Colorado’s archery elk season opens September 2. If you’re counting, that’s about five weeks — and the hunters who tag bulls in September are the ones doing the work in August.
Every year we watch guys show up to elk camp with a bow they haven’t shot since last fall and legs that haven’t climbed anything steeper than a staircase. Don’t be that guy. Here’s the countdown plan we’d give a buddy, starting today.
Weeks 5–4: Shoot Like It’s Real
Flinging arrows at 20 yards in the backyard isn’t elk practice. Elk practice looks like this:
- Shoot your actual broadheads. Fixed or mechanical, broadheads rarely hit exactly where field points do. Find out now, not on a bull at 40.
- Shoot from your knees, from a squat, quartering, uphill and downhill. Elk almost never give you a flat, square, standing shot.
- Shoot winded. Do 20 squats, then draw. Your pin float after a sprint uphill is the float that matters in September.
- Stretch your practice range. If you’ll shoot at 40, practice at 60. Distance practice shrinks your groups and your nerves. If your rig itself is the weak link, we ranked the best hunting bows of 2026 for elk hunters.
Weeks 4–3: Build Your Mountain Legs
Elk country doesn’t care about your bench press. It cares about your legs and lungs at 10,000 feet.
The single best prep is simple: weighted hikes, prioritizing elevation gain over distance. Steep and short beats flat and long. Load a pack with 30–40 pounds and find the nastiest hill within driving distance. Three or four sessions a week from now until opening day will change your hunt — not because you’ll hike faster, but because you’ll still be able to think, glass, and draw a bow when you get there. Half the mistakes we’ve made in the elk woods (and we’ve told most of them on the Hunt Podcast) trace back to being too smoked to make a good decision.
Weeks 3–2: Scout Smart
July and August scouting tells you where elk live — summer range, water, wallows, and which drainages actually hold animals.
- E-scout first. Mark benches, saddles, north-facing timber, and water on your mapping app before you burn boot leather.
- Glass from a distance. One evening on a high point with good glass beats three days of stomping through the unit bumping elk off their pattern.
- Have a plan B and C. The drainage you scouted will have a camp in it opening morning. Bank on it.
New to this game? Start with our first-time elk hunting tips and the gear list — then come back to this checklist.
Week 2: Gear Shakedown
Lay everything out. Pack it, weigh it, cut it down. Boots should be broken in now — a September blister starts in an August closet. Check your release, spare tab, extra broadheads, kill kit, and water plan. Then practice calling on your drive to work: cow calls first, bugles second. A bad bugle educates elk; a soft cow call rarely hurts you. If you want the full strategy on calling and closing, here’s how we killed a herd bull with archery tackle.
Week 1: Don’t Have a Tag? You Still Have Options
No Colorado archery tag in your pocket? Two honest routes:
1. Leftover tags go on sale August 4 — including thousands of nonresident archery licenses that went unclaimed in the draw. We broke down exactly how that works in our leftover and OTC elk tag guide.
2. Hunt with an outfitter who has tags or private-land access. A guided elk hunt with the tag included skips the draw entirely. Our GMU 55 hunt in Taylor Park runs archery hunts in September with 70–90% shot opportunity, and there are more September options on our Hunt Adventures page.
Thirty-ish days. Shoot daily, climb hills, scout smart, shake down your gear. Do those four things and you’ll walk into September ahead of 90% of the mountain. Want help getting on elk this fall instead of just training for them? Talk to us — that’s literally what we do.
Hunting is not a hobby. It’s an obsession.
This guide is part of our complete resource on Colorado elk hunting.
