Colorado OTC Elk, 2nd vs 3rd Rifle: What CPW's Numbers Show

Name: Colorado OTC Elk, 2nd vs 3rd Rifle: What CPW's Numbers Show
Creator: FilledTag
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

CPW's 2024 survey for Colorado's 90 OTC elk units: 2nd rifle had 55% more hunters than 3rd and took bulls at the same rate. Every unit, with a CSV.

Check your elk hunt

Fall color below a snow-dusted peak in the Colorado mountains. Photo: Nathan Anderson, CC0.

Colorado's 2nd rifle elk season opens Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026. A bull license for it, or for 3rd rifle, is sold over the counter in 90 game management units. These are the plain numbers for those 90 units from Colorado Parks and Wildlife's own 2024 harvest survey, the latest it has published, worked out unit by unit.

Source: CPW 2024 harvest survey (Colorado Parks and Wildlife, 2024 Elk Harvest Estimates). The survey estimates hunters and harvest for each unit and season. All figures below are those estimates, sums of them, or those divided by a unit's public land area.

The three findings

2nd rifle is the crowded one, not the more productive one. Across the 90 units, CPW estimated 37,837 hunters in 2nd rifle and 24,459 in 3rd rifle, 55% more in 2nd. Yet hunters took bulls at almost the same rate: 12.9 bulls per 100 hunters in 2nd rifle and 13.3 in 3rd. Success, which counts every elk taken (bulls, cows and calves) by every license in the season, was 15.7% in 2nd rifle and 18.8% in 3rd.
3rd rifle held up in most units. Of the 66 units with at least 100 hunters in each season, 46 had a 3rd rifle success rate equal to or higher than 2nd rifle.
Room on public land varies more than tenfold. Across all 90 units there were about 232 acres of national forest and BLM land per 2nd and 3rd rifle hunter. Among units with at least 200 hunters it ran from 35 acres per hunter in unit 13 to 1,111 in unit 14; the most room per hunter was in units 14, 30, 72, 59 and 21.

Most public land per rifle hunter

National forest and BLM land in the unit, in acres, divided by CPW's 2nd and 3rd rifle hunters together. Units with at least 200 hunters.


14	1,111	85%	200
30	970	73%	421
72	647	28%	273
59	598	30%	204
21	593	86%	827

More room per hunter is not more elk. Unit 14 had 18.5 bulls per 100 hunters; the average across the 90 units was 13.1.

Most bulls per 100 hunters

Bulls CPW estimated were taken in 2nd and 3rd rifle, per 100 hunters in those seasons. Units with at least 200 hunters.


13	39.5	164	415	6%
70	29.6	630	2,131	64%
78	27.3	398	1,459	62%
12	26.3	218	828	48%
31	25.6	170	663	56%

Read the public land column beside it. Unit 13 is 6% national forest and BLM land, so most of its bulls were taken on ground you need permission to hunt.

All 90 units

Tap a column heading to sort by it. Hunters, bulls and success are CPW's 2024 estimates for each season. Bulls per 100 hunters and public acres per hunter use 2nd and 3rd rifle together. Units with few hunters can show extreme per-hunter figures. Download the table (CSV).


