NVMIKE

Charlie brown - I'm also from nevada and my wife had an 072 bull elk tag. What a ROYAL SCREW JOB that turned out to be. The Nev. Dept. of Wildlife(NDOW) does every unscrupilous, dirty, coniveing, underhanded, plain dishonest thing they can can to screw this rifle hunt up. A few years ago that area had 10-12 tags(rifle) and the archery guys went then the muzzle loader, then rifle one after the other. EVERYONE took a nice elk. Now NDOW cant have that going on!! Soo.. To make more money they sell 3X the tags(up to 28 rifle), but you cant take that many bulls out of the herd and the greedy ba**ards wont issue fewer tag(less money you know). They then have to make sure that the elk dont get shot(which means hunters get skunked). They move the season back a month(into serious snow season in that area). OOHH!! but thats not the end of it!! That month just happens to be the deer season in that area(deer hunters will scare those elk into idaho where they're safe you know). Still it doesn't end. they then put 90 cow tags out for that area w/ the season laying right in that month before bull season to shoot the hell out of those elk and really get them riled up. Then the bull elk season is almost here YIPPIE!! not so fast, the season opens on saturday. Tuesday before opening day a hunter from california sees a airplane buzzing the elk. He figures its the guides trying to push them back into the wilderness so he calls the NDOW office to report these no good SOBs. Well what do you know!! ... NDOW not only knows about the plane, but its actually them, they are "COUNTING" the elk. Yeah right , my acheing A$$. Out of 28 rifle tags I saw 13 of the elk taken none were big a three were decent(300BC) pathetic for the area. They(NDOW) have chosen certain areas to be sucessfull for certain hunts(ie. archery, muzzleloader, rifle), guess what? archery hunters have the lowest succes rate by far so most areas are set up to encourage you to apply for archery. Why? They can sell 20 tags and get 7 bulls harvested.Get it? more money fewer animals taken. Be very carefull when applying for bull tags in NV. Most big bulls are being taken by bow or muzzle loader. That alone tells you that NDOW is severely tampering w/ the hunts(archery and muzzle loaders shouldn't, no CANT match rifle hunters success w/ normal hunting circumstances. dont apply for any tags that dont have the season in late Sept. or EARLY Oct.(rut). As for road hunting that area, you can glass most of it from the roads and in the rifle hunt we had 12"+ snow, so unless you have snowshoes your hunting from foot is limited somewhat. Xeni - That road tactic may work for the first few days, but after that the will scram faster than ants running from raid. However it may be a good tactic to SPOT elk, depending on the terrain, but I doubt you'll shoot one from the road. If you can spot one this way, the advantage is to you since your partner wont walk, you simply get out hike to em then put the sneak on, you'll get first crack at em. Good luck