Wyoming long range hunting debate

[Hnthrdr]

No disagreement here.

Perception is reality even when it is not complete true. Pimping a narrative, that is not 100% accurate, is not limited to a single side.

If forced to use archery equipment, there’s a lot of dudes out there with bum shoulders that may not be able to use a bow. Unsure how many would quit altogether versus flooding the CHAMP side of hunting. 30 total CHAMP tags for draw deer in AZ this year. Obviously G&F would have to update that.

Yep I get that. Honestly I think most of us would want to see what happens if we took a couple of late MD rut hunts and just took the scopes off, maybe made it a straight was cartridge or muzzy. I’m not advocating making all units or all rifle hunts archery or anything like that.

 

[AZ_Hunter_2000]

Regardless of whether its a stretch, its just not where folks are aiming. Some folks may want to do something for their own ideals around fair chase, etc. but thats not what Im talking about, and I dont think thats why states are limiting technology. The goal isnt to limit harvest without a biological need for that. The goal of a restriction is to reduce hunter efficacy as a tool to increase the number of tags issued for a given harvest quota (or to prevent a reduction in tags). The whole goal is to harvest the same amount of deer, but let more people hunt. Theres tons of ways to do that without making it more crowded too (1st season, second season, separate tags for different seasons, etc).

Since you are proposing more seasons to accommodate more hunters without introducing overcrowding, please provide the actual details to make this work. Below is the Fall 2025 hunting schedule for a single unit in AZ. I genuinely am looking forward to your updated hunting schedule to accommodate all hunters for all species.


Bull Elk

• Archery - Sep 12 - Sep 25
• Any legal weapon - Sep 26 - Oct 2
• CHAMP - Nov 7 - Nov 13 (any elk)
• Muzzleloader - Nov 7 - Nov 13
• Any legal weapon - Nov 28 - Dec 4

Cow Elk

• Youth - Oct 3 - Oct 12
• Any legal weapon - Oct 17 - Oct 23
• CHAMP - Nov 7 - Nov 13 (Any elk)
• Archery - Nov 14 - Nov 27
• Any legal weapon - Dec 5 - Dec 14

Deer (Mule Deer/Whitetail)

• Archery OTC - Aug 23 - Sep 12
• Youth - Oct 3 - Oct 12
• Any legal weapon - Oct 24 - Nov 2
• Archery OTC - Dec 13 - Dec 31
• Archery OTC - Jan 1 - Jan 31

Pronghorn

• Archery - Aug 22 - Sep 4
• Any legal weapon - Sep 5-14

Black Bear

• Any legal weapon - Oct 3 - Dec 31

Mountain Lion

• Any legal weapon - Aug 31 - May 31

Turkey

• Archery - Aug 22 - Sep 11
• Shotgun - Oct 3 - Oct 9

Javelina

• Youth - Oct 3 - Oct 12

Desert Bighorn

• Any legal weapon - Oct 1 - Dec 31

 

[wind gypsy]

This is from AZ in 2024. There's not a whole lot of difference between a muzzleloader and a rifle when it comes to success rate as well as self-reported wounding rate. Draw archery had a higher success rate than rifle.

To me that indicates it's far from an apples to apples comparison and other factors are large drivers of the success rates in the various seasons.

 

[Q_Sertorius]

Those self-reported miss rates are even more laughable than the non-mandatory reporting for success.


____________________
“Keep on keepin’ on…”

 

[AZ_Hunter_2000]

Yep I get that. Honestly I think most of us would want to see what happens if we took a couple of late MD rut hunts and just took the scopes off, maybe made it a straight was cartridge or muzzy. I’m not advocating making all units or all rifle hunts archery or anything like that.

Likely would wind up similar to the Strip and Kaibab: most folks concentrating on the same (relative) few general spots. And that is how we got the no trail camera BS.

There are some natural born killers that will be consistently successful no matter what weapon they have. These types of restrictions mostly don't impact this group. This is a tiny subset of the overall hunting population despite what our egos may tell us.

The issue is alienating the bulk of the hunting population by making the burdens too onerous in order to hunt, let alone get an animal every so often. How many hunters out there are fine with continuing to drop cash on hunting clothes, hunting gear, camping gear, weapons, etc just to be relegated to tag soup for life? How many will throw their hands up and just quit? There's the potential to make millions of anti-hunting advocates overnight.

Not directed at anyone specifically...
Folks need to think things through as the law of unintended consequences can be a bitch.

