There’s nothing wrong with getting lucky.

Ask any hunter, and they’ll tell you a little luck almost always figures in to a successful hunt.

It’s better, however, to take the luck out of the equation.

Sure, you can get your deer or elk license and just walk out into the field, hoping to bag yourself a big ol’ buck or that trophy bull.

The reality, though, is you’ve got to get out and scout.

“It’s too important to forget about,” said Forrest Hoskins. “If you want to have a successful hunt — even if you know the country — you need to get up and look it over. And if you don’t know the country, it’s even more important.”

Hoskins has been hunting units 61 and/or 62 for the better part of 20 years now, since he moved to Grand Junction from North Carolina. While that’s long enough to get to know the land, the owner of Moonscapes 3D in Fruita knows better when it comes to the Uncompahgre. That’s why he tries to get up and scout four or five times in the summer.

“This is big country,” Hoskins said, panning his view from the meadow he stood in to the aspen and pine framing the ridge. “There’s a lot of different kinds of terrain and the animals move around. You need to pay attention to where they’re at, and know the terrain for own self so you don’t get lost.”

And even when you do know the country, it changes.

Just as each year brings different weather patters, each hunting season is different.
Last year, for instance, it was dry up on The Unc.

“It’s so wet this year. That’s going to make it even harder,” Hoskins said. “There feed everywhere, so that’s doing to keep them scattered instead of bunching up in the areas that there is feed.

“And once the shooting starts, they’re really going to scatter.”

Hunting on The Unc isn’t like hunting a 20-acre plot back east for whitetail deer. While Foskins grew up in North Carolina and Kevin Meeker grew up in Pennsylvania, this is what they know now.

So, when you can’t learn every feed area or every bedding area — and all their traveling lanes in between — you can learn the land and then go from there.

Meeker tries to get up a couple times in the summer to scout. More importantly, though, is that he never stops scouting.

“What I’ve found is, where the elk are today is entirely different once there’s hunting pressure,” Meeker said. “So really, the first couple weeks I’m hunting, I’m scouting. I do my best later in the season.

“Besides, too many guys go up there just before the seasons and they have their calls and they’re bugling. What they’re doing is educating the elk.”

Which is why Hoskins and Meeker, like most successful hunters, learn the land ahead of time so they’re ready to improvise as the deer and elk patterns change along with the season.

“Everyone is along that Divide Road,” Meeker said, “and there’s a few good spots, but most of the hunters are there the whole season, and the elk are only there the first few days.

“Most of them big bulls go down in the big holes, where most people don’t want to go.”

Learning what’s down in the draws, and how to get yourself into and out of them, is what scouting big country is all about.

You’ve got to do your homework.

And, besides, it’s not like you’re stuck at home at the kitchen table doing your algebra homework. Scouting is not only important, it’s fun.

Scouting can be a day trip, but most of the time, it’s a weekend of getting away. For Hoskins, his last trip in July was also a father-daughter weekend with his oldest daughter, Holly, who lives in Fort Collins now.

“Plus,” Meeker said, “It’s just a good time to get out there and look and see what’s around. And there’s more to it, you’re seeing pretty country too.”