I?m sure you have all had the winter hunting conversation with yourself this time of year. Mine has been focused on hunting the wilderness over east for elk. We archery hunt over east and the unit(s) we hunt primarily have a mix of wilderness areas. I have no problem getting off trail, but never seem to spend time hunting the wilderness areas. For those of you that have spent significant time in the wilderness areas, and day hunt from your camp, what have been some of the challenges and benefits you have experienced? I know bivy hunting is an option, but I don?t think that would be the desired direction for us to go. Can we effectively hunt these areas on foot for the day? My concern is without bivy hunting, it may be hard to get in deep enough to effectively hunt when you are making a daily round trip. I?m hoping to get some feedback, as even with spending significant time in the woods and getting away from the roads, the wilderness areas may bring hold some advantages and new challenges. I appreciate the feedback and is it September yet???

One limitation I see for this type of hunt is your willingness to hike in/out in the dark. This makes for short nights but in many cases in order to effectively day hunt deep in the wilderness and stay in a comfortable camp back at the main road this is necessary otherwise you will rarely scratch the surface of what is available to hunt.

 

In years past I have done a little archery hunting in the North Fork John Day wilderness with some success for elk. I have friends that continue to hunt that area and they keep horses handy to get the game out quick due to the warm weather. I have harvested cow elk years ago on day hunts coming in from the south side (desolation unit) and hunting the tops, not dropping into the main drainage. Some folks hunt up from the bottom at the end of the road and still others hunt from the north side, silver butte area. Day hunts are doable but having plenty of help or horses are handy for quick retrieval. Good luck with whatever wilderness you hunt.

 

I hunt wilderness areas exclusively for deer and elk and have for over 25 years. I rifle hunt so my days are shorter than archery and weather worse. The advantage is the wilderness solitude. No maintained trails, no signs, no cel service, no people. Very quiet and undisturbed is your reward. Have to be self contained, be prepared to spend the night if you have to, and not screw up as the consequences can be severe.

I hunt by myself but usually camp with one to three other guys. Get up before daylight and walk in by flashlight a mile or two so I am at my spot at daybreak. Hunt hard all day. When you kill a critter it is butchered on the spot. I used to hunt until dark, getting to a known spot before dark and hiking out by flashlight but anymore we try and make it back to camp with an hour of daylight to spare. Evening hunts don't give you enough time to track and dress a critter and a slight miscalculation or delay can mean having to spend the night. Nice to know everyone is back safe and you can hunt tomorrow rather than search for a missing hunting partner. Forty years of big game hunting I have a dozen stories about lost hunters and their rescue or overnight experience. Plus that last hour of daylight in camp is cocktail hour and swapping lies about the day's experiences.

I have friends who archery hunt the wilderness and some of them carry full bivvy packs and follow the herd. That works for archery as it is nice weather and longer days than rifle season. Lots to be said about that, you can really cover ground and be there when the critters are active but I like returning to camp where I have ice in my drink and steak on the grill.

One last piece of advice. Just because it is wilderness does not mean killing is better. There are usually more critters on the edge of agricultural areas. But there are way more hunters there also. Once you hike 100 yards off the road the human footprints disappear. The wilderness hunt is a way better experience for me but I measure success in the hunt, not the kill.

 

I have hunted the Eagle caps a few times with success and it was awesome. Best elk hunting I've ever had, until last year with the wolves. All I can say is I won't be back. You can't compete with wolves. They push the elk mountain passes away and I don't think you could even catch them with horses.

 

It seems like everyone in general has the same idea...wilderness , get away from everyone, better hunting. Then you end up with really crowded trail heads and lots of people hunting close to each other. I would say it really depends on how far you go in and more specifically how far from a trail...

 

It seems like everyone in general has the same idea...wilderness , get away from everyone, better hunting. Then you end up with really crowded trail heads and lots of people hunting close to each other. I would say it really depends on how far you go in and more specifically how far from a trail...