 

[AZ_Hunter_2000]

Those self-reported miss rates are even more laughable than the non-mandatory reporting for success.


____________________
“Keep on keepin’ on…”

Not disagreeing with that but those are the numbers reported.

Don't know if there is a way to get accurate information when it comes to wounding rates.

 

[Macintosh]

Since you are proposing more seasons to accommodate more hunters without introducing overcrowding, please provide the actual details to make this work. Below is the Fall 2025 hunting schedule for a single unit in AZ. I genuinely am looking forward to your updated hunting schedule to accommodate all hunters for all species.


Bull Elk

• Archery - Sep 12 - Sep 25
• Any legal weapon - Sep 26 - Oct 2
• CHAMP - Nov 7 - Nov 13 (any elk)
• Muzzleloader - Nov 7 - Nov 13
• Any legal weapon - Nov 28 - Dec 4

Cow Elk

• Youth - Oct 3 - Oct 12
• Any legal weapon - Oct 17 - Oct 23
• CHAMP - Nov 7 - Nov 13 (Any elk)
• Archery - Nov 14 - Nov 27
• Any legal weapon - Dec 5 - Dec 14

Deer (Mule Deer/Whitetail)

• Archery OTC - Aug 23 - Sep 12
• Youth - Oct 3 - Oct 12
• Any legal weapon - Oct 24 - Nov 2
• Archery OTC - Dec 13 - Dec 31
• Archery OTC - Jan 1 - Jan 31

Pronghorn

• Archery - Aug 22 - Sep 4
• Any legal weapon - Sep 5-14

Black Bear

• Any legal weapon - Oct 3 - Dec 31

Mountain Lion

• Any legal weapon - Aug 31 - May 31

Turkey

• Archery - Aug 22 - Sep 11
• Shotgun - Oct 3 - Oct 9

Javelina

• Youth - Oct 3 - Oct 12

Desert Bighorn

• Any legal weapon - Oct 1 - Dec 31

Well, that's true to a large degree, but my hastily-written sentence you are reacting to didnt really convey what I was trying to say. The degree to which you can prevent overcrowding depends on where hunters are likely to be in the same location based on habitat (are there enough sheep hunters to count them toward crowding, and are the antelope hunters really going to be tripping over the elk hunters more than occasionally?), plus it's hard to generalize for everywhere with a hypothetical when each state has very different situations, season structures, etc. Bottom line is the population of the western states we are talking about (Ca, AZ, NM, CO, UT, NV, OR, WA, ID, MT, WY and AK) has increased over 40% in the last 35 years. That's a pretty real number, I just did that math based on the online cencus numbers for 1990 and an estimate I found online for 2024. With population growth like that, there is no world where "striking a balance between harvest and opportunity" is going to mean fewer people are going to be in the field at any given time--the best you can hope for is adding as many opportunities as you can, while maintaining as much quality of hunt as you can, and trying to find the best balance of those things. My statement should have been something more on the order of "Theres tons of ways to structure tags to maximise opportunity while minimizing crowding, and depending on the season structure in any given state there may be good opportunity for significant change without necessarily having everyone in the field at the same time". For instance, Wyoming has long seasons and many times if you draw a tag you can hunt both the early archery season and/or the later rifle portion of the season on the same tag...it's simply an elk tag for unit XX. Making that one tag into a separate archery and rifle tag would change things, as would splitting one or both of those periods into shorter seasons. Other states may have less wiggle room to do that, but there is still opportunity to do so if that's whats needed (I see several fairly long seasons in there). That's all up to the state to decide how to balance those things, I'm just speaking about what is possible and why a state might choose to do so, not advocating for a particular change. Again I'm not saying this is needed or the right thing everywhere, I'm only saying that it's already a big part of the math that is behind how many people get to hunt, and where an increasingly large % of the population who wants to hunt cant, you run some risk in not making an effort to accomodate that-- even given a static harvest quota--and here's a way that it could be done in some places IF it would be helpful.

Is allowing people to hunt more often even if it's harder, really going to alienate or cause more people to stop hunting, than simply never being able to get a tag? I dont think so. Regardless, that's a balance to be struck not an either/or, which comes back to the point I was trying to make.

