Elk play high stakes – The Denver Post

LEADVILLE — From my perch on a slope beneath the western brow of the Mosquito Range, I can see seven peaks above 14,000 feet in elevation. But not one single elk.

It is a marvelous vista that includes Colorado’s three tallest — Elbert, Massive and Harvard — each with a rapidly shrinking drizzle of snow barely clinging from a week-old storm.

Mountains don’t move, but apparently most of the elk have, beating feet for higher ground to escape hunting pressure and, perhaps, unaccustomed heat. A chilly 18 degrees at daybreak is vaulting toward bikini weather, a balmy 63 degrees by midafternoon.

All the elk in the countryside soon will be shaded up in dense timber, provided they haven’t reached that destination

With the state’s highest peak over his shoulder, a hunter keeps a vigil in the upper Arkansas River drainage. (Photos by Charlie Meyers, The Denver Post )

already. A three-quarters moon that cast a night-light glow over the upper Arkansas River Valley allowed animals to graze by night, snooze by day, a practiced strategy when hunters are prowling about.

Absent nighttime cloud cover, deer and elk are free, by the light of the silvery moon, to set whatever schedule they choose. This second hunt period that began Saturday and ends next Sunday — most popular of four segments — thus far has not been blessed with what most might consider good hunting weather Full Story

Elk play high stakes – The Denver Post.