New Mexico outfitter offers guided elk hunts on 20,000 private acres

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Northeastern New Mexico is a productive area for elk hunting on private land, especially on ranches that border Vermejo Park. This outfitter has 12,000 acres bordering Vermejo and also gets a few tags to hunt 8,000 on Vermejo. Most bulls killed on this hunt score 250 to 350 B&C with an occasional bigger bull. Five or six bulls in the 340 to 357 range were taken in 2008. His hunter success has been more than 90 percent in the past three years.

Five-day guided hunts start on Saturdays and include ranch house accommodations and one guide per pair of hunters. Hunts generally start in early October and run into January. You'll fly into Amarillo, Albuquerque or Colorado Springs, where can rent a car for the drive to the ranch.

We've had several customers on this hunt, and they're generally happy because most see a good number of bulls.

"We've been doing really well on this hunt," the outfitter said. "The early October hunts usually book first, even though they're a bit more expensive, but we've done well on the hunts in the last half of October as well as on our late hunts. I usually do one hunt in December, sometimes two, depending on how many bulls we have killed in October. I don't overhunt the elk. The game department gives us 50 permits, but we usually use no more than 35 of them. I have a group of six hunters who have taken the late hunt for the past three years, and they have been 100 percent and have got some really big bulls, too. The late elk hunt can be really good if we get any kind of weather. We like bowhunters because they get to hunt during the rut. Whatever bowhunters we book, then we book that many fewer rifle hunters."