When to hunt a burn area?

Joe2Kool · Jun 1, 2024

Our draw hunts didn't work out this year, so we're doing some e-scouting for a CO OTC elk area. Relative to when a burn happens, when is the ideal time to hunt it? Does it take a couple of years for it to be good?

I don't have any experience with burn areas, but I do have experience with eastern logging and clear cuts. After about 3-4 years, they are so thick you can't see anything 5 feet in front of you!

I'm guessing with western moisture, it takes much longer for the area to recover.

Soj51hopeful · Jun 1, 2024

Depends on the intensity of the burn, but usually the grass starts growing back pretty quickly. 1 year after a burn can be great hunting.

CFMuley · Jun 1, 2024

1 year after is normally a good bet, unless the fire got super hot. The burn will continue to be good from that point on until it gets overgrown.

BuzzH · Jun 1, 2024

Same year it burns.

Joe2Kool · Jun 1, 2024

Thanks guys. Area burned in 2022.

Soj51hopeful · Jun 1, 2024

Should be good.

Battlewagon · Jun 1, 2024

I've watched elk eat bark off of just burned down aspen. It seems fire/heat makes the bark easy to strip.

Soccerdude · Jun 1, 2024

I love hunting burns. Sometimes the same year and sometimes 15 years later. Lots of factors though. One down side is burns often get more pressure in some areas thanks to onx listing them so easily to see.

1989Cohunter · Jun 1, 2024

I’ve hunted spots that had a pile of the the year after. I’d heard of guys seeing critters being in burn areas just weeks after a fire. I think it probably depends if there is new grass growth.

c3 · Jun 2, 2024

In oregon they do controlled burns of slash piles in the winter. They take a dozer and push the hot glowing coals pile down the hillside which burns another 100 - 200 yards down the hill below each landing they burn on.

By the next archery season the rosies are bedding in the black coal burn on the landings and feeding on the hillsides below all day if they don't get bumped off.

Here on the front a local burn had elk all over in it by June the next spring. I hunted elk again who'd been bedding in the black coal areas with zero vegetation in late Aug the next year.

After two years, I think it's just random that they go head into it. I did kill my Wyoming unit 54-9 bull in a burn that was about 4 years before and still hasn't grown any new trees of any sort.

Anyway, a summer or fall fire will attract elk the next hunting season and on for ......

Just my take

Cheers, Pete