So true. I blame Cameron Hanes for the increased popularity with Wilderness hunting. assout:

 

Don't know about rifle, but with archery, I've noticed a lot more hunting camps and pressure along the edge in some Wilderness locations. Of course, this isn't all Wilderness areas in Oregon, just some very popular ones.

And then there's outfitters that setup huge camps during archery with multiple large cabin tents, corrals and horses.

From what I've seen over the recent years, hunting in the Wilderness has gotten very popular during archery, so much so, that the numbers of camps reminds me of rifle hunts from years past.

Back to the OP's questions....... camping along the edge and making hunting trips in and out of the Wilderness is doable, and done every year. Just be prepared to spend a lot more time walking back and forth. I believe it does waste a lot more energy, since many trips start and end in the dark, so you're just covering ground and not hunting. We've done this for years, were I would often cover 15+ miles a day. On some days, I would be into elk right up to dark, then turn around and hike down and up canyons for 4 miles back to camp.

One trip into the Eagle Cap, I was 8 miles from the trail head and watching a small heard of elk with a nice bull in late afternoon. Even though I wanted to pursue the bull, I was torn with a desire to start heading out to navigate some steep rough terrain in daylight.

So a lot of camps are setup along the Wilderness edge every hunting season where people move back and forth. Even though it's not the most efficient method to hunt Wilderness, it can be done, and not all animals are inside the wilderness anyway.

 

Once you enter the wilderness there's an elk behind every tree. Finding elk can be much more physically challenging. Changing where you hunt once you are in there can take a lot of effort. I'd suggest getting to know areas from a camp that you drive to and can hike out from daily. After you have a better idea where you'd like to spend more time or go deeper than consider the pack in approach


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

First thing I should know, I am a new hunter. This past season was my first bow hunting deer and elk....

I hunted elk almost exclusively in southern oregon wilderness areas and I saw none, not a single elk..ever(I did see the largest black bear I have ever seen... three times though). I did get into areas of good sign but I never saw the elk that went with them. The one bull I got on my trail cam was a funky little spike(still would have killed him given the chance). I hunted the edge and also backpacked in, spending several nights in the middle of wilderness areas with zero success and not really any increase in sign seen.

The last day of season, I decided to go after a deer I kept seeing on my drive up to the wilderness. I was maybe 1/2 mile from the highway and I ran into the freshest elk sign I had seen all season. Fresh rub, stunk like crazy, fresh poop and beds..my guess from the day/night before.

So in summary, just because you get far away from everybody doesn't mean the animals are plentiful.

 

:yeahthat:
I have had similar experiences with deer and elk trying to get far behind closed gates away from other people.

 

whether you are in the wilderness or not the key is understanding the behavior of your prey. In warm weather find cooler north facing slopes with the best cover and access to water and you up your chances of finding elk during archery season. Fresh logging activity or nearby agricultural crops can also attract elk. The biggest advantage to hunting deep in a wilderness or on private lands is in getting away from some of the competition. To experienced hunters this is captain obvious stuff but it may help the folks new to the sport.

 

Thanks for all the great feedback. I realize going deeper doesn't always mean more animals. I was just curios on day hunts. The bull I saw this year was driving back out from a big hike,so go figure.

 

I have hunted Wilderness areas off and on for years and have had a mixed bag of success in getting bulls. It was not for finding them that was never the problem. We many times just set up a base camp close to the trailhead and then would get up early and head on down the trail in the dark and end up walking right by bulls that were close to the road, in the process of trying to get farther in and quicker than anyone else. With this method we had a lot of very long days with lots of walking. I was one of those guys who stayed way back in until dark and then walked out back to the camp at the road. This often had me coming into camp after 10:00 most nights and sometimes at midnight depending on just how far I went in.

Now that we are older we like to spike camp in a few miles and hunt from there. Sometimes hunting pressure is really strong so you must learn your area enough to understand what the elk will do when so many are out wandering their habitat. I have found that the elk will sometimes be very close the the road just look for the thickest reprod and that is where they will go at first light and not come out until dark. I have called in many bulls while in my sleeping bag in the tent close to the main roads with other camps close by. We even had a big 6 pt that I got talking early one morning that I almost got in the trail head parking lot but unfortunately some other hunters drove into the parking lot just as it was getting light and missed that great opportunity.

