Book and Website
Objectives
Colorado Elk Hunting - Where You Hunt a Mile
above the Rest - And Certainly Closer to
Heaven!
Our Goal: To give back to the future generations
of hunters what we so greatly enjoyed:
It took a lifetime to observe elk in the wilderness.
We have decided to pass on our "tricks of the
trade" for new hunters, since it would be heartless
to take our knowledge to the grave. It is time to
give back the hunting joys we experienced.
I want people to look back on their lives and say
that they were extremely successful in living. I wish
they reap the many riches we accumulated, most
of which cannot be bought. Chasing meaningless
wealth may prove to be an empty objective
compared to the riches that life offers. It is time to
pass on our philosophy and hunting legacy to a
younger generation to enjoy.
I hope that this site will inspire hunters to leave the
tedium of vehicle hunting and stretch into
wilderness hunting. I hope that will be families like
mine, who can bond in unforgettable experiences.
This they can do if they are prepared and
comfortable enough to enjoy the solitude and
beauty.
May readers be able to look back on a long life and
say as we can, “I would live my life over again, every
wonderful outdoor second of it!”
Enticing New and Younger Hunters in the Field:
Hunting remote, high altitude areas for elk, deer
and bear hunting requires a lot of preparation,
outdoors experience, endurance, and self-
confidence. We have witnessed many hunters
leaving the wilderness because they came
unprepared and with the wrong equipment. Many
elk hunting books focus on tactics for scouting,
tracking and harvesting elk. Unfortunately, many
articles are focused just on the moments of kill.
Few offer a complete, practical field guide to
remote wilderness hunting, especially hunting at
high altitudes. I saw this discrepancy and decided
to write the basics from vehicle preparation, to
altitude hazards, and to elk and animal behaviors.
The successful hunter applies all his knowledge of
nature. The literature fails to disclose the many
facets of the hunt, which results in success. There
are "tricks of the trade" not mentioned in typical
magazine articles. Our family consistently found
and harvested elk and deer. I would love to hear
from you in a year or two that your family decided
to get into the back country, and that you had been
successful and happy with the endeavor. May you
and your family also prosper in hunting memories,
which can be much sweeter than the meat!
Preparing Hunters for High Altitude Hunting
Success:
I wrote this book
especially for
neophyte high
altitude hunters
based on what I've
witnessed in over
four decades
hunting up there. Hunters at 8,000 to 12,000 feet
altitude are often not mentally optimally “crisp".
They fail to realize that oxygen deficiency subtly
befuddles their minds and makes them less
conscious of details of their surroundings. They can
miss subtle but
important clues that
portend game
presence.
Unfortunately, we
witnessed out-of-
state hunters spend
small fortunes on what they expect will be a
lifetime hunt, only to go home tired, discouraged
and without game. Like John Prine sings, "old Joe is
often seven miles from where he is at". Or in bar
speak, "two drinks does not affect my
consciousness.”
Everything in magazine articles is made to seem so
effortless and easy, until you go on the internet
blogs and see the disappointments and misery
many hunters had. Sometimes I see general "check
lists" provided by guides, but rarely do they give
important details that only experience provides.
Much of the hunting magazine and book literature
does not seen to be up to date with new research
findings. No hunter should ever stop learning.
Exposing New Animal Behavior and Hunting
Science:
A final website objective is to add addenda articles.
So much new science is being discovered. The
precious experiences and wonders of elk hunting
should be shared. Maybe I can influence some
others to hunt successfully as we have. That means
having an easy, enjoyable, safe experience
resulting with bringing prime, healthy, delicious
meat on the table. And precious cascade of
memories!
Encouraging Honourable, Ethical, Fair Chase
Hunting, not Sick Sport Shooting:
A final objective of this website and to correct the
often misperceptions the public has of hunters.
Constant television and movie violence involving
firearms bombards us. Excessive pressure
advertising for high tech arms, ATVs and brutish
trucks further sours public opinions about hunting.
Hunting magazines feature page after page of gory
kill photographs and bragging hunter stories
detailing the killing aspect of a hunt. Smiling,
insensitive hunters display the "slaughtered" (as
the public see it) prey for self-glorification on
vehicles and in parking lots.
Now there is a new entry for unethical hunting -
computer gun sights that make all compensations
and guide the bullet to the animal. Teddy Roosevelt
refused to shoot the tied bear, but gun
manufacturers fixated on profits are “marching for
money, reasoning "what does it matter how the
animal dies?" Then there are the rednecks of the
“1,000 Yard Plus Club” which uses a mega gun with
three operators to blast animals over half a mile
away with large bullets. That certainly is group
hunting. For legitimate sport shooters, a cardboard
target would provide the same technical
satisfaction as crippling or gut-blasting an
unsuspecting animal. That is not fair chase
hunting! Some mega-buck sickies sit on their asses
in New York even use computer-controlled guns on
Texas game farms to kill animals. PETA and other
animal rights organizations use these observations
to easily disparage and lobby against the
historically legitimate and humane hunting. The
result is that the public has come to conceive (and
believe) hunting as a macho, wild-west buffalo
shoot, the-animals-have-no-defense, that hunting
is an unrestrained killing orgy. We humans can
strive to do better than that!
Packing into the Flat Tops for October elk
hunt, 1979
( Secret high country fish lake we built 1976-1979)
© 2016 -2021 Copyright by P. K. H. Groth, Denver, Colorado, USA All rights reserved -
See contact page for for permission to republish article excerpts.