Big News
LKS Outfitters continues to grow!
In the spring of 2024, we officially added another outfitting entity to the LKS Outfitters “herd.” Ken, Lisa, Jimmy & Evan had strategized how to scale our Colorado hunting businesses and leverage our team to their highest and best use. Acquisition of another horseback wilderness outfit in the Flat Tops Wilderness Area made sense. There will be countless business synergies and our hunters will have some unique opportunities to plan multiple years of Colorado hunting with a brand/outfit that they trust.
River’s Bend Outfitters is a public land horseback wilderness outfitter operating in the White River National Forest and Flat Tops Wilderness Area in Colorado GMU 24 near the town of Meeker, CO. The permit area includes some of the finest wilderness elk hunting opportunities in the region. Its headquarters are a 70-acre home and ranch property along the White River. The former owners, Tel & Ashlie Gates, built River’s Bend Outfitters to what it is today. Their genuine relationships and sterling reputation amongst their clientele will leave a lasting legacy. The quality of their horses, tack, equipment, and facilities show their love of the business. As the crow flies, River’s Bend Outfitters is only a hop/skip/jump from the Flat Tops Wilderness Guides (FTWG) permit area. We’re looking forward to working together on progressive summer pack trips and helping our hunters to find “the right hunt” for them and creating multi-year hunt strategies. Check out RBO’s new website HERE
As LKS Outfitters Manager, Jimmy Oswald moved to Meeker (where he now resides with his girlfriend, Meghan, and an assortment of barnyard critters) to oversee the new outfit. Additionally, he continues to be involved with Horn Fork Guides and FTWG. It’s great to see him land in a place/role that brings him joy!
Meanwhile, Evan Koster stepped into the role of Manager at Flat Tops Wilderness Guides where his long tenure, dedication, and passion for the outfit will continue to be reflected in our team culture and client service.
Summer
Summer of 2024 was an exciting opportunity to offer new services. We ran several multi-day wilderness fishing trips from our new Lake Camp location. Several groups joined us on these wilderness excursions, and it was all smiles with some lunker Lake Trout brought to the net! As in years past, summer day fishing trips, endless trail cutting, horse care, tack repair, camp gear organization, and ranch maintenance kept our staff busy!
Shane pausing to take in the sights on a trail-cutting mission.
September Hunts
Lodge Black Bear Hunts
Year-to-year variability is an ongoing theme in all western big game hunting — but it especially applies to fall black bear hunting. Our guided bear hunts are spot-and-stalk (no bait, no hounds,) so success hinges heavily on the production of natural food sources. There are good years and there are poor years. 2024 was a good year! Historically, the acorn (Gambel’s Oak) crop is one of the most important variables to our bear hunting success. This food source is vital to bears as they pack on the pounds for winter. Acorns provide +/- 2,000 calories per pound! Anecdotes from neighboring regions (including intel from our local District Wildlife Manager) reported very little scrub oak mast elsewhere. But here locally, brush was heavy with acorns. The result was a high-density concentration of bears drawn to the FTWG permit area to gorge on the plentiful acorns as they browned and ripened. In total, 8 bears were killed. One of the most memorable was a chocolate-colored boar whose squared hide measured an honest 7 feet. Black bears of that caliber are truly impressive. We were thrilled to be a part of the hunt!
In our hunter briefings, we also instituted some new diagrams and conversation points regarding shot placement and shot selection. In years past, we’ve seen disappointing recovery rates with too many bears missed or wounded. We were proud to see the results of this additional hunter education pay off with less misses and a much more acceptable recovery rate (+/-80%.) Great shooting guys!
Pete and Ellen celebrating her enormous Colorado bruin
Rocky Mountain Goats
Just as in years past, our guides knocked it out of the park on our goat hunts! We hunted some units we haven’t had hunters draw in several years, and some of our old stand by goat units are changing by a bit (goats are getting pushed to more remote spots). Our biggest billy this year came from a unit that is managed for low populations and probably the toughest unit in the state! See Jimmy’s post HERE for our 2025 Colorado Bighorn Sheep, Mountain Goat, and Moose Recommendations.
Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep
Just like the goats, the sheep hunting was just as successful with some great rams! Sheep hunters all went home with a great ram and even more importantly, a great adventure/story. See Jimmy’s post HERE for our 2025 Colorado Bighorn Sheep, Mountain Goat, and Moose Recommendations.
Archery Elk
The first week of September is sometimes hit-or-miss elk hunting. Bulls can be silent, solitary, dispersed, and difficult to locate. But for whatever reason, opening week of archery elk hunting in 2024 was red hot! Five of our drop camp hunters had either shots or shot opportunities within the first few days of the season! From the bottom of the drainage to the top, it seemed like everyone was into elk! The second and third weeks were also good, especially on the western end of the our permit area. Guided hunters worked hard for them, but saw good action. Several hunters came to full draw and one hunter put an arrow in a nice bull that went unrecovered.
October/November Hunts
Moose Hunting
I’ll just go ahead and say it: Colorado’s Shiras Moose hunting is epic! We are seeing world-class bulls in all of the units we guide. This was the first year in recent memory that we didn’t guide a GMU 25, 26, 231 hunter, and it’s too bad! We were keeping tabs on a legendary bull. Our guides look forward to this hunt every year. Call us when you get the tag! In GMU 24, Jimmy guided a rifle bull moose hunter to an exceptional bull. He was called to within archery range! Congrats, guys!
