23’ Co license recommendations..

[cnelk]

The fact that this comes out after we have to submit our applications and cannot alter them is ridiculous.

Always has. Always will.

 

[ResearchinStuff]

If the tag #s were stable that would be fine. But they're not, at all, especially this year.

 

[UncleBone]

I called 3 times in march trying to find out what the archery allocation would be in grand Mesa. They couldn't answer, and based on the number they're actually recommending I would love to be able to change my first and second choices.

Yah, I put in for Ml there 1st choice, thinking theyd release a reasonable ammt of tags. As a guy w one season under my belt, and 0pp, wolves coming up etc, I thought thatd be a good hunt to learn the ropes of the rut, and start saving points for a few years after. Ill likely still draw that tag, wont take it, and wont get a point.

 

[ColoradoV]

https://cpw.state.co.us/Documents/Commission/2023/May/Item.16-W-2_Final.pdf

License numbers by unit are above. Redline = changes from last year.

 

[WTFJohn]

If the tag #s were stable that would be fine. But they're not, at all, especially this year.

Winter isn't fully over out here yet, it was 0.5* Friday morning with another large storm hitting over the next 24 hours. The most taxing storms of winter also are the late ones, where animals barely hanging on are lost to the elements.

Other than delaying the draw (which isn't feasible and would make point creep worse), what do you propose be done?

It's been a record winter, and has cost some local ranchers 10x their normal loss rates with calves. How do you think wild animals are doing without supplemental feed and shelter? How do you think their calving success rates will compare to previous years?

Edit- The link in ColoradoV's post above has the details you're after.

 

[Wags]

-59% tag reduction in my area.... ouch.

 

[UncleBone]

Winter isn't fully over out here yet, it was 0.5* Friday morning with another large storm hitting over the next 24 hours. The most taxing storms of winter also are the late ones, where animals barely hanging on are lost to the elements.

Other than delaying the draw (which isn't feasible and would make point creep worse), what do you propose be done?

It's been a record winter, and has cost some local ranchers 10x their normal loss rates with calves. How do you think wild animals are doing without supplemental feed and shelter?

Unless they are doing the draw well before the may 30th results posting, they should allow people to make changes on their applications until the info comes out. Seems pretty easy to me. It seems like a 50 to 60% reduction in tags would cause a lot of point creep in those units.

 

[WTFJohn]

Unless they are doing the draw well before the may 30th results posting, they should allow people to make changes on their applications until the info comes out. Seems pretty easy to me. It seems like a 50 to 60% reduction in tags would cause a lot of point creep in those units.

If NR care about the resource, they should keep up/involved with the news/CPW local to the area they hunt instead of waiting until the last minute and expecting others to change for them. Seems pretty easy to me.

 

[UncleBone]

If NR care about the resource, they should keep up with the news local to the area they hunt instead of waiting until the last minute and expecting others to change for them. Seems pretty easy to me.

CPW cant even keep track of the herds. Not to mention, some people don't hunt the same unit every year, or are maybe trying to get aquainted with new units they havent hunted much or at all. Ive been a resident here for 12 years, but am new to western big game hunting. I also can't spend weeks driving all over in the winter to watch the elk I may hunt next fall, even though I wish I could. Guy stated above he called cpw for weeks asking questions and theyd never answer him. Sounds like he at least put in some effort on that end. CPW doesn't care about anything but the money they make anyways. Just my .02

 

[WTFJohn]

CPW cant even keep track of the herds. Not to mention, some people don't hunt the same unit every year, or are maybe trying to get aquainted with new units they havent hunted much or at all. Ive been a resident here for 12 years, but am new to western big game hunting. I also can't spend weeks driving all over in the winter to watch the elk I may hunt next fall, even though I wish I could. Guy stated above he called cpw for weeks asking questions and theyd never answer him. Sounds like he at least put in some effort on that end. CPW doesn't care about anything but the money they make anyways. Just my .02

April 1

State biologists recommend a decrease in hunting licenses in Northwest Colorado

As the intense winter weather continues, thousands of big game wildlife in Northwest Colorado have been forced to migrate farther west than ever before. If the area populations continue to thin without return, Colorado Parks...

www.craigdailypress.com

March 21

Wildlife officials work to help elk, deer survive tough Northwest Colorado winter

With snow piled high throughout Craig and Moffat County, wildlife has struggled this winter to break through 30 inches or more of hard-packed snow to get to food. According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, news...

www.craigdailypress.com

March 27

Winter in the Northwest: Surviving today and after the snow melts - Colorado Outdoors Online

Using the data collected over the past several months, and anticipated additional losses throughout the spring, biologists are taking conservative approaches with this year's license recommendations.

coloradooutdoorsmag.com

You don't have to drive to find this information, it's online if you are willing to look for it. Just because they didn't spell out exact numbers doesn't mean you can't do some extrapolation/guessing.

