Our hunting ground for the week would be the uneven terrain of southeastern Colorado. Whether we'd find elk in the steep timber or the alfalfa-rich meadows, we were confident they were around. For the record, we spent most of the trip around 7,500 feet above sea level.
The author and his guide regularly visited the location photographed above, which offered a "view from the top," so to speak. It offered a look at miles and miles of land—not that the elk offered any cooperation, at least early in the week.
If your prey could be holed up thousands of yards away, you're going to need good glass to find them. And we were stocked with some of the best. Leupold provided its GR Spotting Scopes for the trip.
When our hunting grounds were a little more intimate, we broke out our LeupoldBX-3 Mojave binos for a closer look. That's the Kryptek patterned version in the photo above.
The rougher the terrain, the more likely you are to find an elk. With thick timber surrounding us and rain the forecast, we armed ourselves with Ruger'sM-77 Hawkeye—the stainless steel barrel and synthetic stock would be required to survive the beating that the environment was sure to heap on it.
Elk are notorious for soaking up lead, so you'll want a cartridge that's capable of delivering it in spades. Our 180-grain, .300 Win. Mag. NoslerAccuBonds did the trick.
It took until the final morning of the trip, but the author was finally able to get a legal bull in his sights. It took an hour and a half hike, all uphill, in total darkness...but a bull waited at the end of the long road. No complaints here.
A single 230-yard shot, taken from a seated position using a Primos Trigger Stick, proved to be all that was required to crumple the bull. That's Ryan Solomon of FullDraw Outfitters on the left.
There's nothing quite like punching your elk tag at the end of a successful trip, at least not in North America. As Executive Editor Adam Heggenstaller put it, "Any elk is a good elk."
I first hunted Colorado for elk in the fall of 2013...and never saw a thing. Cervus canadensis may as well have been Latin for unicorn, because we’d seen just as many of the latter as the former. And, despite my best efforts, that outcome remained in the back of my mind as I returned to the Centennial state in October 2015 for redemption. I was due to join Leupold Optics, Ruger and Nosler for a five-day adventure in the mountains of southeastern Colorado, alongside the fine folks from Fred Eichler's FullDraw Outfitters. As I came to find out, however, the story couldn't have gone any differently. How so? Check out the photo gallery embedded above for more.
