Separate groups?

[Coloclover]

Last year I hunted first rifle season (Oct 10-14) and I didn't tag an elk, but I saw several, which I marked on my map. Three of the places I saw elk are sort of in line with each other and are less than three miles apart from point 1 to point 3. I'm trying to decide where I want to look for this season, but I'm not sure where to concentrate my efforts. Do elk tend to use the same bedding and feeding areas from year to year? How likely is it that the elk that I saw are the same bunch? How much room do they like to keep between groups? I appreciate any insight you guys may have to offer from your experience!

[Elkduds]

The area you were in is likely to hold elk if you return @ same time of year in similar weather. They will move between drainages. Hunter pressure may move them, hard to predict from year to year. Drought can move them, heavy snow will move them. Grazing livestock will move them. Construction, drilling, new roads, aerial "scouting," the list goes on.

[cohunter]

In my experience hunting the first season in CO, most elk are in very loose herds. The biologists group herds into groups of a few hundred, but on the ground in October, you'll more frequently find them in smaller groups of 8-20 (trending toward the bottom of that range). There is a good chance that the elk you saw belonged to the same large herd, but they probably weren't the same elk (that is unless you saw around 40-50 at once). This can be to your advantage because it's much easier to locate elk when they are more widely dispersed. Later in the year as they form a larger, tighter herd, they're less widely distributed and it may be harder to locate an elk. On the other hand, 100 elk leave 100 sets of tracks! Those large herds also are much more predictable - they can usually be found on the same private ground on the valley floor year after year.

[saddlesore]

As Elkduds states, elk move around. They do typically use the same breeding and calving grounds. However they roam a lot for feed. It has been my experience that barring external pressure, that they will stay in an area few days and then move on, but may return to that local in a few weeks or a few months. I don't like to hunt the first season in Colorado because it is too short and where the elk were last year, they might not be this year. Unless there is absolutely no indication that elk do not frequent the area, I hunt an area within a 5 mile radius or so that I know elk frequent. I always tell new hunters that they may not see elk until the last day of the season, or they may see them the first day and then not again for the entire season. Where I hunt, I have killed two bulls and a cow in the last four years within a 100 yards of each other. Two bulls I killed the first day I hunted, the cow on the,last day of the 9 day season that I hunted every day.

[Indian Summer]

How many days apart did you see them in those spots. Could be the same group but maybe not.

Question: Were those spots at the same elevation? If so I'd say keep it simple for starters and run that contour level all over the area.