Dutton cow Elk

Bucksnbulls08 said:

Has anyone been finding cow elk on the Dutton cow hunts? Plenty of snow to push them down. I hope to get out there next weekend, after the storms pass.

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Up. Remember, this is the Dutton. They go up in the winter!

The Saturday after Christmas there was a ton of tracks in the snow on the low hills between the Cottonwood road and the Deer Creek road. I'm guessing there are elk in the area.

Thanks PBH. This morning I talked to a friend that was all over that country from Deer Cr. to Hunt, last Friday thru Monday and didn't even cut a track. Lots of glassing and no elk found, they went as high as they could get, which wasn't vey high. It does take a lot of snow to push them out of the high country. I thought there might be enough snow to do that.

IMO the elk have had the hammer dropped on them on the Dutton, Boulder, Monroe, and Fishlake the last few years because of pressure from local ranchers. Heck they just handed out dozens of depredation tags in the last couple weeks on top of the 350 tags good until January 31st. The elk got pushed off a little this year and man they've laid the hammer down on them. Good luck, I don't think there are near as many elk as these ranchers complain there are.

Deer, I think you are right about getting hammered. With the control permits being given out this year, there were far more spike hunters on the Dutton then I have ever seen with all the weapons. I talked to a lot of hunters that said the only reason they bought a spike tag and were on the Dutton, was to get the control permit. These elk have been run hard since August.

Bucksnbulls08 said:

Deer, I think you are right about getting hammered. With the control permits being given out this year, there were far more spike hunters on the Dutton then I have ever seen with all the weapons. I talked to a lot of hunters that said the only reason they bought a spike tag and were on the Dutton, was to get the control permit. These elk have been run hard since August.

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They definetly have, and many places on public land where the elk wintered, they are leaving due to this extremely late running hunt. Last year there was very little snow and they got pushed up. This year they added 200 additional tags and many of the elk have ended up in the valley which resulted in a lot of depredation tags over the last couple weeks. I really hope they fly these units this winter and get some accurate counts because there are no elk in a lot of areas that have always had elk until this year and with the snow this year they should be there. It's far past time to rollback on some of these cow tags in this state.

Bucksnbulls08 said:

Deer, I think you are right about getting hammered. With the control permits being given out this year, there were far more spike hunters on the Dutton then I have ever seen with all the weapons. I talked to a lot of hunters that said the only reason they bought a spike tag and were on the Dutton, was to get the control permit. These elk have been run hard since August.

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Welcome to the world of control permits....THEY SUCK IMO!

Watching what has happened with the Wasatch elk herd is sick.
Our DWR has their heads, --------------Well, You know.