1st Rifle Season
If you ask ten seasoned Colorado elk hunters what their favorite season to hunt elk is, eight of them will say 1st Rifle Season. Bulls are high in their summer range, they haven’t been forced into the “hellholes,” and they are often still displaying some rutting behavior. This year, however, 1st Rifle Season was TOUGH in our permit area. We had unseasonably warm temperatures with highs into the seventies. We were hunting in T-shirts at 11k feet! Elk were moving mostly at night and sticking to the timber before/after shooting hours. When conditions are like this, it is paramount that hunters are getting to their hunting areas before dawn and leaving after last light. Those brief moments at dusk and dawn are your only hope! We did hear/see some bugling activity — hopefully that will carry-over to 2025 hunts.
2nd Rifle Season
During 2nd Rifle, we saw our first good winter storm. Elk began moving and spending more time on their feet feeding. Overall, success was on-par with average. Not crazy good. Not poor either. Several good bulls were killed in the drop camps. Mature bucks were harder to come by, but a couple of the drop camps found dandies. The guided hunters did well on deer, too. One heavy-horned buck with a kicker was killed at midday while hunter/guide napped in a tree well!
3rd Rifle Season
The opening days of 3rd Rifle brought more snow and cold temps. Hooray! This is what you pray for on late season hunts. When the storm cleared, bucks/bulls started hitting the ground. Most of the 3rd Season drop camps had good success across the board. Ken (LKS Outfitters, owner) and his family hunted out of the Lodge during 3rd Rifle — and it was action packed! Both of his son-in-laws harvested their first bulls.
4th Rifle Season
We guided three deer hunters out of the Lodge during 4th Rifle. All of them were focused on mature mule deer — and all three took great bucks home with them! Conditions were just right — enough snow to put the deer in predictable rutting locales, but not enough snow to trigger full-blown winter range migration. When the bucks were all hung in the Meat Shack, we continued to hunt elk and were able to take a cow and bull as well.
Post Season, Renovations, Mountain Lion Hunts
Late November and early December were devoted to hauling horses to winter pasture, shutting down FTWG facilities, and storing camp gear. This winter, contractors have been working on updating the historic FTWG Barn and Pack Station. Thankfully, it’s been a mild winter. New roof, posts, beams and trusses will protect the hitching rail area for another 50+ years! Stay tuned for pictures! As Ken said best, “The end of an era and beginning of another.” We are also updating the staff Bunkhouse and the wraparound Lodge porch.
In January, a past deer/elk hunting client returned to hunt mountain lions with Evan and his hounds in the Horn Fork Guides permit area. In his words, “My favorite hunt so far!” We had an incredible time exploring the big, wild, cat-rich region behind the dogs. Contact us for next winter’s lion hunting availability.
Colorado’s Hunting Outlook
Proposition 127
Proposition 127 (banning the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats) was REJECTED by voters. This was a huge win for hunter-conservationists. Voters recognized that science-based wildlife management matters and hunters are a crucial component of that system. Thank you to all that were involved in funding and educating during the campaign against it! Keep an eye on Coloradans For Responsible Wildlife Management. They did the lion’s share of the work in defeating this measure and I think we will see more positive hunter legislation come from them in the future. If you pick a conservation group in CO to support, this is the one!
Wolves
In 2023, wolf reintroduction began in Colorado in earnest. Winter of 2024/2025 saw the reintroduction of more wolves. In total, there are now 29 collared wolves in the state. We continue to be unsupportive of “ballot box biology” in any form, and we genuinely feel empathy towards the hardworking CPW staff whose hands were tied. We also feel for the wolves — we believe they were set-up for conflict and failure from the beginning.
Wolves are here. That’s a fact. But it doesn’t mean that elk numbers in Colorado will immediately or permanently plummet. In fact, if we use the northern reintroduction states as a model, the longterm forecast for elk hunting is not bleak. There may be localized impacts in certain areas. A lot is unknown at this point. We’re learning as we go and encouraging hunters to do the same. Elk hunting as we know it is not going away! For better or worse, unless you want to hunt Utah or Arizona (good luck drawing the tag!), learning to hunt in areas occupied by or adjacent to wolves is the new norm. Please be active in the conversation regarding the future management of wolves in CO. The group at Howl.org does a good job of notifying and activating hunters on opportunities to engage.
2025 – 2029 Big Game Season Structure — 2025 New Changes
The 2025 — 2029 Big Game Season Structure is now codified. You can read it HERE. Aside from some subtle date changes, the biggest takeaway that will affect FTWG hunters is OTC Either-sex Archery Elk going away for Nonresidents. Tags for Nonresidents will now be available through the Colorado Big Game Draw. The draw opens March 1 and closes April 1. See our Blog Post for our 2025 Guide to the Colorado Big Game Draw.
Tag allocations will remain liberal. Hunters will be able to draw the tag with zero preference points. We’ll see after this year’s draw plays out, but it’s likely that GMU 25 tags may even be offered to Second Choice applicants or as a Leftover. The takeaway: GMU’s that were historically OTC Either-Sex Archery Elk units will remain easy to draw and opportunities will still exist for Nonresident archery hunters to hunt annually in Colorado. Get comfortable with the draw process and consider making a multi-year preference point plan! There’s a good chance rifle OTC will go this route in 2030 and beyond.
Booking Opportunities
We regularly remind our hunters that reputable outfitters are usually booking a year or more in advance. Try to get in the habit of planning next year’s hunt this year! Here is what our current booking availability looks like:
- Several 2025 Archery Drop Camps available. Contact for dates.
- One 2025 First Rifle Drop Camp available. This will go fast!
- A handful of 2026 Guided mule deer, elk, and bear hunts
- Partial Rifle Drop Camp availability for 2026
