Dave Myers couldn’t hold his horses. Didn’t even want to try. Not with archery season just around the corner.
Thus find the Broomfield resident, along with his stepbrother Cliff Rohlf and anyone else he can coax to sit a saddle, trailing a string of sometimes-cantankerous animals along a rocky trail in the foothills west of Golden on what amounts to a shakedown of the main event.
That much-anticipated occasion arrives Aug. 27, the beginning of a month-long celebration of fresh mountain air, companionship and the thrill of the stalk. There’s a special stirring among thousands of bowhunting enthusiasts who have been waiting 11 months for the calendar to flip to this most exciting time of the year.
Nothing in the grand panoply of Colorado outdoors stirs emotions quite so much as the opportunity to chase deer and elk with bow and arrow. Archers aren’t the most numerous members of the hunter tribe; approximately 34,000 bought tags to hunt elk in 2004, about 11,000 for deer – a small percentage of the throng who pursues big game with a rifle.
Doubtlessly, they are the most devoted. Perhaps it is the degree of skill and practice that successful bowhunting demands, or simply the exhilaration that comes with romping through the woods when the leaves are green, weather is agreeable and not many people are around.
Whatever the calling, it is enough to prompt hunters such as Myers and Rohlf to push 12 miles deep into the Weminuche Wilderness of southern Colorado on a dual search for solitude and elk.
“It’s more about just being out there than bagging an animal,” said Myers, a trophy hunter who, in several decades of bowhunting, has bagged his share. “Now I don’t care whether I shoot anything or not.”
Myers plans to stay out two weeks on this initial foray. If he doesn’t bag a big bull, he will return after the Sept. 10-18 muzzleloader season that splits the archery hunt.
“I really don’t like being up there with the muzzleloaders,” he said, echoing the sentiment of many archers. “It just doesn’t seem like a good mix – guns and people in camo suits.”
Certainly this dedication to archery is not driven by raw success. To achieve all the other benefits, archers sacrifice a certain amount of meat in the freezer.
Archers scored just 15 percent of the time for elk during the 2004 hunt, roughly 60 percent of the ratio for rifle hunters. For deer, the forfeit is much greater, 19 percent against 51 percent.
Despite a shorter season, muzzleloaders fare a bit better, 19 percent for elk, 31 percent for deer.
The good news for the coming season is that hunting should be at least as good for both deer and elk as it was in 2004, a season when Colorado hunters set overall records for deer and recorded the highest numbers for deer since the state turned exclusively to limited licenses in 1999.
“We should have outstanding deer hunting in virtually every unit on the Western Slope,” said Bruce Watkins, big-game coordinator with the Division of Wildlife.
Watkins cites the units in the Gunnison Basin as the go-to place for deer, ratifying a continuing success story of recovery in an area decimated by winter kill two decades ago.
With a ratio of at least 30 bucks per 100 does in virtually every unit west of the Continental Divide, Colorado boasts an increasing number of bucks in older age classes.
Watkins said that, despite continuing and somewhat successful efforts toward reducing the state’s overall elk population, the possibility exists that a record might be established for the second year in a row, given favorable weather conditions.
Listen to Charlie Meyers at 9 a.m. each Saturday on “The Fan Outdoors,” radio KKFN 950 AM. He can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
