bbraden
Well-Known Member
If you know generally where the elk are, and you're backpack camping, how far away should you camp from the elk? One ridge over? A mile or more, etc?
Depends if you do a spike camp, limit noise and fire you can be close, I had elk water in the stream next to my camp. if you are going to have a normal camp with fire and some noise I would be at least 1/2 mile from where I would want to hunt
problem with scouting a few days before the season opens is that lots of guys do just this on public land-- this can push the elk once more-- if you leave them alone then they may stay right where they are until opening morning when 50 million guys crank up their noisy atv's and utv's and start driving all the roads looking for a nice rack-- I was taught to leave the area alone for at least a week before you hunt to keep the animals calm and from moving around too much.
Its kind of a luck thing on public land-- you see the animals, you should assume someone else has seen them too--if you mess with the area too much your noise and scent can make the animals move to another spot. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't-- if you know they are in a certain area and go there , chances are they may have moved to that more remote area, if you head to the remote area, sure enough-- they wont have moved yet from the area you knew they would be in.
best bet would be to find that "secret spot" where the animals are but nobody else knows they are there--good luck with that-- you can use hunting pressure of other hunters to help, but if the others get to the animals first then you might loose your "prized bull"
thats why they call it "hunting" and not "a sure thing"
more and more here in CO at least, guys are starting to hunt the ML season to "get a jump" on all the hordes of people that get 1st rifle season tags-- but then those ML guys just push the animals out of the areas earlier---too much noise, too much scent, too many vehicles in the area just push them to hide earlier--only way to hunt during the rut is to go for archery season here. If you can ride your atv to withing 30 minutes of the "spot" then most likely there will be other hunters there-- use your feet and get back into the forest away from all the other people
thats the nice thing about private land-- you get to keep the area quiet and undisturbed up until your hunt, unfortunately private land is hard or expensive to gain access to if its not yours
With as much ground as a herd can cover in a morning i would say 4000 yards.If you know generally where the elk are, and you're backpack camping, how far away should you camp from the elk? One ridge over? A mile or more, etc?