 

[Hnthrdr]

Well, that's true to a large degree, but my hastily-written sentence you are reacting to didnt really convey what I was trying to say. The degree to which you can prevent overcrowding depends on where hunters are likely to be in the same location based on habitat (are there enough sheep hunters to count them toward crowding, and are the antelope hunters really going to be tripping over the elk hunters more than occasionally?), plus it's hard to generalize for everywhere with a hypothetical when each state has very different situations, season structures, etc. Bottom line is the population of the western states we are talking about (Ca, AZ, NM, CO, UT, NV, OR, WA, ID, MT, WY and AK) has increased over 40% in the last 35 years. That's a pretty real number, I just did that math based on the online cencus numbers for 1990 and an estimate I found online for 2024. With population growth like that, there is no world where "striking a balance between harvest and opportunity" is going to mean fewer people are going to be in the field at any given time--the best you can hope for is adding as many opportunities as you can, while maintaining as much quality of hunt as you can, and trying to find the best balance of those things. My statement should have been something more on the order of "Theres tons of ways to structure tags to maximise opportunity while minimizing crowding, and depending on the season structure in any given state there may be good opportunity for significant change without necessarily having everyone in the field at the same time". For instance, Wyoming has long seasons and many times if you draw a tag you can hunt both the early archery season and/or the later rifle portion of the season on the same tag...it's simply an elk tag for unit XX. Making that one tag into a separate archery and rifle tag would change things, as would splitting one or both of those periods into shorter seasons. Other states may have less wiggle room to do that, but there is still opportunity to do so if that's whats needed (I see several fairly long seasons in there). That's all up to the state to decide how to balance those things, I'm just speaking about what is possible and why a state might choose to do so, not advocating for a particular change. Again I'm not saying this is needed or the right thing everywhere, I'm only saying that it's already a big part of the math that is behind how many people get to hunt, and where an increasingly large % of the population who wants to hunt, cant you run some risk in not making an effort to accomodate that even given a static harvest quota, and here's a way that it could be done in some places IF it would be helpful.

Amen. I know I would rather have the chance of seeing a mature buck or bull every year with a tag in my pocket and not getting close enough to harvest than waiting years to get a tag knowing I’ll likely be able to shoot to 5-600 yards.
A lot of the best hunting stories are about the ones that got away or the ones you encountered when you didn’t have a tag for them. I know some of my older buddies have fantastic stories about bucks they encountered in the 80’s while elk hunting or vice versa.

 

[AZ_Hunter_2000]

To me that indicates it's far from an apples to apples comparison and other factors are large drivers of the success rates in the various seasons.

Don't know.

It was not weather/moisutre related as the bulk of the state was consistently dry.

It was not days in the field. Youth muzzleloader (2.3 days) and Youth rifle (3.2 days) spent the least amount of time in the field yet had the highest success rate. CHAMP (3.8 days) had a higher success rate than rifle (4.5 days). Draw archery (7.4 days) spent the most time in the field and was in the middle of the pack on success rate.

Amount of help? Likely a contributing factor as Youth and CHAMP tend to have more help in the field.

Don't care about trophy quality? Likely a contributing factor as Youth and CHAMP tend to shoot what is legal rather than monsters (though some of them get toads). Unsure about draw archery hunters but I know a lot of rifle hunters do kill what is legal rather than holding out for mature bucks.

Lots of potential contributing factors that others can look into.

(Not directed at you) But a blanket statement that archery has a low success rate is not necessarily accurate at least when it comes to self reporting successful harvests; likely more accurate than the self-reported wounding rates.

 

[KurtR]

Are populations dropping because of over harvest? If yes than there are a few options less tags, shorter seasons or limit weapons. Only 2 of those 3 are realistically enforceable

 

[Macintosh]

@AZ_Hunter_2000 that's totally true, weapon alone does not define success rate. The combination of factors including weapon, time of year, succession of seasons, etc all combine to define a success rate.

Reporting accuracy is also a factor, BUT if there is year to year consistency on average the data is still very useable to make predictions from.

