Completely agree. If you gave out 5,000 archery tags in a heavily timbered unit and started the season on September 10th then there’d be like a 0.5% success rate. Take the same unit in late November with a rifle when all the deer are down low and it’s almost grocery shopping.
I have no idea what CPW could actually get away with on limiting hunter efficiency but I know anything to slow people down would help deer slip through. When there’s rangefinding binos that spit out everything you need in less than half a second, there’s going to be more deer killed by less experienced hunters. Every little thing helps. Add up all of them and it’s a big difference.
Of course there’s always going to be guys that get it done no matter what. Give me my 30-30 w/ a fixed 4x and I’m going to get it done a whole lot more than the average success rates. Just like you and everyone else obsessed enough to be spending time on an online hunting forum discussing Colorado’s deer herd management after listening to an hour and a half long podcast about it, I am going to go into any season I hold a tag as physically and mentally prepared as I possibly can be to get it done. We as a community are not the baseline. We think it’s hard to draw a tag now.. let CPW manage their hunter harvest expectations on our average meat pole thread and tag numbers get cut 90% overnight.
Go down to your local sportsman’s warehouse and take a listen to the average conversation though. The vast majority of the people in there are either lost as last years Easter egg or full of sh*t up to their eyeballs. And honestly there’s nothing wrong with that. Most people have too much stuff going on to dedicate the time to it. Hell I’ve got three kids from 4 to 12. Even my youngest is playing sports. We’ve got at least one practice or game six days a week for the next two months straight. It’s a pain in the butt getting shots in and working out every day with that going on. Most people aren’t going to do that. They’ll get their box of Hornady eld’s because that’s what YouTube hunters say are the best and they’ll shoot a few shots at 100. They’ll have a 10” group at 300 yards and say good enough then not touch it again til they go in the field. That’s what game and fish is managing. And I’m glad for it. We’d never draw a tag if everyone got serious about it.
