february 17, 2012 03:03pm

Colorado Mule Deer Hunting

The 2012 hunting regs are out and you can start drawing for your 2012 fall hunts. West Elk Outfitters offers some great mule deer hunting. We will help you apply for your tag or accumulate points for future hunts. Western Colorado has some great mule deer hunting. If you have any questions regarding mule deer hunting this fall please contact us for more information.
Jerad

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february 17, 2012 03:00pm

Colorado Elk Hunting

Well friends of West Elk Outfitters the new 2012 hunting regs are out. Colorado offers some great opportunity for all elk hunters. If you think that you might be interested in an elk hunt this fall contact us and we can help you decide what will fit your plans for this fall.
Jerad

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january 04, 2012 01:27pm

Colorado Lion Season

Lion season is open and going well here in Colorado. We have not had great weather but we are making what we have work. If your interested in an exciting lion hunt please contact us!

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october 09, 2011 12:47pm

Vortex Optics

Westelk Outfitters has become a Vortex dealer this year. We have used Vortex Optics for 3 years now and we feel like Vortex offers some great glass for the money. One thing that has stood out to us is the service and warranty covering and supporting their products. Vortex will do whatever it takes to win your business and give you the best support and warranty in the business. We have sent products back and they have fix or replaced the product in record time. Contact us for references and to order your new optics.
Jerad

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august 16, 2011 12:33pm

Mt Lion Hunting

I was sitting at a Mule Deer Banquet a couple weeks ago and was reading through one of the magazines. I got to an article about mt.lions and predation. One of the stats that caught my eye was that the CDOW estimates there are between 6000-8000 lions in the state of Colorado. And that the old statistic says that a Mt.lion kills and eats one deer per week. Taking the average of 7000x52=364,000 deer per year. So they ask the question, "do we have a deer problem or a lion problem". WOW! Now this doesn't take into account the elk and other prey species that the lions may feed on but it would still be a very high number of deer killed each year.
So my question is how do you manage a population of lions so that there is a huntable population but not too many that is has the effect on deer as we have seen over the years?
I would like to know what your thoughts are on this issue.
Jerad

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july 19, 2011 06:13am

Colorado Elk & Deer Hunting

So i hope you all got your fall hunts all lined and have a great tag in your pocket. I know there are many of you that did not draw the tag you wanted or missed the deadlines to apply etc. Colorado still has a few options even at the last minute. If you still want to hunt deer this fall there are a couple options. First you can find a landowner voucher that will give you the ability to buy a license. Or you can watch the states website for the leftover license list and buy a license when they go on sale.
If you just want to go elk hunting then Colorado is the place to come. With the majority of the tags being over-the-counter tags you can show up and buy your tag for the season you would like to hunt. There are many open otc units that have great elk numbers.
And lastly if you want to go hunting and don't want to do it solo then call us and we can help you find a guided elk,deer, lion or bear hunt that will fit you.
Jerad

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july 05, 2011 10:08am

2011 Hunts Still Available

We would like to thank all the hunters who have booked hunts with us this fall. We still have a couple spots to fill. The 2nd rilfe deer hunt is still available for two hunters. This hunt is a 5 day hunt with the landowner voucher included. Hunt dates are late October. Hunt Price is $4000/per hunter. Your food lodging and transportation while on your hunt are provided. Hunt will be one guide for the two hunters.

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june 16, 2011 12:39pm

Landowner Vouchers and Hunts

Westelk Outfitters has some friends and landowners with some tags available.
Unit 53 Muzzle Loader tag.....$3700
Unit 53 2nd Season Rifle Tag....$2500
Unit 53 Archery Tag.............$1500
Unit 63 3rd Rifle Tag...........$3700

If you are interested in any of these tags contact us.

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june 10, 2011 07:29pm

Landowner Vouchers and Hunt Specials

Westelk Outfitters has friends and landowners that have drawn vouchers for the 2011 hunting season.
Colorado Tag
3 Unit 67 1st Season Bull Tags....$1500per
3 Unit 74 Archery Buck Tags.......$1500per
2 Unit 74 2nd Rifle Buck Tags.....$1800
Nevada Tag
Unit 231 Bull Elk Rut Hunt 2 guides per hunter. Killed 411 bull last year. $18,000
Texas Hunts
Mule Deer Management Hunt on 260,000 acres of private land (NO HIGH FENCES). Management hunt is for a buck up to 170 inches for $3000 including guide, lodging, food for 5 days.
Trophy Mule deer hunt is 5 days for $6000. All inclusive also.
You can do a Audad and Mule Deer Combo for $6500 Season runs from Nov-Jan
Contact us for more info on these hunts and tags.

