Want to hunt elk every year in Colorado without having to draw a tag?
Residents and Non-residents can buy Elk Licenses Over-the-Counter (OTC) in many GMUs in Colorado (Table 1).
There are two OTC archery hunts, an Either-Sex and an Antlerless hunt (same dates) and three OTC rifle seasons; 2nd Rifle Season, 3rd Rifle Season and a Plains Rifle Season in eastern Colorado.
Hunters with OTC Either-sex Archery tags can hunt in 137 of Colorado’s 184 elk units (Game Management Units – GMU’s).
Table 1. Over-the-Counter Elk Tags Available to Non-residents in Colorado for 2022 (not available yet)
Season Sex GMUs Public 2021 Season* Reference Map OTC Elk Archery Either Sex 134 Sep 2 – Sep 30 Map 1 West; Map 2 East OTC Elk Archery Antlerless 51 Sep 2 – Sep 30 Map 3 OTC 2nd Rifle Antlered 93 Oct 30 – Nov 7 Map 4 OTC 3nd Rifle Antlered 93 Nov 13 – Nov 19 OTC Plains Rifle Either Sex 53 Sep 2 – Jan 31 (2022) Map 5
* Dates finalized by mid of February every year, dates are correct for 2021 now.
2022 Colorado Hunting License Fees
Non-resident elk tags includes a fishing license and the cost for Non-residents in 2022 is $670.25 for Bull Elk (Antlered) or Either Sex Elk tags and $503.12 for cow/calf (Antlerless). The cost for Non-resident Youth tag is $102.78. Plus everyone 18 – 64 also has to buy a $10.40 habitat stamp.
For Colorado residents, elk tags do not include a small game hunting or fishing license. The cost for small game license is $50.37 and the cost is $30.11 for Bull Elk (Antlered), Either Sex Elk tags or for cow/calf (Antlerless). The cost for Resident Youth tag is $1.26 for small game and $15.68 for elk tags. Residents aged 18 – 64 also need a $10.13 habitat stamp.
These OTC tags go on sale on Aug. 6 this year (2021). These licenses are unlimited on public land, but most private land tags are limited.
Hunt many GMUs in Colorado with OTC Elk Tags
In the past, there has been some confusion about how many units could be hunted with the OTC tags in Colorado.
You can choose any GMU that allows the type of hunt you want and you can hunt in all GMUs.
For example (see Map 1 or Map 3), you could hunt in GMU 72 one day in southern Colorado, then drive all the way to the northern part of the state and hunt GMU 3 the next day.
You will have to decide on only one of the six OTC hunts (three Archery, three Rifle) in Table 1.
You can also try to draw additional antlerless or either-sex tags or buy left-over tags, but you can only hunt with one OTC license.
Historically, just over a half of all elk hunters in Colorado take over a quarter of all elk with OTC tags. The latest available harvest data (2019) is shown in Table 2.
As with most General or OTC Elk tags, hunter success with OTC tags is lower than Limited Tags.
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Table 2. 2020 OTC Colorado Elk Harvest and Hunting Success by Season
Season Total Elk Total Hunters Success Days per Harvest All OTC Rifle combined 14,341 88,685 16.1% 28.0 OTC 2nd Rifle 7,951 49,521 16.1% 29.1 OTC 3rd Rifle 6,390 39,434 16.2% 26.7 All Archery 5,366 53,426 10.0% 71.2
More elk are harvested every year in Colorado than any other state (read post on harvest comparison), but Colorado also has the most elk hunters.
Lots of non-resident hunters choose to hunt Colorado because it has the most elk, but also because it is the closest state to many hunters in the east and the mid-west.
Hunter success seems very low both rifle seasons, but keep in mind that many people also hunt with Limited Antlerless tags at the same time or during other seasons.
How Colorado OTC Harvest Data Derived
In previous years, I used to take the time and tried to separate out data for just the OTC GMUs in Table 1, This was difficult because those data are not reported directly by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
My ultimate goal for analyzing OTC and General Season harvest data is to be able to compare harvest, success, elk density and hunter density between different GMUs in different states. Some of the states make it easy to see only the general season harvest data, but others don’t. Colorado is one of the states that doesn’t.
It is easy to compare total harvest to total harvest, but we need the data separated because there are big differences between OTC Bull Only and Limited Bull or Limited Cow hunts. There is very little value in comparing apples to oranges.
CPW reports the combined Limited and OTC archery hunt data. But only one unit (851) has both Limited Entry and OTC archery hunts (and those hunts are separated by OTC hunts being off the State Wildlife Area and the Limited Entry units are on the SWA), so there is no overlap in space (GMUs) between OTC or Limited Archery hunts.
So the OTC Archery data could be separated by simply adding the data from all units with OTC tags. If we wanted to see just the Limited Archery data, we could then subtract that OTC data from the total Archery data.
