found multiple ATV's in there miles from the established trails, camo tents blinds everywhere flapping in the breeze and rude hunters. It is against the law to drive off trail but people just don't care anymore. They do what they want and the hell with everyone else. I walked a long ways to get back in there and they didn't expend one bit of energy and in fact, chased the elk out of there. Its a shame as you can probably harvest 10 elk out of there in all the seasons but not if you drive in.
I recall one guy telling me he had ridden his ATV 90 miles in one day and hadn't seen an elk to shoot. That's how hunters have become. They want it fast, easy and without any work. Then rush back home and brag about the hard hunting they did. We have lost a lot of what hunting is about by watching too many television shows who score every week and so we begin to expect that for ourselves too.