Mark Edhammer (aka mdndeer) shared his Colorado unit 44 4th season hunt adventure in the forum. He posted..........

"Unit 44 4th Season Not a Cake Walk - Last April/May when I found out that I got drawn for 4th season in unit 44 and I got a lot of advice/opinions that made me think of what I was getting into. Was told that it was a great unit, it was over rated, weather dependent, small deer herd, don’t shoot the first 180, weather dependent and weather dependent. I got a lot of help from the member here on the area and I would like to specifically thank Simo42 who was out there scouting during my hunt and giving me updates on what he was seeing and also Cologregs who I talked to a few time on what he knows of the unit.

So my buddy and I when out there 4 days prior to the hunt to start scouting and what we found was a very large area and not a high density of deer. In the 4 days prior to the hunt we saw at most 4 to 5 bucks a day and no more than 5 to 10 does a day(couple of days much less) and not shooting the first 180 buck was going to be easy because we did not see one, probably saw two 170’s bucks at best. There had not been weather in a while and we did not see anything low in the sage and started to concentrate high up in the timber(very dense) but still in the first two days of the hunt we were not seeing a lot of deer and no large bucks. The weather report for the third day was snow and possibly 12" on top, so we were excited (this was day 7 out in the field scouting/hunting), so we got up on top and started walking some branch roads hoping to walk up on deer or cut some tracks to follow. We worked one area until noon (only saw 2 bucks and no does) and decided to go to an area we have seen deer a couple of times. We started walking this one road and within a couple of 100 yards we cut some tracks and almost immediately my buddy sees some movement above us. The timber was dense and I could see that there were 3 deer but could not make out what they were. I started to walk forward to get an angle when my buddy grabs me and says this is the largest buck he has ever seen and pulls me back to an angle he is look at. He is yelling (quietly) shoot it/shoot it. The buck is looking right at us and I can see he has good width (not great) but don’t have an angle to see the forks. My buddy is still saying shoot it, but I am saying "dude" I need to make sure he is what we want because we now have weather and 2-1/2 days left and then the deer turns his head and I see good forks (front and back) and I pull the trigger. He ran about 20 yards and piled up and when I got up to him I see a beautiful 4 point on one side but I am only seeing 3 on the other and I am thinking I shot too quick and then when I grabbed the horns a great 4th point comes out of the snow and I got myself a bomb (my standards at least).

So, my take on unit 44 is that if you are looking at seeing a 100 deer a day and a bunches of bucks this might not be the unit (my buddy’s brother was in a unit that took him 18 NR points to get into and he was texting us picture everyday of many nice bucks and talk about seeing a hundred does a day, and he did shoot a nice 4 by 6) and I do truly believe you need the weather or it would be extremely hard to find them in the timber. In my next breath they do have the genetics and very large deer come out of this unit. My buck may not meet some of the people standards for this unit but I am "Extremely Happy" and that's what matters. Again I would like to thank the member of the forum who reach out and gave me some good advice."