Dworshak Elk Working Group

[cavalier14]

Anyone familiar with Idaho's Dworshak Elk Working Group? The IDFG site has had a few updates over the past year but nothing recent. Generally curious about the elk population out there and if that OTC tag (10a) is worth much. The tone of some of the articles (and a lot of the posts on here) all seem pretty down on the Elk numbers out there, but there haven't been many updates as far as what their proposals are for the '25-'26 season.

 

[wowzers]

I know some of the folks on it. Think one is even on here. My understanding was fish and game adopted their recommendations in the new 2025 regs, ie no more cows during muzzleloader or archery, no spikes during rifle.

My issues I have is that the unit is completely different from one side to the other. You have a lot of ag ground in the south and pretty remote timber grounds to the north and west and a huge road density. Supposedly the cow numbers are down but we’re stuck paying depredation money out still and probably more so now. Their solution was to add a controlled muzzleloader cow hunt on the private ground.

 

[cavalier14]

Yeah that would make sense that they included updates already. Still a surprising amount of tags available though (upwards of 2,000 i think) since they say both cow and bull pops are below objective. But like you said I guess limiting rifle to brow-tined bulls I guess is part of the effort.

Are your issues with the unit that applying the same regs to such different landscape/habitat doesn't make sense? I'd think the motorized hunting rule would be one of the first tools they'd use but I guess the road density problem might make that pretty worthless.

 

[olsont2]

Road density in Lolo is pretty bad too