And not to defend CPW, but have you ever reached out to do more than ask for info? Did you know that many local CPW offices can connect you with volunteer opportunities that can put you in a working relationship with the biologist you're trying to reach, studying the animals you like to hunt?

Also, if they let you change your draw options after releasing the data; how does everyone else doing the same based on the same data NOT increase point creep?

 

[UncleBone]

April 1

State biologists recommend a decrease in hunting licenses in Northwest Colorado

As the intense winter weather continues, thousands of big game wildlife in Northwest Colorado have been forced to migrate farther west than ever before. If the area populations continue to thin without return, Colorado Parks...

www.craigdailypress.com

March 21

Wildlife officials work to help elk, deer survive tough Northwest Colorado winter

With snow piled high throughout Craig and Moffat County, wildlife has struggled this winter to break through 30 inches or more of hard-packed snow to get to food. According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, news...

www.craigdailypress.com

March 27

Winter in the Northwest: Surviving today and after the snow melts - Colorado Outdoors Online

Using the data collected over the past several months, and anticipated additional losses throughout the spring, biologists are taking conservative approaches with this year's license recommendations.

coloradooutdoorsmag.com

You don't have to drive to find this information, it's online if you are willing to look for it. Just because they didn't spell out exact numbers doesn't mean you can't do some extrapolation/guessing.

And not to defend CPW, but have you ever reached out to do more than ask for info? Did you know that many local CPW offices can connect you with volunteer opportunities that can put you in a working relationship with the biologist you're trying to reach, studying the animals you like to hunt?

Also, if they let you change your draw options after releasing the data; how does everyone else doing the same based on the same data NOT increase point creep?

Well the unit I applied for deer wasnt in any of those reports, and theres a 46% reduction in tags there. Looking for info about those units and winterkill on google and here, provided no results, especially not any recent ones. The area is only slightly above average for snowpack for the winter as well. Not sure what other info I could have looked for there.

I know you wouldn't defend cpw. The several times I have tried to reach biologists, I have never gotten a return call.

I never said it wouldnt cause point creep. I just stated that so does a 40 to 60% reduction in tags with no info about that at all prior to the draw deadline. If theres plenty of info available on all of it, despite cpw releasing that after the deadline, wouldn't people reading that info alone cause point creep? Its a darned if you do, darned if you dont scenario for the hunters no matter what really.

 

[cnelk]

Want to know something at the CPW?
All you gotta do is ask.

Ask Colorado Parks and Wildlife

cpw.state.co.us

 

[WTFJohn]

Well the unit I applied for deer wasnt in any of those reports, and theres a 46% reduction in tags there. Looking for info about those units and winterkill on google and here, provided no results, especially not any recent ones. The area is only slightly above average for snowpack for the winter as well. Not sure what other info I could have looked for there.

I know you wouldn't defend cpw. The several times I have tried to reach biologists, I have never gotten a return call.

I never said it wouldnt cause point creep. I just stated that so does a 40 to 60% reduction in tags with no info about that at all prior to the draw deadline. If theres plenty of info available on all of it, despite cpw releasing that after the deadline, wouldn't people reading that info alone cause point creep? Its a darned if you do, darned if you dont scenario for the hunters no matter what really.

I'm guessing as to where you applied, but there was an early snow that stuck around, got a rain on top, then more snow. That created a hard ice layer at the bottom of the snowpack, so many areas that normally became windblown and regularly open for feeding on winter range did not clear off until late March of this year. Were you active in the mountains in October and November? If so you would've felt that winter had set in early, and hard. (Also, if it's where I think it is; you should've expected cuts anyways).

Thanks to various podcasts and hunting personalities, biologists' time gets prioritized away from answering questions and towards actual work. Again, you can volunteer and do things like count elk calves in the spring, or set game cameras in the summer, or help with winter population surveys. You just have to sign up and show up.

Turning people down because there are no tags won't cause point creep, it forces people to take their chances on a tag that may or may not be there. If you draw, points burned. If you don't draw, you have one more point the next year and maybe some more knowledge. In your scenario, everyone sees not to apply for unit X and switches their choice to other units, driving out the folks that were marginal to draw.

Longer term than this year, the reduction in tags across all species will cause an overall increase in point creep due to supply & demand.

