Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Caught this guy on camera at our lake

wbuffetjr...basically the Colorado cabin had to be sold to settle the estate.

Plus...although Colorado is beautiful & I love it,
Lake City is 800 miles from Dallas...
I live and work in Dallas.

Realistically I am not in a position to spend more than a few weeks
a year at a remote cabin in Colorado & there was/is a lot of upkeep.

Yeah we could have rented it out but then you have smokers,
partiers, rug rats, and dogs tearing up your beautiful cabin
800 miles away, which leads to more upkeep, hiring maids, ect...
just not my cup of tea. Plus I hate cold weather.

I will get much more use from the property with a pond
and small log cabin closer to home....1 hour from Dallas.

Unit 62 is where we cow elk hunted in early December. Nice Shiras!!

We used Kinikin Outfitters http://www.huntwesterncolorado.com/

Who actually hired Camp David Outfitting to take us out:
http://www.campdavidoutfitting.com/home.html
Ray (the dad) and Jerad (son) will work their butts off for you to make sure you have a successful hunt.

Jerad also has dogs that he runs Mt. Lions with, along with another guide, Shamus. How they can run at that elevation and still sort of keep up with the dogs is beyond me. I tried following them as they took off up the hill in knee deep snow and I was almost puking my guts out in less than 100 yds.

In 2012, there was a female lion in heat (we thought) and there were 6-7 Toms in the same canyon that she was. All the elk got pushed back to the National Forest and we ate our tags. One of the guys had a lion tag, and he DID get his lion the 2nd day that we let the dogs out. The first day the dogs pushed a lion off of a live elk as it was trying to kill it. The Elk was covered in blood, and still alive. The dogs stayed with the Elk and not the lion, (probably because of the blood) and that day the lion got away.

Unfortunately, the consensus among the guides is that the lion hunting in Colorado will mimic the lion hunting in California since the lead lion biologist's girlfriend was instrumental in the lion hunting fiasco in California.....

Scott I remember a few years ago being way up on the jeep trail in Colorado. We stopped when we saw a huge patch of snow. I decided to run across a large patch of snow at like 12,000-13,000 feet...hey it was the middle of the summer and this Texas boy couldn't believe his eyes...seeing, touching snow in August.

When I stopped running I literally could not breathe. My lungs at that altitude just could not take in enough air. Mentally I was thinking "am I gonna die"..."am I gonna pass out"....what will happen? After bending over for several minutes I finally caught up on my breathing.

No wonder the Denver Broncos usually have such a great home record.

We are in unit 65 and border 62. Both the units are listed together in the DOW regulations book. Between the bears and the lions, the hunting has definitely suffered where we are. Fortunately the DOW SEEMS to be responding well on the bears at least. They almost doubled the bear tags last year and just while I was at the DOW office getting my tags last year I saw 5 bears get checked in! We will see what happens with the cats. If the DOW doesn't do something about it the locals/ranchers will. I have heard lots of stories of them just handling it but I wouldn't know anything about that....

The altitude is no joke and you can't acclimate in a week or even two. Being able to get after it out there keeps me training all year! The first year my brothers in law (college cross country runners) took me out there for my first elk hunt they embarrassed the hell out of me and kept calling me a sissy every day. I vowed to never let that happen again!!

I already had my cow in at the processor, but the last evening we watched 5-6 nice bulls feeding on the side of the mountain while we were on the lodge upper porch. If memory serves me right, they were 5x5 and 6x6's, and one that might have been even bigger.

Got out the spotting scope, and took some pictures with the phone camera thru the lens. Then the "what if" thought came out. I grabbed the rangefinder. Yep, it was a doable shot, especially since the wind had died down to absolutely nothing - right around 1,450 yds if I remember right. But, I didn't have a bull tag, season wasn't open and it turns out they were in a different unit too, according to a guy that lived there.

The year before I was out there for 3-4 days ahead of time to try and get acclimated to the altitude. It helped, but I sure wasn't 100%. That year I only had about 24 hrs at altitude before I tried keeping up with the guide. No way possible.

Wow! That's over 0.8 of a mile! That would have been a shot to remember!

When I was there for that cow elk hunt, I re-zero'd the gun at altitude and shot it from it's 300 yd zero out to 1,330 yds to make a drop chart and to collect data. At 1,330 yds, the 2nd shot impacted in the same dirt crater that the first bullet made. Good enough to kill an elk. I honestly don't know how accurate the gun is. It all depends on the nut behind the trigger. I have shot 3/4" center to center groups at 300 yds, but I still don't know how to read the wind as well as I should. The cow elk that I shot there was at 705 yds.

Bill, when I was in Texas I put a hole in a coyote using that same gun. First shot out of that gun since that elk hunt in December 2013 (clean cold barrel). That 'yote was 17 yds shy of being a half mile away.

Got a witness to the shot too.

Yeah, I did screw up the windage reading. The bullet hit about 6" to the left of where I was planning it on hitting. I do have a picture of the coyote in the field, but I'd rather not post it here - it has a bunch of red in it....... The coyote walked about 20' from where it was hit and never took another step. It's mate ran off when the bullet hit, and came back about 15 seconds later to see why it didn't follow. I forgot to adjust the scope for the 2nd shot and missed low. (In that gun a clean cold barrel shoots 1.5 moa higher than a dirty barrel.) I didn't have another chance to shoot as the coyote took off FAST.

That's some fine shooting esshup. What kind of rig are you shooting with?

It's a 7mm. But it's a wildcat based on the .338 Lapua cartridge. Specifically it's called a 7mm Allen Magnum.

Build specs:
Nesika Bay Model M Hunter receiver
Lilja SS barrel, fluted 1-9, 4 groove, 28" barrel, #6 contour
APS Slim Painkiller muzzle brake
Jewell trigger
Manner MCS-GAT stock
Defensive Edge adjustable cheekpiece
HS Precision Detachable Magazine system
Nesika 20 moa SS rail base
NightForce Ultralight rings
NightForce NXS NPR1 5.5-22x50mm with zero stop
Rail mounted ACI
Scope mounted scope level
Harris S-BRM 9”-13” Bipod with Swivel Lock w/Bipod Loc

It's not the lightest thing in the world to be dragging around a mountain at 12#, but a lighter gun would be a little bit more difficult to shoot. With the brake the recoil is about like my 6# .243.

I was shoving a 175g Sierra MatchKing at 3490 fps, but after a few hundred rounds they were coming apart in mid-air about 50 yds past the muzzle. I'm now shoving a 180g Berger VLD at 3350 fps at 785' elevation. Still haven't played enough with the 200g Wildcat bullets to see what velocity they are most accurate at. The 'smith said I should be able to shove them around 3300 fps, and with them having a verified bc of .91 those should cut down on wind drift a bit.

No wonder that bad boy will reach out and touch em! Fine piece! Shame you're not into guns! Lol


Pat

That's awesome!! I like to think I am like Robin Hood with a bow and I know I am more like Stevie Wonder with a gun!!! hahaha

I got my buddy to put up a couple trail cameras for me and got a couple pics already!

This looks like a different bull than the other one. Other one seems to have a longer bell.


Too many of these guys up there!

Looked back over this post and forgot I was gonna post this. Got a little footage of the monster moose we saw one year hunting near Creede. It is through the spotting scope so not the greatest. I have a pretty good moose on the wall and I have looked at a lot of them. This guy was VERY big for a Colorado Moose.

https://youtu.be/dp96hNboe-w