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may 19, 2011 12:21pm

Westelk Kennel

Westelk is building a kennel for our hounds. We will have a nursery for the females that are having pups and a roof over all of them. It will be a nice addition.
Jerad

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may 18, 2011 08:52pm

Lion Hound to have pups

Westelk got one of our female walkers bred to a great dry ground walker from AZ. We are excited about the cross and cant wait for the pups to get here. We will keep you all posted on the progress.
Jerad

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may 02, 2011 11:43am

purposed change of bear season dates!

For some of you Coloradans you remember when you could hunt black bears in the spring with dogs or bait. In 1992 that was done away with. Advocates said that too many sows and cubs were being killed. Nothing was further from the truth. Right now there is a lawmaker trying to get the spring bear back open. And why not? Well he needs our help. He is more worried about his next election and pleasing the liberal folks of Colorado and is now changing his stance on his bill because he has caught some flack from the advocate groups. So please get involved and voice your opinion. The fact is this that when a houndsmen puts a bear in the tree he knows what he is shooting he can tell if its a boar, sow or a juvenile. If it is illegal to take sows with cubs he is going to know if there are cubs with the sow. If a hunter is sitting over bait he is going to be able to see what animal he is harvesting if it is a female or boar or if it has cubs with it. The bottom line is that American Sportsmen are losing there freedoms bit by bit for ridiculous reasons. So we need to get involved and do what we can to bring back things like lion hunting in CA and spring bear hunting in CO and wolf hunting in ID, WY and Montana. So please help. Thanks! Jerad

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april 28, 2011 05:24am

Colorado Mule Deer

Well folks as our winter is underway this is the time of year we all start thinking about this fall. We flip through magazines and watch hunting shows wondering what we should apply for this fall. That is the life of a hunter.
What things can you do during the winter and spring to make your fall hunt more successful. Hunters who live near the area that they hunt they have a huge advantage to learn more about the animals that they will be hunting in the fall. One thing that is helpful is to do some winter range scouting. Once the rut is over the bucks will batch back up together. By getting out and seeing what has made it through the previous hunting seasons and survived the rut you will see what you have to look forward to seeing the next season. If you do your winter range scouting then you will know where these bucks are wintering and why not get back out in the spring and pick up some sheds. Which leads us to my next useful preseason research tool. Shed hunting is a useful tool to figuring out what an area has for mature mule deer. Deer are creatures of habit and often if you find a bucks sheds. You can count on that buck coming back to that area for the fall rut. He may not be in the exact spot but he should be in the general area. If you are not successful in finding that same deer don't be discouraged about using that tactic, there is alot that can happen during the summer and that deer may have gotten killed during the summer. So get out and find some sheds and hopefully it will all pan out for you when this fall comes around. Learn your area deer year round it will help you be more successful this fall. Best regards!
Jerad Cotten

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april 05, 2011 12:00am

Colorado Tag Application Deadline Today!

Well today is the day. For all you hunters wanting to apply for Colorado Big Game tags today is the deadline. Applications can be done online or sent in by mail today. For those of you who may still need some help feel free to contact us. We have a few spots still available for elk and deer hunts. Some of our elk hunts can be drawn with 0 points but they still need to be applied for. We have some deals on some hunts right now also. We wish you all the best of luck in the draw!
Westelk Outfitters

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march 22, 2011 12:00am

Colorado Division of Wildlife merge with Parks

So our Governor has purposed to merge the CDOW with the State Parks. They would like to merge the two so that basically Parks (a broke agency) can be incorporated into the DOW (a cash funded agency). The DOW does get matching federal excise tax, about 20 million a year from the Dingel-Johnson, Pittman-Robertson acts which is a specific tax on firearms,ammunition etc. This excise tax money can ONLY be used for hunting and fishing related activities and is specifically NOT to be used for outdoor recreation.
Take Crawford State Park for example. They will look at that and say "oh well there is hunting and fishing opportunity at the park so we can use excise tax dollars to run it" Including Hunter and fisherman (yours and mine) dollars being spent to clean bathrooms, pick up trash, talk to jet skier's and make sure campsites are nice.
Another rumor is that they will all have to share trucks and we all know that that will not work. Two law enforcement agencies cant share a vehicle. The wardens must have a 4 year degree and complete one year of training and can do everything a park ranger can. A park ranger doesn't have to have any of that and they can not do any of the things a warden can.
The state is trying to ramrod this bill through with out ironing out the details ahead of time. They would rather have a shot gun wedding and crash it all together. They are shooting for July 1st for the merger. This merger was done in the late 60's and ended in the early 70's cause it did NOT work.
My fear is that we will end up with and under funded, inefficient agency that cannot afford to be proactive in disease control and herd health. The DOW has already suffered from budget cuts and this will only make it worse.
What will happen when wolves show up here and we don't the funds and personnel to combat the problem.
As sportsmen i feel that we need to be heard. So contact Governor Hickenlooper and tell him this is not a good idea. There are other ways to save money and run more efficiently. Here is the link to tell him what you think. http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/GovHickenlooper/CBON/1249674240317
Thanks again for reading our blog! As always share us with your friends!
Westelk Team