 

[ResearchinStuff]

Winter isn't fully over out here yet, it was 0.5* Friday morning with another large storm hitting over the next 24 hours. The most taxing storms of winter also are the late ones, where animals barely hanging on are lost to the elements.

Other than delaying the draw (which isn't feasible and would make point creep worse), what do you propose be done?

It's been a record winter, and has cost some local ranchers 10x their normal loss rates with calves. How do you think wild animals are doing without supplemental feed and shelter? How do you think their calving success rates will compare to previous years?

Edit- The link in ColoradoV's post above has the details you're after.

Those details came out after the draw deadline. In other words - they're useless for applicants.

April 1

State biologists recommend a decrease in hunting licenses in Northwest Colorado

As the intense winter weather continues, thousands of big game wildlife in Northwest Colorado have been forced to migrate farther west than ever before. If the area populations continue to thin without return, Colorado Parks...

www.craigdailypress.com

March 21

Wildlife officials work to help elk, deer survive tough Northwest Colorado winter

With snow piled high throughout Craig and Moffat County, wildlife has struggled this winter to break through 30 inches or more of hard-packed snow to get to food. According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, news...

www.craigdailypress.com

March 27

Winter in the Northwest: Surviving today and after the snow melts - Colorado Outdoors Online

Using the data collected over the past several months, and anticipated additional losses throughout the spring, biologists are taking conservative approaches with this year's license recommendations.

coloradooutdoorsmag.com

You don't have to drive to find this information, it's online if you are willing to look for it. Just because they didn't spell out exact numbers doesn't mean you can't do some extrapolation/guessing.

And not to defend CPW, but have you ever reached out to do more than ask for info? Did you know that many local CPW offices can connect you with volunteer opportunities that can put you in a working relationship with the biologist you're trying to reach, studying the animals you like to hunt?

Also, if they let you change your draw options after releasing the data; how does everyone else doing the same based on the same data NOT increase point creep?

Which of those indicates that they're "limiting" grand Mesa archery elk tags to 3400+?

Winter kill tag reductions were communicated. The switch from otc to draw for grand mesa was communicated. What cpw could not even provide a rough order of magnitude guess on was grand mesa archery tag numbers. They decided to limit them, then picked the number after they saw how many apps they got, which is what has me commenting on this issue, because it is messed up.

While I'm here, let's also stop pretending that it takes 8 weeks to do a draw. The average laptop has enough processing power to run the draw in roughly 5 minutes. So, if they wanted to, they could easily shift the draw deadline until after the snow melts, either permanently or on a special case by case basis. The solution space is actually pretty broad, they've just picked an approach that is pretty lousy for animals and hunters.

 

[taskswap]

If NR care about the resource, they should keep up/involved with the news/CPW local to the area they hunt instead of waiting until the last minute and expecting others to change for them. Seems pretty easy to me.

I'm a resident and care about the resource and want the same thing you ridiculed the other poster for wanting. I paid EXTREMELY close attention to every meeting record, published statement, news article, etc. Acting as though this information was consistent or useful is misleading because it evolved so rapidly over time. The area I was interested in went from a 12% reduction to 23% and ended up at a ___90%___ reduction.

This wasn't a "you could have read the same news I did and factored it in" adjustment. A 90% reduction is a catastrophe.

I'm not crying into my cheerios that I might not get the tag I want, which seems to be the attitude a lot of folks here are assuming. It's the inefficiency that's appalling to me. The application deadline is an arbitrary date - there was nothing magical about "8pm MT 4/4/23." In their final report, CPW themselves stated "Unlike quotas, it is not possible to set season dates and hunt codes later in the spring because hunters are applying for licenses throughout March and until the early April application deadline."

So even CPW admits it wishes it had more tools available to manage things like this. And yet despite that,
somehow there are folks seem to be rapid supporters of the current system.

Maybe it's just an agree-to-disagree type thing but mocking folks who disagree isn't helpful and sells THEM short. Many of the people I've talked to (including non-residents) would happily change their filings AWAY from the affected areas now that they know how bad it really turned out to be. This isn't a desperate me-me-me tag grab. It's an exceptional situation and it absolutely would not be that difficult to allow hunters a week to adjust their filings as a one-time event to allow for such an unusual situation.

 

[WTFJohn]

Those details came out after the draw deadline. In other words - they're useless for applicants.

Which of those indicates that they're "limiting" grand Mesa archery elk tags to 3400+?

Winter kill tag reductions were communicated. The switch from otc to draw for grand mesa was communicated. What cpw could not even provide a rough order of magnitude guess on was grand mesa archery tag numbers. They decided to limit them, then picked the number after they saw how many apps they got, which is what has me commenting on this issue, because it is messed up.