3	295	37	13	351	23	8	9.3	366
4	408	53	13	368	60	17	14.6	156
5	249	47	19	85	6	10	15.9	331
6	935	32	8	453	34	15	4.8	48
11	582	100	18	670	75	17	14.0	189
12	482	141	33	346	77	31	26.3	184
13	219	74	39	196	90	56	39.5	35
14	167	33	21	33	4	12	18.5	1,111
15	982	45	9	685	31	9	4.6	115
16	480	19	6	217	3	18	3.2	134
17	408	29	11	314	59	29	12.2	136
18	1,026	78	11	927	104	19	9.3	133
21	544	55	12	283	21	9	9.2	593
22	716	161	25	489	82	23	20.2	365
23	425	21	6	375	22	13	5.4	131
24	482	23	5	166	0	5	3.5	401
25	394	32	11	249	20	11	8.1	191
26	275	23	8	180	11	9	7.5	161
27	484	10	5	228	4	11	2.0	72
28	647	20	4	465	13	5	3.0	250
30	180	36	22	241	18	12	12.8	970
31	327	87	27	336	83	27	25.6	381
32	146	39	27	84	7	14	20.0	312
33	743	48	13	443	38	16	7.3	164
34	230	30	13	150	14	12	11.6	297
35	280	45	17	198	17	12	13.0	248
36	325	23	10	178	25	18	9.5	284
37	343	27	9	262	35	15	10.2	384
38	195	7	4	148	10	9	5.0	170
41	411	36	14	273	39	22	11.0	188
42	716	61	15	639	78	25	10.3	146
43	791	85	19	384	46	28	11.1	206
44	411	55	17	216	10	14	10.4	297
45	339	46	17	144	8	16	11.2	390
47	257	32	17	74	11	18	13.0	516
52	506	55	16	226	26	19	11.1	109
53	442	62	16	183	14	14	12.2	309
59	126	13	10	78	4	11	8.3	598
60	139	16	14	138	18	20	12.3	448
62	1,567	224	18	832	72	15	12.3	251
63	304	39	21	182	32	25	14.6	234
64	231	26	19	162	20	21	11.7	159
65	687	119	25	414	81	31	18.2	191
68	695	88	14	406	48	14	12.4	276
70	1,069	281	32	1,062	349	42	29.6	290
71	789	120	16	376	23	7	12.3	240
72	186	36	20	87	7	8	15.8	647
73	265	29	12	152	10	8	9.4	348
74	370	74	20	205	31	16	18.3	542
75	408	88	24	259	46	23	20.1	262
77	1,057	229	22	782	201	28	23.4	159
78	871	235	28	588	163	29	27.3	207
80	1,166	176	17	627	89	21	14.8	172
81	1,411	201	17	582	88	21	14.5	240
82	526	42	11	392	44	18	9.4	217
85	605	107	18	345	21	8	13.5	99
86	461	49	12	216	18	8	9.9	253
131	207	25	16	97	7	32	10.5	36
133	23	10	42	7	0	0	33.3	37
134	13	7	50	0	0		53.8	39
140	49	33	66	27	4	14	48.7	0
141	10	6	66	10	6	63	60.0	15
142	46	10	21	8	0	0	18.5	4
161	662	19	6	566	30	13	4.0	139
171	437	23	5	236	21	16	6.5	125
181	254	16	8	245	20	17	7.2	112
211	457	70	21	453	79	22	16.4	114
214	96	7	8	72	17	32	14.3	173
231	300	12	9	93	2	13	3.6	181
301	85	0	0	141	8	6	3.5	112
361	70	10	16	76	3	16	8.9	243
371	182	13	9	162	18	14	9.0	271
411	213	19	10	123	17	17	10.7	267
421	886	81	13	370	52	19	10.6	176
431	70	13	32	23	3	34	17.2	1,098
441	194	19	12	72	22	30	15.4	91
444	430	52	17	171	22	19	12.3	249
471	60	3	5	9	4	55	10.1	847
511	451	13	4	156	7	6	3.3	231
521	531	58	11	246	35	19	12.0	310
581	373	36	11	272	30	11	10.2	221
591	89	10	11	34	4	11	11.4	0
681	411	32	8	325	42	13	10.1	332
691	36	3	9	41	4	9	9.1	869
711	631	110	19	595	88	17	16.2	240
741	75	22	30	76	24	33	30.5	41
751	372	78	24	305	48	17	18.6	309
771	167	19	13	191	28	15	13.1	117
851	87	24	27	65	17	26	27.0	13
861	95	33	35	48	7	15	28.0	309

How the numbers are defined

Hunters: CPW's estimate of license holders who hunted that unit in that season, every license type in the season, not only OTC bull licenses.
Success: every elk taken in the season (bulls, cows and calves) divided by those hunters, as CPW publishes it.
Bulls per 100 hunters: bulls taken divided by hunters, times 100. Closer to what an OTC bull hunter can take, since the license is bull only.
Public land: U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land measured inside the unit boundary. State wildlife areas and state trust land are not counted, so the real figure is a little higher in some units.
The 90 units: the units on the 2026 OTC rifle bull list in the 2026 Colorado Big Game brochure. Units 54, 55 and 551 left the OTC list for 2026 and are not included.
These are survey estimates of what happened in 2024. They do not predict 2026 harvest, and no unit promises an elk.

Use these numbers

Free to cite with a link to this page: https://www.filledtag.com/guides/colorado-otc-elk-2nd-rifle-numbers-2026/. The table is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, naming FilledTag and Colorado Parks and Wildlife as the source.

For every unit's other seasons, crowding and elevation, see Colorado OTC elk units by the numbers. For dates, rules and prices, see the 2nd rifle elk guide and every 2026 OTC elk unit.

Sources

Colorado Parks and Wildlife, 2024 Elk Harvest Estimates, by unit and season: https://spl.cde.state.co.us/artemis/nrserials/nr1445internet/nr14452024internet.pdf
Colorado Parks and Wildlife, 2026 Colorado Big Game brochure (OTC unit list and season dates): https://cpw.state.co.us/big-game-brochure
Bureau of Land Management, national surface management agency data (federal land inside each unit).

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