Historical success rates and hunting as a group

2rocky

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 23, 2010
Messages
4,954
Thinking back to hunts I've done with my family out of state, I was wondering about how much more effective we were having a group, spread out over a larger portion of the country. Eventually SOMEONE would get into some Elk and we would seem to beat the average in our group success rate versus the unit average.

I was wondering if this was the case for other people who hunt as part of a group.
 
Hunting as a group where everyone had tags or when some are just there to help?

I am typically limited to a week for out of state trips with the starting and ending weekends usually dedicated to travel. Over a number of trips my $ would be on a higher percentage of tags getting filled solo than on 2 person trips where both hold tags. With elk the meat care and packin often eat up a lot of time if we're trying to kill multiple animals in a week. The other thing is I don't typically do more than 2 in a "group" and we're usually hunting together. Especially when calling during archery season.
 
We always go out in a group. Once we get there everyone spreads out and we find the animals. Once we do that then we tend to hunt closer together in the area with all the sign. Our group typically does very well for all animals (deer and elk). we hunt the rifle season.
 
Earlier days a couple friends and I camped together and would spread out to our popular locations of the past. Discuss that eve and devise our game plans for the next.
Our success rate was very good. Over time, marriage, jobs, etc that dissolved.

A co-worker and I stayed in groove with work/family leave to head for the hills. Elk and spring bear mostly. Maybe less care for harvest and more for camaraderie (?) We hiked the mountains together. During our hike, we may part ways to cover an area though it was far from the earlier days.
Our success rate dropped dramatically. Though meh, suppose it's a trade off.

I solo hunt frequently unless he's able to join as age takes a toll and I'm flipping too stubborn to listen to my body until I return from my trek - that's when i acknowledge he's the wiser of the two of us. Haha!

***Long story cut to a sentence? Success rate increase the more ground covered when focused on harvesting game.
 
It depends a lot on the group, there are a few people I hunt with that are super competent and by combining forces we are usually close to 100% even in brand-new country, 3 motivated people working on getting eyes on as much country as possible in a coordinated way makes it hard for even a small number of animals to hide, we pretty much never actually hunt together though, all about the covering ground and then coordinated plan of attack on the best option we find...
on the other hand, I've hunted with groups of new hunters or even just less dialed hunters where the amount of hand-holding reduced our overall success by quite a bit, if the majority of the group isn't self sufficient then I expect success to drop.
 
Back
Top