While I'm here, let's also stop pretending that it takes 8 weeks to do a draw. The average laptop has enough processing power to run the draw in roughly 5 minutes. So, if they wanted to, they could easily shift the draw deadline until after the snow melts, either permanently or on a special case by case basis. The solution space is actually pretty broad, they've just picked an approach that is pretty lousy for animals and hunters.

Whenever an OTC unit has gone draw lately, they have made it so that roughly the same number (or more) of hunters can get tags the first year or two that were hunting it before then reduce it from there, in part to help reduce the complaining by hunters losing access to their units.

Seems to have worked well.

You picked Colorado, the 'last choice' for every big game hunter in the west that struck out elsewhere, on a record winter. I'm sorry CPW won't tailor things to meet your exact needs, so you can plan a perfect excursion with no one else around 6 months in advance before anyone has a grasp of how the winter really went.

I'm a resident and care about the resource and want the same thing you ridiculed the other poster for wanting. I paid EXTREMELY close attention to every meeting record, published statement, news article, etc. Acting as though this information was consistent or useful is misleading because it evolved so rapidly over time. The area I was interested in went from a 12% reduction to 23% and ended up at a ___90%___ reduction.

This wasn't a "you could have read the same news I did and factored it in" adjustment. A 90% reduction is a catastrophe.

I'm not crying into my cheerios that I might not get the tag I want, which seems to be the attitude a lot of folks here are assuming. It's the inefficiency that's appalling to me. The application deadline is an arbitrary date - there was nothing magical about "8pm MT 4/4/23." In their final report, CPW themselves stated "Unlike quotas, it is not possible to set season dates and hunt codes later in the spring because hunters are applying for licenses throughout March and until the early April application deadline."

So even CPW admits it wishes it had more tools available to manage things like this. And yet despite that,
somehow there are folks seem to be rapid supporters of the current system.

Maybe it's just an agree-to-disagree type thing but mocking folks who disagree isn't helpful and sells THEM short. Many of the people I've talked to (including non-residents) would happily change their filings AWAY from the affected areas now that they know how bad it really turned out to be. This isn't a desperate me-me-me tag grab. It's an exceptional situation and it absolutely would not be that difficult to allow hunters a week to adjust their filings as a one-time event to allow for such an unusual situation.

This didn't happen overnight, the writing has been on the wall for months. If you failed to see that, I am sorry.

Feb 3
https://www.steamboatpilot.com/news...-a-toll-on-wildlife-in-routt-county-colorado/

Your suggestion for a 'one-time' adjustment is bunk, after the deadline extension debacle two years ago I will enthusiastically campaign against any additional time for application changes. The draw isn't a Halloween candy bowl, where you can put the mini Snickers back because you see a King Size Reece's sitting off to the side.

The application deadline is the same as it's always been, even on other bad winters. Do you monitor the rainfall in the area you're hunting during the summer? Maybe it's time to start monitoring snowfall & accumulation in the winter range too. Tag cuts didn't happen because of a March or April snow storm, those are just the storms that break the camels' back.

 

[Trogon]

I don't envy CPWs job. Declining populations due to winter kill, habitat loss, CWD, wolf reintroduction forced down their throat by people that know nothing about wildlife, record increases in tag applicants, then finally have to make management decisions with the tiniest amount of data possible. All overseen by a board of directors that have zero experience or qualifications in wildlife management.

 

[svivian]

Hey atleast Colorado lets you turn in your tag, get a full refund and all your points back.... could be worst.

 

[Huntin_GI]

I don't envy CPWs job. Declining populations due to winter kill, habitat loss, CWD, wolf reintroduction forced down their throat by people that know nothing about wildlife, record increases in tag applicants, then finally have to make management decisions with the tiniest amount of data possible. All overseen by a board of directors that have zero experience or qualifications in wildlife management.

While I can agree CPW is in a difficult position, we can't pretend that it was the Agency and not the Commission recommending Status-quo and/or very limited NR reductions over these past two years.

CPW leadership and management are just as much to blame as the commission. The director of tag allocations Danielle Eckart is a joke. Matt whateverhislastname, the lead state terrestrial biologist pretends that wolves aren't going to have a population level impact on big game species and "our modeling is more accurate that mandatory reporting" has got to be the most comical thing I have ever heard of. There are agency employees who are just as bad for sportsmen as the state commission.

 

[taskswap]

This didn't happen overnight, the writing has been on the wall for months. If you failed to see that, I am sorry.

After I literally just finished saying how closely I had been monitoring this situation. Nice.