The Highs and Lows of CO

There were definitely times throughout this hunt, and I would say every hunt, when it is hard to stay positive and keep going. Things do not always go as planned. The bulls are not bugling, the weather is not ideal, and opportunities are few and far between. In reality, we were in some amazing country, meeting awesome people, and we were not at work. We definitely had moments in this hunt where it could have been easy to call it quits, but we stuck with it. Looking back, I am very happy with how hard we hunted. It is definitely no easy feat to hunt for 14 days, and even though the elk won this time we will definitely be back in the elk woods.

For this hunt I ran two different cameras. I had a Sony A7III as a photo specific camera and a Sony ZV E10 II as a video specific camera. Personally, I really liked this setup. I had each camera attached to the shoulder straps of my backpack, which made going back and forth super easy. The video camera had a 24 to 105 f4, which is one of my favorite lenses for video, especially for archery season. On the photo camera I switched primarily between a 20mm 2.8 and a 50mm 1.8. Both of these cameras were great for capturing the landscape as well as the fine details. Having a camera specific to photo and video made capturing the hunt extremely easy, especially with preset settings. This allows you to capture a photo or video shot without changing many settings.

Every hunt I do, I go in with the same mindset; high hopes, low expectations. This hunt exceeded expectations even though we didn’t harvest anything. In September 2025 I was lucky enough to follow Jake around the elk woods of Colorado for two weeks. The first thing I noticed was how steep and thick the terrain in the unit was. E scouting only goes so far, especially in an area that Jake and I had never been before. As hunters know, public land provides more opportunities and more access. That being said, the public land available to us for the hunt was extremely steep with heavily wooded sections. This added to the already challenging hunt. Before I arrived in Colorado, Jake had done some work to find a big herd with plenty of legal bulls. We initially focused on this area, trying to get their pattern down. Later in the hunt we ventured to different areas of the unit and found elk but always returned to the big herd. The initial herd also had very little pressure from other hunters. We had elk within twenty yards multiple times. We had a great bull come into fifteen yards but unfortunately he never broke the treeline with the opportunity for a shot.

Elk hunting is hard, but we definitely had some super cool moments throughout the hunt. We were able to meet some incredible locals who were very interested in our hunt and gave us some great information. It is these experiences that keep bringing me back to the mountains.