We finally arrived in Colorado and got the tent set up. After getting things organized, we all headed out for an afternoon stroll. We figured we would check some places out and see what the sign looked like.
On our way in, we noticed a lot more camps than normal. It’s always disappointing when you see camps, but it’s even more disappointing when multiple camps have big horse trailers at them. That usually means people are way back in where we don’t normally see people.
After returning to the tent and talking about what we saw, we all came up with the same conclusion: there are way too many people in the area. There wasn’t a lot of elk sign, either. Brian did see some elk and hear a few bugles, but he put on some serious miles. He called one in, but he couldn’t get a shot at it. We are going to head back in there in the morning and give it a whirl.
Dad and I heard a few people bugling their heads off, and one guy sounded so bad that I would have been embarrassed to blow on my call if I made sounds like the ones that we heard. We also saw a guy a little bit before it got dark. He was muzzleloading. Brian ended up seeing eight guys, four of them from Michigan. They were all on off-road motorcycles and had bows on their backs. He also saw three guys muzzleloading and another bowhunter.
There are far too many people in here. All we can hope for is people to start filing out near the end of the week. That’s the only hope we have. This place goes in spells. Sometimes we don’t see another person and other years there are so many people you can’t find a place to get away from them. It appears that we are dealing with the latter this year.