There is a question of what to do about the private land only OTC units (4, 5, 12, 23, 24, 32, 33 and 441).
Since most first-time DIY elk hunters and non-resident hunters usually hunt on public land, I omit these units from the data in Table 1 and these units are not shown on Maps 1 or 3.
As for the rifle seasons, the OTC rifle tags are good for the 2nd or 3rd rifle seasons. Again, there is no overlap in space with any of the Limited Bull (Antlered) hunt during the same times, but there are many Limited Antlerless (cow/calf elk) hunts going on during both seasons.
CPW reports harvest data for all 2nd and 3rd rifle seasons and they also report harvest data for all 2nd and 3rd antlerless rifle seasons, so if the Antlerless data (per unit) is subtracted from the total data, that should leave only the OTC rifle harvest data.
But there are problems with that method since there are 68 hunts (antlerless or either sex) that overlap either the 2nd OTC rifle season or both the 2nd and 3rd OTC seasons that are not included with either the 2nd or 3rd antlerless rifle season data. Out of those 68 hunts, 57 are on private land only tags, so they could be omitted, but that still leaves data for 11 cow elk hunts that are still included with the OTC data.
So lots of effort to get imperfect harvest data.
So I decided to simply take all harvest from the 2nd and 3rd rifle seasons and simply remove all data from units that were not have OTC tags.
So the data is for the OTC units during the 2nd and 3rd rifle season, but includes antlerless hunters and their harvests.
The question about hunting effort is basically: How many days did you hunt?
So hunting only an hour vs. hiking and hunting hard all day long are both considered an equal day of hunting (not to mention everyone’s memory is not perfect).
Another problem with harvest data in Colorado is it estimated for herd units (Data Analysis Units – DAUs) and not by hunt units, by hunt seasons or by hunt codes (though it could be if CPW made it a priority).
So my attempts to get at the truth using imperfect data were not be perfect, but I hoped they were close enough to compare oranges to oranges (or to General Seasons in Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming), but I am beginning to think none of these states want that to happen.
This has gotten into more detail than I wanted, but since this data is not available anywhere else I wanted to explain how it was derived.
The OTC plains rifle season harvest data is not reported separately and I do not know how to tease that data from the tables as reported, so those hunters and harvests are not part of the All OTC Combined harvest.
Colorado Over-the-Counter Hunt Unit Maps
In all of the map images (Maps 1-5), I superimposed public land on top of the Colorado elk units that have OTC tags available for both resident and non-resident hunters.
The maps show which units have OTC elk tags and the relative amount of public land in the various hunt units.
Obviously, you will need more detailed maps before you can hunt, but these maps show which units are available for each type of tag and where to find the most public land.
Example: Most out of state hunters will probably want to hunt in western Colorado since there is less public land in eastern Colorado (compare Maps 1 and 3 to Maps 2 and 5).
For OTC Antlerless and Either-sex Archery tags are also valid in on private land only units 4, 5, 12, 23, 24, 33 and 441. Unit 32 is also valid with an Either-sex Archery tag.
I only included units that allow hunting on public and/or private lands. Private land only units are left out.
Hunting on Colorado State Trust Lands
In Colorado, only some of the State Trust Lands are open to public hunting as opposed to most other western states where most state lands are open to hunting.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife obtained access to 550,000 acres (State Trust Lands in Colorado totals nearly 3,000,000 acres) by leasing the land. The land can be accessed between Sept. 1 through Feb. for hunting.
It is a shame that the other 2.4 million acres of State Lands in Colorado are not open for public hunting as most State Trust Lands are in other States like Arizona, New Mexico, Montana and Montana (with permit) or Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming (without permit).
State Trust lands occupy the 16th and 36 section of many townships in Colorado, but you can not hunt on most of those sections. Each section is one square mile, which is 640 acres.
Colorado Hunting Maps & Hunting Accessories
Federal Public Land in Colorado
There are still plenty of public lands to hunt in Colorado. There are over 14,5 million acres of US Forest Service lands and 8.3 million acres of BLM lands. Including the State Trust Lands that are open to hunting, that totals over 22.8 million acres of public land which is about 34 percent of the entire state which is available for public hunting.
Elk Habitat and Colorado Ecoregions
If you know anything about Colorado, Interstate 25 runs down the Front Range of the Rockies and divides the state with about two-thirds in the west and one-third of the state in the east.
The western part of Colorado is primarily mountainous and is mostly in the Southern Rockies and Colorado Plateau ecoregions, but also includes part of the Wyoming Basin in the northwest and and the Arizona/New Mexico Plateau in the south.
The ecoregions found in Eastern Colorado are the High Plains (north-east) Southwestern Tablelands (south-east).
Elk primarily live in the mountainous parts of the Southern Rockies and Colorado Plateau, so 41 of the 43 DAUs are in the western part of the state and only two DAUs are in east of the front range.
