Colorado, Unit 711, 3rd Rifle Season Review
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TexasHunter83
- 2 point
- Posts: 177
- Joined: Sat Apr 06, 2013 12:30 pm
- Location: Texas
Colorado, Unit 711, 3rd Rifle Season Review
Sorry I haven't been on sooner to write a review of my trip to CO. Since returning to Texas I've been extremely busy at work. Now that I have a little bit of a break, I thought I'd recap a little about my trip. Unfortunately I won't be posting any photos at the moment, until I figure out how to meet the size limitations to post them on the forum.
Going into this hunt, we knew that it may end up being a tough hunt. The weather wasn't quite right when we arrived and a member of this forum had shared information that there had been some seism graphing done in the area during the summer. Thanks to another member of the forum, I'd gotten a hunting report from the 2nd Rifle Season and had my doubts going into the 3rd.
On Thursday, October 30, 2014 we left southern Texas at 4:00A.M. in order to pick up a relative in central Texas. By afternoon we were trekking across New Mexico and on our way to Albuquerque. We arrived in Albuquerque as it was getting dark, stopped to get a bite at the Outback, and kept on driving into the night. Around midnight we made it to Cortez, CO and stayed at a small lodge in town.
Friday morning, October 31st, we woke up early and made a trip to Wal-Mart to pick up our groceries and last minute hunting items. We left Cortez around 9:30 A.M. and began the last leg of our trip Disappointment Valley. We arrived after lunch and set up camp. Still being early enough for an evening scout trip, we loaded up our gear and set out to find a few good places to scout; as well as locate some places to hunt for the following morning. My friend and I ended up finding a few places we thought would be good to set up and eventually settled on an area we ended up nicknaming "Doe Mountain." It certainly wasn't a mountain, by any means, but for two Texas boys, everything is a mountain in Colorado. The spot had some really nice cover and gave us a really good view of several hillsides. I had a GPS, but instead we placed a small pile of rocks on the side of the trail so we'd remember where to stop.
On Nov. 1st, we set out from camp on my ATV. Due to unfamiliarity with the area, I passed up our rock pile and ended up running into my uncle about a mile down, who'd chosen to set up in a spot we found the evening before. We turned around and made our way back and eventually found our rock pile. After that it was smooth sailing to find the spot we wanted to hunt. Due to anticipation, we'd gotten up earlier than we should and ended up sitting in the dark for a while before shooting time. I'll have to admit, at first I was a little creeped out sitting on the side of a mountain, in another state, in pitch black darkness. However, after a little while I got used to it and it quite peaceful. As the sun came up I could tell that the spot we chose was a good spot. It gave us plenty of light on the opposing hillsides and pretty much gave us open range to shoot anywhere from 10 yards to 500yards. We sat for about 30 minutes, scoping out the hillsides when all of a sudden I saw movement to my left. I froze and just tried to use my eyes and there was a small group of does (5) walking by us at about 10 yards. They were so close that I didn't have time to get my camera out. After they passed I was able to catch a little video of them heading down into a small finger in front of us and then cross over onto the opposite hillside; beautiful to watch. 15 minutes later, to our right, another small group (4) of does crossed in front of us at about 200 yards. They grazed as they went but pretty much kept walking, disappearing over the hill. We ended up watching one group of does for a while (we think it was the first group that passed near us) and eventually they faded off into the tree line atop a hill in front of us. As the morning grew closer to lunch, the temp came up into the 60s and we decided to head back to camp and regroup. We'd seen no bucks that morning.
After returning to camp, we'd talked to others and no one had seen any deer whatsoever. An uncle of mine never came in for lunch and ended up staying all day. We later talked to him and he'd only seen one small buck that morning. We ended up trying the same spot that evening and saw the same 9 does we'd seen that morning. Coming back to camp that night, we'd learned that still, no one saw any deer.
