3rd season Colorado buck tag

It borders 61 which is a trophy unit so there are some good bucks floating around. It is very important to stay until the end of the season. Many hunters will get discouraged and leave a day or two early so the pressure is less and the deer will go back to their routine and you will notice bucks exhibiting some rut behavior the last few days. If it's warm the deer won't move much during the day. Glassing is the only way to find them. The canyons in the northern end of the unit are rugged enough to keep some folks out. Escalante Forks to Long point and Kelso Mesa is worth looking into. Find the does and sit on them. The bucks will get interested towards the end of the week as always.
Mark

Mark,

Thanks for the Info, I'll be dedicated and hold out til the last day. I'm a big believer in Glassing. Did you see good numbers of deer in those deep canyons?, or was it few and far between?

wildcat2 ::wel to Muley Madness good luck on your hunt.

M Gardner gave you some pretty good advice hope it works out for dont forget to share pics and and story of hunt with us.

Third season you'll see plenty of bucks glassing. If you aren't seeing 3-5 bucks per day, move to a different area.
Not unusual to pass up 25-30 bucks on this hunt looking for something worth shooting. I hunt second season and when it gets to my last 2 days I'm not too picky about what I put down.
I'll post a report when I return from my hunt October 28th.
I've hunted this unit a couple years and feel like I am starting to get a good feel for it, I am looking for 26-28" buck that will go 180" or better for the first part of the season. I've seen them there before, but they can be hard to locate.
A lot of small 4's and 3's under 22", they can make a 24" buck look big! lol
I will be there 3 days before the opener and stay for two weeks, the action can be good all day long so be willing to keep hunting. I've had better luck down low on blm land, but I've also seen some big bucks up top when it's storming, you just never know.

Thanks to all for your replies. 3d, I'm looking forward to seeing your post after your trip. You'll have to do it quick, cause I'll be leaving on the 29th to go down and start scouting. Just one other question if you don't mind, how's the distribution of bucks on the BLM land? Have you found that they're already thinking about getting to the winter range?

By second season they are headed for winter ground in that unit from my experience. By third season, they are there and some of the bigger bucks show themselves more often.
Second season, we seem to be hunting the early arrivals!
A few storms in October really help out, if they can get a foot of snow on top at Divide Road then the bucks usually head to the sage/juniper areas.
In a lot of areas on this unit you have to pick, either hunt timber(NF) or sagebrush/juniper(BLM). There is usually a section of private land in between these two and a lot of these bucks will hold on that private land waiting to be pushed down onto winter grounds.
I see a lot more deer and bucks in the sagebrush. Two years ago 2nd season saw a lot of pre rut activity, I even had two bucks fighting pretty good in front of me at one point. They were 22-23" 4 point bucks(4X4) with decent eyeguards but it was only Oct 22nd and I still had some time to hunt, was looking for something bigger.
You can also ambush some nice bucks coming from farmers fields on the edge of the lower valleys, there are some dandy shooters that visit those fields. I like to hunt the rim country, get up high and watch. If I don't find what I'm looking for after a day or two I'll move over a canyon or two. Good luck this year.

Thanks 3d. Hey, do you have any pics of the bucks you've killed on 62?

That buck in my avitar is a unit 62 buck from 06', in 04' we passed on several bucks, one of our hunters shot a 25 wide 160-165" buck and the rest of us ate our tags. We had been there 2 days when we found out my sister had passed away and we had to head back home to take care of things and attend the funeral. So 06' was really the only hunt where we hunted the whole season.
If you check monstermuleys they have some pics of some real nice bucks taken in 62 the last couple years. Do a search on there and then check out the pics.
I hunted the first 10 days of archery season 06' in 62 for elk otc, saw a lot of nice bucks and learned a lot about summer patterns and what size deer are in the unit.