How often do you see elk?

[Dsnow9]

So I came up with a completely arbitrary stat on how often I see elk in a limited unit in CO. My info is based off of a 0/1 point resident unit in first season. My stat was double the harvest percentage and that is the percentage of days I usually see elk. Obviously putting in work to find them. Driving roads doesn’t count. What are your findings?

30% harvest rate = 60% of the days I see elk.

 

[Tiredofthebickering]

'Bout once a year, hopefully, give or take . . .

 

[GrantK]

I'm generally not happy if I don't at least see elk every day, there are areas that are exceptions, and if you are looking for a big elk it's often not where you are seeing a lot of elk, but as a general rule if I don't see elk for a day I'm moving, no matter how awesome the area looks.

 

[2rocky]

Seen does not equal shootable for many of my hunts. I can think of many visible elk on private, or in a unit not open to hunting.

I think a good metric is "Time to first sighting"

My LE elk hunts I saw elk every day including scouting days.

General units in Wyoming we saw elk on opening day by the end of the day in all years.

Central and Eastern Oregon hunts were adjacent to private land sanctuaries so we just hunted the wanderers...

It is so much easier to keep hunting hard when you know there are animals around....

 

[Oak]

Every damn day, trying to screw up my deer hunt.

 

[QuazyQuinton]

Mathematically, I'm not sure about the relationship between number of days seeing elk and the harvest rate. Kind of apples to oranges units of measure, but perhaps a rough guage.

I would say for most elk hunts, I expect to at least see elk every day. They may be 3 miles away or on inaccessible private land or running full speed through the timber, but I expect to at least see some. If it's an unfamiliar area or a low-success hunt, I may not see elk every day, but I probably knew that going in. It makes a difference, too, if I'm glassing a bazillion acres of private land and know I can't chase most of what I see, or if I'm hiking in timber and know that every sighting will be game time.

QQ

 

[Danger_Denver]

On public land, pretty much never. On private land, often... I’m new though so I think I’m just jumping them before I ever see them or something.

 

[Wildabeest]

I’ve only elk hunted one year and deer hunted the west for two. Have yet to see an elk in the field while hunting during those two years. Seen them when scouting, just not when hunting.

 

[hank4elk]

Usually everyday here in my neighborhood. Just watched a herd of cow/calves bed in my SW corner til noon. Does from my couch count?

I usually see elk most days elk hunting in NM with a tag in pocket. But not always...........lol

 

[rwc101]

Between the living room wall and the chest freezer just about every day.

 

[Jaquomo]

In the low-success/big bull unit I bowhunt now, sometimes only every 4-5 days. Sometimes less. But much of that is due to the thick heavy timber with a ton of beetle kill deadfall, and the increasing behavior of bulls rarely bugling in daylight. In the more open country I used to hunt, pretty much every day until they flee onto the big ranches. Which can only take a few days in recent years, with over-the-top hunting pressure pushing them all day in swirling wind.

Last year I didn't actually "see" an elk for two straight weeks, until the end of the season when I killed my bull 200 yards from a county road in a little sliver of NF nobody bothered. But during that previous two weeks I was hunting a couple of gagger bulls in some super thick nasty stuff, so I accepted what I had signed up for.

 

[Husker hunter]

My average over 3 elk hunts on public land would be seeing elk every 3-4 days. On my one private land hunt, saw elk daily.

 

[MLC]

Last year was my first hunting elk. I hunted private land in NW Colorado. I saw elk every day and shot a 5 x 4 bull on day three at 320 yards. I was thankful that I had practiced shooting all summer out to 300 yards, had a quality range finder and was in good shape.

 

[huntin24/7]

This is interesting. I hunt hard but my elk experience is limited to bow hunting or rifle cow hunting the breaks. I see elk basically every day. While researching units in WY and other states, it seems like almost everyone on line talks about how terrible their hunt was and they hardly saw anything on public. I always wonder if hunting is that much more difficult in most mountain units or if a lot of these guys just don’t get after it that hard.