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march 08, 2011 12:00am

Predator and Prey

We all become more alert when we run across a fresh lion track while we are out in the woods. We know that this is a very stealthy quiet effective killer so it makes us a bit uncomfortable to think that we are sharing the woods with this predator. Mt lions are very majestic and often the beauty of the animal makes people snarl at the thought of hunting these animals. People often think that there are few lions left because they don't see them. Well that is not true. We don't see lions because they hunt as the night falls and are often bedded up for the day before the sun comes up. What we do see of the lion are the remains of its successful night of hunting or a big padded foot print pushed into the snow or soft ground. This predator doesn't do any howling or barking it hunts quietly and often kills using the element of surprise. I am sure some of you have sat and watched a big buck and you thought long and hard about how you were going stalk close enough and how you were going to use the terrain to avoid detection. Well Mt lions are masters at that technique.
Most of us don't know of something called Predator-Meditated Competition. This is where a species like mule deer is brought to extremely low levels due to mt lions having a second prey species in the system. I just finished reading and article on Predator-Meditated Competition in the Muley Crazy Magazine. The article was written by Dr. Charles Kay. Very nice article.
Here is a paragraph from his article. In systems with a single predator and single prey, the predator cannot generally take the prey to extinction due to declining return rates that is the predators usually starve to death before they can find the last few prey. So while mountain lions, for example, can have a negative impact on mule deer the cats can only take the deer population so low before the lions begin to run out of food and increasingly turn to killing each other. But what happens when there is a second, alternative prey in a system? Counter intuitively, the additional prey species does not buffer, or reduce the predation pressure on the first prey animal. Instead, fueled by alternative prey, the predator takes the more vulnerable prey species to even lower levels. this called predator-meditated or apparent cometition, and where this occurs, habitat and habitat improvements are largely irrelevant, contrary to what most biologists would have you believe.
So after i read the whole article, which there was about three pages of great studies to back Dr. Kay's research, I began to think about some things that our Division of Wildlife Biologists do that i disagree with. In certain areas where there are bighorn sheep wintering ground the Division of Wildlife Biologists close these areas to lion hunters and houndsmen. There reasoning behind this is to not stress the sheep by having hounds running through the areas. In a few of these areas there is very high mortality due to lions killing the sheep. These lions also have elk in the area. So my first thought is sheep are obviously the weaker of the species and the elk provide a secondary species for the lions. With low lamb recruitment due to a number of factors the lions have been able to take some sheep herds to extremely low levels. To me this is a classic example of predator-meditated competition. In my opinion when you have a vulnerable species like sheep and the herd numbers are low you have to manage the predators.
Here is some Jerad research. Elk can move to different areas easily if predation is present, due to the fact that they forage on whatever is available. Sheep diet is different and they can only winter in certain areas forcing them to stay in an area even though predation is present.
Well sorry this was a long read. We have predation problems across the west and sportsmen need to be proactive in doing what they can. Wolves, Grizzlies, Mt lions Coyotes they all serve a purpose but they have to be managed. We need healthy herds and a balance of age, sex and maturity is necessary to have a healthy herd. Predators must be kept in check in order to have healthy herd.
Enjoy and please share us with your friends! Post a comment we would love to hear your thoughts!!
Jerad Cotten

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march 03, 2011 12:00am

Antler Growth

Antler growth is an amazing thing. To grow bone each year and shed and regrow it is just almost unbelievable. During the peak of the antler growth antlers can grow at a rate of half an inch per day. So as our deer and elk are shedding and preparing to regrow antlers it makes me wonder about nutrition and genetics and all the factors that need to be balanced to make that buck or bull grow into a B&C trophy. Well there is alot that needs to go right. The most important thing is a buck or bull has got to have the genetic capability to produce B&C antlers. If that is not there no matter the amount of nutrition intake and minerals that bull or buck will never be a trophy. Genetics are hard to pinpoint. What i mean is a buck could look like he has poor genetics when all that has happened is that buck had poor intake of the needed nutrition during antler growth. Stress is also a factor when it comes to antler growth. High stress levels like a rutting wound or hunting wound will cause a buck or bull to not produce antlers to their potential. Buck and bulls antler growth is last on the list when it comes to nutrition. The animal must first take care of its self and if there is nutrition left it will go toward antler growth. Body mass of an animal also contributes to antler growth. As antlers are being grown the animal can't take in enough nutrition and minerals so there body robs from the bone structure of the animal. Once the process is finished that animal must then replace what was taken from the bone in order to sustain health through the fall and winter. Maybe you have seen a buck one year and see him the next and he regressed. That deer may not have been able to replenish what it lost through the winter and previous year. Mule deer rely on what they store during the summer to help them sustain a long winter. When quality feed diminishes and snow covers it. Deer will not travel to try and find great feed during winter. They would burn valuable reserves in search of feed so they will feed on sage mostly. So nutrition and mineral intake year round are critical for animal health.