On the morning of November 2nd, my dad and my uncle decided they wanted to try a completely different pretty much right on Disappointment Creek. We'd gotten a front in and the wind was blowing pretty hard. We tried a slow drive in this area, yielding nothing. We ended up talking to several other hunters who were all having trouble finding deer. Morning turned into afternoon and I convinced my dad to come sit with me on "Doe Mountain" because I was seeing deer there. Late afternoon rolled around, we found the rock pile, then walked down to the spot I'd hunted opening day. It was beautiful evening and the weather started changing. We could see the mountains across Disappointment Creek and they were getting hit a dusting of snow. Not long after watching the snow across the hills, we saw several does walk past us at about 25 yards to our right. They never saw us and walked by slowly, grazing here and there. I was able to catch this on film; but still no bucks. As it got too dark to shoot, we grabbed our packs and headed back uphill to the ATVs and headed back to camp. Again, no one else had seen any deer.
On the morning of November 3rd, I found myself hunting alone for a little while. My friend slept in because it was windy and raining. Being the addict that I am, I loaded up and headed off for "Doe Mountain" again. Seeing as how this was the only place anyone was seeing any deer, I figured that I should hang around. EVENTUALLY, I thought, there'd be bucks trailing those does. After a while of sitting under my poncho, and getting sleeted on, I decided to call it quits for the morning, instead opting to go back and take a nap. It sleeted and rained most of the morning and then eventually stopped. That evening my friend and I hit up the same spot, instead, opting to walk down further into the bottom and explore rather than actually set up and hit. We saw a few more does in the distance but never any bucks. We decided to head back to camp and talk about whether or not we should change our game plan. That night, we started getting hail, sleet, and eventually snow.
When I woke up on the Morning of the 4th, we were getting a light dusting of snow. There was some on the ground, not much, and there was some still falling. I loaded up my ATV and started the ride up the mountain. The further I went, the more it was snowing. By the time I got to my spot it was snowing pretty good. Again I'd woken up early and ended up sitting in the dark for a while. When the sun started peaking out from the hill behind me, I could notice a really good dusting of snow on the ground. It had stopped by then and was cold, calm, and beautiful. It mustn't have been daylight for about 20 minutes and a group of does walked by me again, this time at about 30 yards. Only this time, they had two bucks with them. They had a really young scraggly horned buck, and another buck who must have been about 2-3 years old. His antlers would have been about the size of a small basket-6 or 8 here in Texas. 30 minutes after that, I noticed another small buck emerge from the tree line in front of me, trailing another small group of does. I had numerous opportunities to fill my tag on these bucks, but seeing as how the snow got them moving, I figured I'd wait and try my hand that evening.
The evening of the 4th rolled around and, while back on Doe Mountain, I saw the same couple of scraggly bucks (with does) on the opposing hill about 600yrds away. I watched them until dark and eventually headed back to camp empty handed.
Going into our last day of hunting (Nov. 5th) I made up my mind that, should I see a deer with horns, he'd be going in the cooler regardless of how big he was. That morning I opted to hunt a different area inside Indian Valley. It was way more wooded and was further down in the "bottom" than where I previously hunted. It was below 30 degrees, ice cold, and eerily quite. I sat in this small valley for a while, freezing my toes off. I ended up not seeing anything but rabbits so I started to head back towards "Doe Mountain."
Now, the day before, a lady camping near us had killed a decent 4x4 very near to where I was hunting on the morning of the 5th. So, keeping this in mind, I decided to try that spot just to see. So after a few hundred yards of walking through the woods it emerged into an open area very similar to Doe Mountain, except I could see further. I walked about 200yds down the hill and found a dead tree to sit down by. It was beautiful spot with a beautiful view. After about 10 minutes of sitting, I noticed a doe walk out in front of me at about 300yds away. Right behind here was a small buck. I quickly made up my mind that venison sausage would taste good and decided to pull the trigger on him. I waited until he crossed through a group of trees and then took him. I'm not exactly proud of taking young bucks, but today was the last day of the hunt and I wanted some meat in the cooler. We nicknamed the buck, "The Jackalope Buck" due to his small fork horns. Some jokes were even made about whether I wiped the milk off his mouth after I shot him.