This year I was in so many nice bulls I couldn't believe it and never ran into another hunter in this spot. The reason is it was difficult to get into for most hunters and this ended up being a spot big bulls loved to hide out in. It was amazing because there were camps very close to ours and they all packed up and left mid week because they could not find elk and the elk were right in front of their face. They just did not understand elk behavior and because of that they thought there were no elk around and the opposite was the truth. We had a great hunt and both of us should have taken a nice bull.

I just over shot one of the six points I came across by just messing the shot up. There were more tree rubs in this area than I have ever seen before it was just unreal the no. of trees they killed.

As with any place you hunt a small part of the habitat at times holds the elk if you learn how to recognise those spots you will always be in elk.

 

I've hunted the wilderness's Oregon has to offer for many years now, some out of camp, others out of a backpack.

The biggest issue when talking about this subject is a double edge sword in most cases. 1. time, 2. weather.

So a guy can be in great shape and hike 20 miles a day with a load on his back... but if your 6 miles in, @ 90F down a nasty canyon with a nice bull... I hope you got some help or the ability to get some, because if not something is going to get wasted... whether that is the meat or you is really up for debate.

Conversely if your say 4 miles in @ 0F down a nasty canyon with 2+ft of snow... now it becomes a matter of safety / fatigue.

Y'all say what you want but being in both situations in my life previously you can very easily dance with fate, especially if you aren't super familiar with the area, ill prepared, or overconfident.
By the 3rd trip regardless of the time of year still sucks.
Nowadays if I plan on going deep into the dark, I don't go alone.
Sure I will hunt alone but if I'm living out of a pack for a few days my buddy is as well.

I've also like others have had success right next to the road before. So you really don't NEED to hike 10+ miles in for good hunting. I found good hunting this year down some nifty draws which lead to old landings / skid roads.

 

Most of my boot tracks in wilderness areas were laid down in hopes of finding a nice buck, rather than a bull. At age 66, even handling a good buck back in a wilderness is a challenge. Lets be honest here, at age 66, just dragging my tired butt out of the wilderness empty handed can be a challenge, but there is something about the term wilderness that creates images in my head of hunting pristine country in solitude while being surrounded by animals that have seen few, if any, people all summer long. That image in my head has kept me hunting wilderness areas for 25 years, and I have found a few times when the experience came close to matching my dream, but looking at the number of vehicles parked at the trailhead tells me those visions in my head are not exactly original thoughts. Everyone wants a wilderness buck or bull, so you have to be mentally prepared to have so much company that you would have been better off staying out, and you need to scout ahead of time to be sure the hunting is not better outside the wilderness. The very first time I backpacked into a wilderness, I was with a friend and we were excited that we would be spending a week-end buck hunting a few miles in. We were young and inexperienced, our packs were heavy, and we were exhausted by the time we got to our destination, but we had to face the truth; there was a lot more sign outside the wilderness than inside the wilderness. We didn't even unload our packs; we just turned around and hiked back out. My friend killed a buck that evening and I got mine the following morning. Do your scouting. Ron

 

It's taken me a very long time and lots of miles on my boots to fine my spot in the wilderness. Not much of it holds elk where I go but some little pockets are awesome. You don't have to get 20 miles in, well in Oregon there aren't many places you can. I hunt the Cascade wilderness areas, usually less that 5 miles from the truck. I hunt alone and hike in early and am usually out by 3:00. I typically have cell service and help on standby. I love it up there deadfall and all.

 

Finding the pockets in wilderness that hold elk can be tough. I have found the majority looks like this and is almost completely barren of sign/tracks...

 

If you are spending most of your time in areas that look like that then the odds of getting into elk go way down. Elk are big eaters so you need to be focussing on areas that have a lot of feed if you are looking for any kind of decent elk density. Do most of your search first on Google Earth and other map sources before even putting a foot on the ground.