Supplemental feeding has been proven to help elk and deer health and antler growth.
Across the west it is illegal to supplement deer or elk so before you go putting out mineral and protein check with your local game and fish to see if it is legal or not. The above buck i watched change his antler configuration, His G2's dwindled down and he got a little inline and got wider. He was easy to see year to year as he had the small second throat patch. Well i hope you all enjoyed reading this and would love hear your thoughts on our blog topics. Happy hunting!
Jerad
Lori pointed out something that i missed. Thanks Lori. What i missed was age factor. Age plays a big part in antler growth as an animal ages there body mass increases and increases their bone structure which will help in antler growth. Mule deer and elk reach maturity generally at 5 and from 5-8 you can expect to see there best sets of antlers.
Jerad

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february 23, 2011 12:00am

Wildlife Management

So recently the discussion has come up about how our wildlife is managed across the state. I want to know what your thoughts are. Colorado has one of the lowest tag costs for the nonresident hunter. The state has made changes to bring back their deer herds and increase quality. With over the counter elk tags the state offers hunters a place to hunt elk each year but they also offer some quality hunts that you will have to accumulate preference points for. So do you like the way things are or would you change them and why??? What would you like to see done? Understand that the state budget is made off of tag sales so if you cut tag numbers drastically the budget will have to made up in other ways. Let us know your thoughts!
Jerad

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february 22, 2011 12:00am

Colorado Elk Hunting

Colorado has the most opportunity for the elk hunter. Most of Colorado is managed for quantity and not quality. There are some select areas that offer the trophy hunter a chance at a better bull. In the area that Westelk operates our elk herds are managed for numbers and not quality. So for the hunter who can not draw a trophy tag in other states we have an option to take them hunting each year. These hunts are alot of fun and are often done with a buddy or two. Cow tags have to be drawn unless there are leftover tags. Our archery, 2nd and 3rd season are all over the counter tags. The muzzle loader takes a few points to draw, but the first and fourth seasons can be drawn with 0 points. Take time to browse through our elk photos. We look forward to talking to you. We have a great lodge and great guides. If you book a hunt with us and have some buddies that book with you. Your hunt will be discounted. Please share us with your friends and follow us on facebook and twitter. Thanks!
Jerad

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february 17, 2011 12:00am

Wolf Information and Numbers

As sportsmen it is our duty to take action when needed to protect our rights as Americans and as sportsmen. A very deadly predator was illegally introduced and is now threatening elk herds across the west. The Historic elk herd of Yellowstone that decreased 24% in the last year has taken a huge hit from this excessive predation and sport killing by the wolves. The Yellowstone herd was sitting at 16,791 in 1995 when the so called wolf restoration project began. Today there are 4,635 elk. The wolves are mostly to blame but the Grizzlies have taken there toll on the calves in the spring.
Here are some numbers from Hunting Illustrated. In 2009 the net sails from wolf tags reached $423,000. The amount of residents that bought wolf tags was nearly 26,000. Wolf tags for residents were $11.75 in 2009. There were only 188 wolves killed during this season not even reaching the quota of 220. Success rate on the Idaho wolf hunt was 0.7%.
I am not totally against the wolf. But it is not a native wolf. And predators have to be managed an kept under control. Wolves kill 365 days of the year.
So i ask all you sportsmen to help take action to help preserve our hunting heritage for future generations. Become involved in conservation however you can. We have let things go too far as it is and freedoms have been taken from us that we should still have. (Hound hunting bear in Colorado, Lion Hunting in California) There are many more. Don't sit back and think it will fix its self cause it won't. If you need help knowing what you can do contact us we would be more than happy to help. Please feel free to post your thought on anything we discuss here at Westelk.
Thanks!
Jerad Cotten

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february 15, 2011 12:00am

Colorado Hunting Regs are out!

Well i hope everyone is having a great winter. Most of you should be receiving your 2011 hunting regulations in the mail by now if you have not received yours you can click on this link and download a copy or print a copy.
Drawing deadline is April 5th. The first inside page will tell you what has changed for the current year. If you are not ready to hunt this year it would be a good idea to at least put in for preference points for future hunting. Remember to involve a child in the outdoors as they are the future.
Jerad Cotten

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