After talking to numerous people in the area afterwards, hardly anyone was seeing any deer. Out of 20 people camping near us, myself and a lady down the road, were the only two people who killed anything. On our trip back home we ran into 20 hunters from San Antonio who said that 1 guy killed a deer out of the 20 that were hunting. The deer simply weren't down from the mountains yet, and certainly weren't in full rut where we were. A member of the forum did tell me that deer started showing up after the season. I'd imagine, with so few deer killed this year, next year may be a good year to hunt the area. Maybe some good deer were able to survive and get a little better for this year.
While in Colorado, we experienced hot weather, cold weather, rain, sleet, hail, snow, wind, calm, ice, etc... I thought Texas weather was unpredictable but boy was I wrong. Though having a hard hunt, I had an amazing time and caught some good footage; footage I'll post one I figure out how. I'll take a hard hunt over the best day of work anytime. I got to hunt, camp, and relax with family and friends. One thing I did learn in CO, is that 6,000ft is definitely my extent of my threshold for walking around in higher elevations. I had two lung surgeries in high school, and two bouts with pneumonia afterwards. My lungs are shot for the most part. It was fairly difficult for me to breath at these elevations. Downhill was quite a bit easier, but uphill hiking was definitely the most difficult part of my hunting. I wasn't ever able to get more than 500yds off of the trails due to this. Thanks to all of the MuleyMadness members who gave me pointers and reports from this unit. I'm in the process of planning another hunt this year. This time the target may end up being southeastern Oklahoma due them having OTC whitetail tags for nonresidents.
As soon as I figure out how resize my photos I'll post some on this thread. Thanks for reading!
Going into this hunt, we knew that it may end up being a tough hunt. The weather wasn't quite right when we arrived and a member of this forum had shared information that there had been some seism graphing done in the area during the summer. Thanks to another member of the forum, I'd gotten a hunting report from the 2nd Rifle Season and had my doubts going into the 3rd.
On Thursday, October 30, 2014 we left southern Texas at 4:00A.M. in order to pick up a relative in central Texas. By afternoon we were trekking across New Mexico and on our way to Albuquerque. We arrived in Albuquerque as it was getting dark, stopped to get a bite at the Outback, and kept on driving into the night. Around midnight we made it to Cortez, CO and stayed at a small lodge in town.
Friday morning, October 31st, we woke up early and made a trip to Wal-Mart to pick up our groceries and last minute hunting items. We left Cortez around 9:30 A.M. and began the last leg of our trip Disappointment Valley. We arrived after lunch and set up camp. Still being early enough for an evening scout trip, we loaded up our gear and set out to find a few good places to scout; as well as locate some places to hunt for the following morning. My friend and I ended up finding a few places we thought would be good to set up and eventually settled on an area we ended up nicknaming "Doe Mountain." It certainly wasn't a mountain, by any means, but for two Texas boys, everything is a mountain in Colorado. The spot had some really nice cover and gave us a really good view of several hillsides. I had a GPS, but instead we placed a small pile of rocks on the side of the trail so we'd remember where to stop.
