Timing...

[mandrroofing]

Need a lil advise guys, I was set on hunting the last 10 days in Sep for elk in colorado.my buddy rather go the second week because muzzloader will be still in the first two days that we are there.my thoughts are the rut timing and it will he colder.his thoughts are the extral pressure from the orange army.sooooo,what's you alps thoughts on this? I really appreciate it fellas!

[cnelk]

Where I hunt, the ML hunters mess things up for about 5 days.
Some say they don't bother where they hunt, so it all depends.

After the 5th day, the ML hunters are tired and go home.
About Thursday, the elk get back into their routines,

But once again, it all depends.

[easeup]

I cant say that I ever noticed the ML guys messing things up too much. If you get away from the ATV areas you are not likely to run into them anyway. the last several years our hunts have overlapped the ML season and I cant even recall hearing any of them shoot.
maybe that just says we were in a sorry area.

[dapper]

We were there last year for the entire week of muzzleloader season. Saw one muzzlelader walking back on the trail towards the trailhead as we packed in on Saturday, their opener. Never seen another or heard a shot that entire week.

Dan

[mtnmutt]

A few of years ago CO went to limited draw on ML, so the ML numbers have decreased in my OTC archery area. You may look at the ML hunter numbers for your area on CPW website to perhaps gauge the ML pressure.

On the 1st day of ML in the morning, I have run into elk where some of them where on the run after the first ML was fired. I hunt through that 1st ML day after being there all week. After the first ML shot in the morning, its a bit different in my area. The elk get skittish and you need to be deeper into the Wilderness area to get into elk.

For the 2nd weekend of ML, I see some week long ML hunters with their 5th wheels parked along the road. However,, the ML numbers appear low by the 2nd weekend of ML compared to the 1st ML weekend. I still go out the 2nd weekend of ML for a light car camping hunting weekend before doing my final 5 day backpacking of archery Wednesday-Sunday. I also noticed far fewer archery hunters the last week of archery, however, I go away from the outfitters areas which are south of my location.

[horseshoe]

We noticed a big increase in traffic on the roads and new campsites in ML week last year, but it didn't seem to lead to fewer elk encounters. We called in two nice bulls, had some cows charging into the calls and had other encounters, including the last day.

I'm not sure of the cow encounter. We saw some ML hunters moving down the trail from above the general direction of the cow encounter, would the elk have considered my cow calls to be regrouping calls if they were spooked?

[bnsafe]

i hunted ml last year with my cousin who was bowhunting. i never heard a shot and we never saw another hunter. but it could have been where we were hunting. along the nat forest road were plenty of camp sites so not sure if they were ml or just there all the time.

[>>>---WW---->]

Since we are talking about the effects of smokepole hunters, here is how it goes in my area.

The Denver and front range city guys usually show up some time on Friday to set up camp. They do a little scouting and hunt most of the day Saturday and until around noon on Sunday. Then the bulk of them break camp and head back over the hill so they can be in their little computer cubicles on Monday morning. There may be a few nonresident hunters throughout the week but the city crowd is gone and 80% of them never show back up for the second weekend.

So I don't worry too much about them. As a matter of fact, the archery antelope hunters act much the same way.

So I suppose, getting back to the original question, if it were me, the later in the season, the better. If you think you'd like to hear them bugling, that would be the time to come. However if you are a meat hunter you have to consider that unless you are an experienced elk hunter, it may be a little harder to get one once they herd up for the rut.