I just got home from spending 3 days scouting a unit in NW Colorado I drew for 2nd season muleys. Conditions weren't ideal with the heat and full moon, but it was when I could get away to do it. A buddy went along and we saw very few deer, 6 total in 3 days. We were out from before daylight to dark every day and put over 200 miles on the UTV exploring country. We used it to find spots we could glass from and hiked into other spots from the roads or trails marking vantage points. We also put around 150 miles on the truck checking out other places with better roads and getting an overview of the unit. We moved camp to cover more new country each day. We saw a total of 6 deer in the unit.
The unit is a mix of pinion juniper and oak brush. We checked high meadows, burns, all the country at the highest elevations of the unit, around 8500ft, that looked good. When that didn't work we checked a lot of mid elevation brushy country. It would have been easy to miss deer there, but we really didn't see a lot of sign either. We also drive the creek bottoms at daylight twice and looked at the alfalfa fields. One local we spoke too said if we wanted to see deer look at the alfalfa at night. We had enough moonlight to glass somewhat effectively so we tried this our last night, we drove past the close alfalfa fields at 11pm and then started checking bottoms at 4am, looked until about 8am and only saw 2 does. Both does were on fields after daylight.
The lady we spoke to at the closest Parks and Wildlife office told us that the deer in this area were not really migratory, she said we should be seeing deer especially in the creek bottoms. There really isn't any country we could see from the highest points of our unit that looked a whole lot higher anywhere extremely close.
I'm glad we went, saw some new beautiful country and got to mark a lot of good vantage points.
I'm still a little curious where the deer all were? I've got very limited experience hunting muleys in Colorado. Scouting trips to Wyoming for past hunts this time of year we always found deer pretty easily hanging out in open areas with their velvet antlers at different elevations. I'm wondering if these bucks were in the oak brush and just not coming out much?
Thanks for any help you can give.
The unit is a mix of pinion juniper and oak brush. We checked high meadows, burns, all the country at the highest elevations of the unit, around 8500ft, that looked good. When that didn't work we checked a lot of mid elevation brushy country. It would have been easy to miss deer there, but we really didn't see a lot of sign either. We also drive the creek bottoms at daylight twice and looked at the alfalfa fields. One local we spoke too said if we wanted to see deer look at the alfalfa at night. We had enough moonlight to glass somewhat effectively so we tried this our last night, we drove past the close alfalfa fields at 11pm and then started checking bottoms at 4am, looked until about 8am and only saw 2 does. Both does were on fields after daylight.
The lady we spoke to at the closest Parks and Wildlife office told us that the deer in this area were not really migratory, she said we should be seeing deer especially in the creek bottoms. There really isn't any country we could see from the highest points of our unit that looked a whole lot higher anywhere extremely close.
I'm glad we went, saw some new beautiful country and got to mark a lot of good vantage points.
I'm still a little curious where the deer all were? I've got very limited experience hunting muleys in Colorado. Scouting trips to Wyoming for past hunts this time of year we always found deer pretty easily hanging out in open areas with their velvet antlers at different elevations. I'm wondering if these bucks were in the oak brush and just not coming out much?
Thanks for any help you can give.