I have not spent anytime hunting those southern oregon Wilderness areas but my guess is elk density just is not that high down there. If there is much better food sources outside the wilderness then the elk will be there until they are pressured to go where human activity it least and still have some sort of food source. Once you really learn elk habits you can pretty much look at a contour map and with google earth circle spots that will hold elk every time you go look. I believe you would be better off going to some of the eastern oregon wilderness areas if that is the type of hunting you want to do. You will have a much better chance of seeing or hearing elk every day and will be able to increase your knowledge of hunting these magnificent animals immensely just by being around them and going thru the learning curve of trying to call them in or just stalking them.

As Timber Hunter showed find an area with lots of fresh and old rubs from previous years and you know you are in a spot the elk like to be during bow season. Have fun and good luck.

 

I look for these.

 

That is what I was looking for as well. Seemed to me that the elk were active at night then would vanish during the day. I put in a lot of miles trying to find them with no luck. I fully admit though that my lack of experience most likely had a HUGE part to play... :/

 

Not wanting to hijack this thread so I will say that you are completely right. When I came across areas like this last season, I pretty much turned around and went back to where I had come from. It was impossible to move without making tons of noise and there just wasn't anything around, not even squirrels.

I did do a lot of scouting on google earth and did seem to find areas that had animals, just not when I was around it seemed. There aren't a ton of areas around here that have water so finding the water was a safe bet and always led to seeing sign. Also, everybody I talk to says the elk down here very rarely bugle and are nearly impossible to call in.. :/

Like you suggested, I have been spending a lot of time on google maps looking around the central/north east side of the state. I'm hoping to get a solid week off of work this year to head up there. Looking at the harvest numbers, there just isn't a lot of animals down this way so unless you REALLY know an area well and know where elk are, the chances are very low.

 

Wilderness hunting is for the most part, awesome!! But this fall we had our eyes opened by the effect and shear numbers of wolves. Still can't believe the effect quite yet and it changed things.. Hope we can adjust.
Hunted since I was 12 in that area and now am 53. Still dumbfounded!!

 

You bring an intesting point on wolves. I posted before about the wolf action in Desolation. This is going to really hurt both animal populations and hunting if something isn't done. I believe ODFW is way understating the wolf population. We did a little night bugling this year from the road and the only response was a pack of wolves. This was a huge shock and a eye opener.

 

I have a friend of mine, shared a similar story about desolation this year as well.

He also shared the elk numbers seemed down compared to previous years.

 

One thing I will add, I don't spend a lot of time in an area without sign. I will also let out a bugle every so often to try to locate them. I very rarely get a response but when I do it's about a 99% chance it's a bull not another hunter. An average day for me is about 7-10 miles on the boots and I have way more days without elk than with. The days with more than make up for the days without.

 

That is a nice bull!

 

That is a seriously nice bull!!! Wow!

 

I backpack hunt with my girlfriend for archery elk. Not just to be in wilderness, more to be as far from roads as I can get. With that being said the further into the wilderness or away from the roads you get, the further the Elk needs to be packed out if you are successful. So if you want to hike a ways in to hunt, have a plan to hike an elk out before it spoils in the possible warm weather of September. I know this seems basic but trust me on this. If you are alone I wouldn't suggest getting to far back. If you have access to mules or a few friends with pack frames then go for it.

 

As the last few posters have said if you get too far back in the Wilderness and are hunting solo you have your work cut out for you. I try and limit my distance to about 3 miles now if I'm hunting alone and even if I was young I would not attempt anymore than a 4 mile pack out even if you were in the greatest of shapes. You need at least one other person if at all possible to get the job done in a reasonable amount of time before the meat will spoil. Again the weather will play a huge factor in that but usually the weather is warm and you need to get the meat out in 24 hours or less before OR you will start loosing meat or quality.

You need to plan on packing all night if necessary to get your meat out especially if you are alone. Also no need to be a hero by loading way too much meat in your pack. You are better off going lighter and not trashing your body on the first pack. Also you want to make sure you have some carbon fiber treking poles with you they will help greatly on your pack out they weigh next to nothing and can be in your hunting pack with you at all times.