Free: Contests & Raffles.
You would only get 3 days to hunt in the Hancock because they close down for elk a day before the elk season opens. The only way I would put in for that is if I drew the elk permit, draw coming soon and still almost 500 tags left. Shh!
We were in there last year with the blacktail raffle tag , Nov. 1-6 hunting the Bridge side . There were 5 guys hunting in there with the quality tag . The fact that you cannot hunt in there the entire season is why we won't put in for it . And I don't believe they will make exceptions , I called them to see if they would allow my wife to hunt in there with her raffle tag during the elk season being it is kind of like a OIL tag . They were very nice about it but the answer was no . We had cameras in there during the Modern elk season , when we pulled them all the buck pictures were between Nov. 8 - 12 , and we had quite a few different bucks .
Yes , we were able to hunt the day before the season opened and no we did not see any big bucks and talking to the guys in there with the quality tag they did not see any either . One hunter shot a 2 point on the 6th , and that was the biggest buck he had seen . We saw well over a hundred does in the 4 days we hunted and none of them had bucks with them. I just remembered that we could not hunt the 1st and 2nd because Hancock shut down for 2 days because of heavy rain . I think part of Rd. 1 washed out . We did have big bucks on our cameras but of course they came through after the 6th .
If you have any points built up I sure wouldn't waste them on a Quality Blacktail hunt.