On Nov. 1st, we set out from camp on my ATV. Due to unfamiliarity with the area, I passed up our rock pile and ended up running into my uncle about a mile down, who'd chosen to set up in a spot we found the evening before. We turned around and made our way back and eventually found our rock pile. After that it was smooth sailing to find the spot we wanted to hunt. Due to anticipation, we'd gotten up earlier than we should and ended up sitting in the dark for a while before shooting time. I'll have to admit, at first I was a little creeped out sitting on the side of a mountain, in another state, in pitch black darkness. However, after a little while I got used to it and it quite peaceful. As the sun came up I could tell that the spot we chose was a good spot. It gave us plenty of light on the opposing hillsides and pretty much gave us open range to shoot anywhere from 10 yards to 500yards. We sat for about 30 minutes, scoping out the hillsides when all of a sudden I saw movement to my left. I froze and just tried to use my eyes and there was a small group of does (5) walking by us at about 10 yards. They were so close that I didn't have time to get my camera out. After they passed I was able to catch a little video of them heading down into a small finger in front of us and then cross over onto the opposite hillside; beautiful to watch. 15 minutes later, to our right, another small group (4) of does crossed in front of us at about 200 yards. They grazed as they went but pretty much kept walking, disappearing over the hill. We ended up watching one group of does for a while (we think it was the first group that passed near us) and eventually they faded off into the tree line atop a hill in front of us. As the morning grew closer to lunch, the temp came up into the 60s and we decided to head back to camp and regroup. We'd seen no bucks that morning.
After returning to camp, we'd talked to others and no one had seen any deer whatsoever. An uncle of mine never came in for lunch and ended up staying all day. We later talked to him and he'd only seen one small buck that morning. We ended up trying the same spot that evening and saw the same 9 does we'd seen that morning. Coming back to camp that night, we'd learned that still, no one saw any deer.
On the morning of November 2nd, my dad and my uncle decided they wanted to try a completely different pretty much right on Disappointment Creek. We'd gotten a front in and the wind was blowing pretty hard. We tried a slow drive in this area, yielding nothing. We ended up talking to several other hunters who were all having trouble finding deer. Morning turned into afternoon and I convinced my dad to come sit with me on "Doe Mountain" because I was seeing deer there. Late afternoon rolled around, we found the rock pile, then walked down to the spot I'd hunted opening day. It was beautiful evening and the weather started changing. We could see the mountains across Disappointment Creek and they were getting hit a dusting of snow. Not long after watching the snow across the hills, we saw several does walk past us at about 25 yards to our right. They never saw us and walked by slowly, grazing here and there. I was able to catch this on film; but still no bucks. As it got too dark to shoot, we grabbed our packs and headed back uphill to the ATVs and headed back to camp. Again, no one else had seen any deer.
On the morning of November 3rd, I found myself hunting alone for a little while. My friend slept in because it was windy and raining. Being the addict that I am, I loaded up and headed off for "Doe Mountain" again. Seeing as how this was the only place anyone was seeing any deer, I figured that I should hang around. EVENTUALLY, I thought, there'd be bucks trailing those does. After a while of sitting under my poncho, and getting sleeted on, I decided to call it quits for the morning, instead opting to go back and take a nap. It sleeted and rained most of the morning and then eventually stopped. That evening my friend and I hit up the same spot, instead, opting to walk down further into the bottom and explore rather than actually set up and hit. We saw a few more does in the distance but never any bucks. We decided to head back to camp and talk about whether or not we should change our game plan. That night, we started getting hail, sleet, and eventually snow.
When I woke up on the Morning of the 4th, we were getting a light dusting of snow. There was some on the ground, not much, and there was some still falling. I loaded up my ATV and started the ride up the mountain. The further I went, the more it was snowing. By the time I got to my spot it was snowing pretty good. Again I'd woken up early and ended up sitting in the dark for a while. When the sun started peaking out from the hill behind me, I could notice a really good dusting of snow on the ground. It had stopped by then and was cold, calm, and beautiful. It mustn't have been daylight for about 20 minutes and a group of does walked by me again, this time at about 30 yards. Only this time, they had two bucks with them. They had a really young scraggly horned buck, and another buck who must have been about 2-3 years old. His antlers would have been about the size of a small basket-6 or 8 here in Texas. 30 minutes after that, I noticed another small buck emerge from the tree line in front of me, trailing another small group of does. I had numerous opportunities to fill my tag on these bucks, but seeing as how the snow got them moving, I figured I'd wait and try my hand that evening.
