Some interesting info there
No doubt. From all the people I've talked to since the end of the seasons you'd think not a single elk was shot in 2016. Sure looks like a lot of elk got taken home. I'm a little disappointed to see that. I was expecting the state's entire herd to have carried over from last year.
Question for you guys- how much stock do you put in the validity of accurate reporting data?
Outside of the mandatory check-in species in CO, the harvest stats are of comical accuracy. It's really a huge bummer because they use these stats for game management.
Every year I open the stats hoping for improvements, but I honestly can't even get through the report. I know for a fact, lots of unit-level stats on the elk are inaccurate by 5-10 fold, on the up and down side.
Unfortunately, this data is close to having zero value.
I'm a numbers guy, and I don't give their numbers much credence. I haven't heard of many people at all that filled elk tags last year through any of the seasons. All the people I've talked to don't know many at all that took an elk home last year. My buddy works with about a dozen guys that archery hunt, and he keeps reminding me that I'm the only guy he's heard of that got a bull last year. When I went to the DOW office here to pick up a leftover late season doe antelope tag, the guy told me they got cleaned out of over 100 tags in two days because "no one got anything else this year and needed meat". I have a buddy that hunts the same unit I do a lot. He's the kind of guy that knows of every camp in an area, and visits those camps throughout the season and he said he didn't talk to one guy that was successful during archery and ML in that unit.
The evidence would dictate contrary to what these reports show, at least for elk. But it doesn't matter........one elk, 100 elk, or 1000 elk in my areas......I'm still hunting them, and nothing is a guarantee.
I'm a numbers guy, and I don't give their numbers much credence. I haven't heard of many people at all that filled elk tags last year through any of the seasons. All the people I've talked to don't know many at all that took an elk home last year. My buddy works with about a dozen guys that archery hunt, and he keeps reminding me that I'm the only guy he's heard of that got a bull last year. When I went to the DOW office here to pick up a leftover late season doe antelope tag, the guy told me they got cleaned out of over 100 tags in two days because "no one got anything else this year and needed meat". I have a buddy that hunts the same unit I do a lot. He's the kind of guy that knows of every camp in an area, and visits those camps throughout the season and he said he didn't talk to one guy that was successful during archery and ML in that unit.
The evidence would dictate contrary to what these reports show, at least for elk. But it doesn't matter........one elk, 100 elk, or 1000 elk in my areas......I'm still hunting them, and nothing is a guarantee.
This is the exact same things I heard throughout the entire season. Funny thing was I had my best season ever, was in elk almost every day- and harvested my biggest bull to date.