601 or 618? Typo!

[jmscon]

This will be the first time hunting elk on the wet side and I don't think I'll be able to make it out until the late season. Looking at these two areas, any recommendations? One better than the other?

[jmscon]

Looks like there are only two or three ways into 518 by road.
Doh! Meant 618! Typo!

[jmscon]

Meant 601 or 618!

I don't have any time to go scout so any advice would be much appreciated!

[jmscon]

I guess no one hints there?! Right on, that means I'll be all by myself in the rain.

[JimmyHoffa]

Both nice areas but they are 3 pt bull.  601 is mostly private land.  It has a good amount of logging and also can be quite swampy in areas.  A bicycle helps you cover lots of ground.  Nearest place to reload for food and gas is in Clallam Bay/Sekiu and I think  most close down not long after dark.  Tribe hunts that unit pretty good and they can take spikes and even a few cows get shot.
618 is mostly forest circus land, but there's a section in between FS, rez and national park (Queets River) that is DNR.  It has some logging in the DNR stretch as well as a few gates and roads.  The FS part has little logging and little road repair, also very steep.  There are some gated FS roads, but they get pretty overgrown and if trying a decommissioned road---worse than just busting brush.  The weather can get bad in there in a hurry, lots of old growth in parts that comes down in high winds.  I've seen days where it rained about an inch an hour and the rivers come up fast.  It is high enough to get a little snow, but does get ice.  The ground is really crunchy with all the frozen alder leaves.  Nearest store is Queets Trading Post.  When the weather would get really, really bad I used to go camp over to the DNR part where trees aren't falling as much. 
Both those areas seemed to take a beating when the rule was changed to allow bowhunters to hunt with muzzie tags, number of hunters went way up.  This year those areas are probably going to take a real beating by the rifle hunters, a few camps I know of are moving to those two units because they are the only ones that don't have an early muzzle loader season.

[jmscon]

Thanks for the info!

The weather is my biggest concern for that time of year. 12' of rain a year and a large percentage falls in Nov/Dec and plenty of wind.

Are you saying multi season guys or bow hunters buying muzzle tags?

[JimmyHoffa]

For 618 weather was a concern for me too back then, partly because when it was only muzzleloaders for muzzleloader tags I didn't see/hear anyone else out there during weekdays.  Figured it would take me a while to cut my way out.  Enough people now that you could probably be out in a couple days.  But that was for the FS land, the DNR land was mostly okay.  Back in I think it was 2007 there was a windstorm which pretty much cut off a lot of the area for a bit, many of the trees especially the really big ones on the ground fell then.  And the rivers in that unit get blown out fast.
601 didn't have the same level of weather concern, there are landslides that go across highway 112 but those are more towards neah bay and would only cut off a small part of the GMU.  The other road out to the national park is kept clear by county and park to get all the hikers out to the beach loop for winter hikes.  Issue with 601 is you'll need to get maps or coordinates to figure what land you want to hunt since it is a mix of different private.  With 618, pretty much everything the boundaries are pretty straight forward.  Park does a lot to mark their boundary with plated in the trees and signs on t-posts (but sometimes the ferns are taller than the posts so all you'll see is the white paint on the top of the post).