The evening of the 4th rolled around and, while back on Doe Mountain, I saw the same couple of scraggly bucks (with does) on the opposing hill about 600yrds away. I watched them until dark and eventually headed back to camp empty handed.
Going into our last day of hunting (Nov. 5th) I made up my mind that, should I see a deer with horns, he'd be going in the cooler regardless of how big he was. That morning I opted to hunt a different area inside Indian Valley. It was way more wooded and was further down in the "bottom" than where I previously hunted. It was below 30 degrees, ice cold, and eerily quite. I sat in this small valley for a while, freezing my toes off. I ended up not seeing anything but rabbits so I started to head back towards "Doe Mountain."
Now, the day before, a lady camping near us had killed a decent 4x4 very near to where I was hunting on the morning of the 5th. So, keeping this in mind, I decided to try that spot just to see. So after a few hundred yards of walking through the woods it emerged into an open area very similar to Doe Mountain, except I could see further. I walked about 200yds down the hill and found a dead tree to sit down by. It was beautiful spot with a beautiful view. After about 10 minutes of sitting, I noticed a doe walk out in front of me at about 300yds away. Right behind here was a small buck. I quickly made up my mind that venison sausage would taste good and decided to pull the trigger on him. I waited until he crossed through a group of trees and then took him. I'm not exactly proud of taking young bucks, but today was the last day of the hunt and I wanted some meat in the cooler. We nicknamed the buck, "The Jackalope Buck" due to his small fork horns. Some jokes were even made about whether I wiped the milk off his mouth after I shot him.
After talking to numerous people in the area afterwards, hardly anyone was seeing any deer. Out of 20 people camping near us, myself and a lady down the road, were the only two people who killed anything. On our trip back home we ran into 20 hunters from San Antonio who said that 1 guy killed a deer out of the 20 that were hunting. The deer simply weren't down from the mountains yet, and certainly weren't in full rut where we were. A member of the forum did tell me that deer started showing up after the season. I'd imagine, with so few deer killed this year, next year may be a good year to hunt the area. Maybe some good deer were able to survive and get a little better for this year.
While in Colorado, we experienced hot weather, cold weather, rain, sleet, hail, snow, wind, calm, ice, etc... I thought Texas weather was unpredictable but boy was I wrong. Though having a hard hunt, I had an amazing time and caught some good footage; footage I'll post one I figure out how. I'll take a hard hunt over the best day of work anytime. I got to hunt, camp, and relax with family and friends. One thing I did learn in CO, is that 6,000ft is definitely my extent of my threshold for walking around in higher elevations. I had two lung surgeries in high school, and two bouts with pneumonia afterwards. My lungs are shot for the most part. It was fairly difficult for me to breath at these elevations. Downhill was quite a bit easier, but uphill hiking was definitely the most difficult part of my hunting. I wasn't ever able to get more than 500yds off of the trails due to this. Thanks to all of the MuleyMadness members who gave me pointers and reports from this unit. I'm in the process of planning another hunt this year. This time the target may end up being southeastern Oklahoma due them having OTC whitetail tags for nonresidents.
As soon as I figure out how resize my photos I'll post some on this thread. Thanks for reading!
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MuleyMadness
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Re: Colorado, Unit 711, 3rd Rifle Season Review
Thanks for the report, it was excellent. Sorry you didn't see any bigger bucks or rut type behavior. But still sounds fun and like a good experience.
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TexasHunter83
- 2 point
- Posts: 177
- Joined: Sat Apr 06, 2013 12:30 pm
- Location: Texas
Re: Colorado, Unit 711, 3rd Rifle Season Review
Thanks Muley,
I had a blast. I really enjoyed seeing and learning some of the area. It's a beautiful place. Thanks for responding!
I had a blast. I really enjoyed seeing and learning some of the area. It's a beautiful place. Thanks for responding!