 

[AZ_Hunter_2000]

Well, that's true to a large degree, but my hastily-written sentence you are reacting to didnt really convey what I was trying to say. The degree to which you can prevent overcrowding depends on where hunters are likely to be in the same location based on habitat (are there enough sheep hunters to count them toward crowding, and are the antelope hunters really going to be tripping over the elk hunters more than occasionally?), plus it's hard to generalize for everywhere with a hypothetical when each state has very different situations, season structures, etc. Bottom line is the population of the western states we are talking about (Ca, AZ, NM, CO, UT, NV, OR, WA, ID, MT, WY and AK) has increased over 40% in the last 35 years. That's a pretty real number, I just did that math based on the online cencus numbers for 1990 and an estimate I found online for 2024. With population growth like that, there is no world where "striking a balance between harvest and opportunity" is going to mean fewer people are going to be in the field at any given time--the best you can hope for is adding as many opportunities as you can, while maintaining as much quality of hunt as you can, and trying to find the best balance of those things. My statement should have been something more on the order of "Theres tons of ways to structure tags to maximise opportunity while minimizing crowding, and depending on the season structure in any given state there may be good opportunity for significant change without necessarily having everyone in the field at the same time". For instance, Wyoming has long seasons and many times if you draw a tag you can hunt both the early archery season and/or the later rifle portion of the season on the same tag...it's simply an elk tag for unit XX. Making that one tag into a separate archery and rifle tag would change things, as would splitting one or both of those periods into shorter seasons. Other states may have less wiggle room to do that, but there is still opportunity to do so if that's whats needed (I see several fairly long seasons in there). That's all up to the state to decide how to balance those things, I'm just speaking about what is possible and why a state might choose to do so, not advocating for a particular change. Again I'm not saying this is needed or the right thing everywhere, I'm only saying that it's already a big part of the math that is behind how many people get to hunt, and where an increasingly large % of the population who wants to hunt cant, you run some risk in not making an effort to accomodate that-- even given a static harvest quota--and here's a way that it could be done in some places IF it would be helpful.

Is allowing people to hunt more often even if it's harder, really going to alienate or cause more people to stop hunting, than simply never being able to get a tag? I dont think so. Regardless, that's a balance to be struck not an either/or, which comes back to the point I was trying to make.

"Theres tons of ways to structure tags to maximise opportunity while minimizing crowding, and depending on the season structure in any given state there may be good opportunity for significant change without necessarily having everyone in the field at the same time."

Then do exactly that for the unit information I provided. How do you accommodate more hunters targeting a variety of big game without adversely impacting those same species? Between scouting and hunting, there's folks hitting that unit to some degree for six months straight. Then add in the meth heads, the campers, the squatters, etc.

Fun stuff.

 

[nm.otter]

2024-25 NM harvest reports are up, but not organized in a way that facilitates the kind of analysis I want. I'll see if I can get better data out of DGF.

 

[wind gypsy]

Don't know.

It was not weather/moisutre related as the bulk of the state was consistently dry.

It was not days in the field. Youth muzzleloader (2.3 days) and Youth rifle (3.2 days) spent the least amount of time in the field yet had the highest success rate. CHAMP (3.8 days) had a higher success rate than rifle (4.5 days). Draw archery (7.4 days) spent the most time in the field and was in the middle of the pack on success rate.

Amount of help? Likely a contributing factor as Youth and CHAMP tend to have more help in the field.

Don't care about trophy quality? Likely a contributing factor as Youth and CHAMP tend to shoot what is legal rather than monsters (though some of them get toads). Unsure about draw archery hunters but I know a lot of rifle hunters do kill what is legal rather than holding out for mature bucks.

Lots of potential contributing factors that others can look into.

My point is that it's evident that how AZ manages each unit on it's own basis with differing weapon options and timing makes it about the worst state out there for apples to apples comparison on differences in hunter effectiveness with different weapons.

(Not directed at you) But a blanket statement that archery has a low success rate is not necessarily accurate at least when it comes to self reporting successful harvests; likely more accurate than the self-reported wounding rates.

I dont think anyone thinks there aren't high success rate archery seasons. But context keeping it in AZ - all from the same unit (but elk..):

Early Archery season success rates (during rut, low hunter #s)


Late Season Archery success rates (November, more tags)


Late Rifle Success Rates (Late Nov, right after late Archery, slightly fewer tags than late archery)




The fact that the rifle season directly after archery season has drastically higher success rates paints a clearer picture of efficacy differences between the two weapons than trying to extrapolate anything from the primo archery tags.

 

[SDHNTR]

The issue is alienating the bulk of the hunting population by making the burdens too onerous in order to hunt, let alone get an animal every so often. How many hunters out there are fine with continuing to drop cash on hunting clothes, hunting gear, camping gear, weapons, etc just to be relegated to tag soup for life? How many will throw their hands up and just quit?

This is actually just what is needed. Too many internet age onset hunters in recent years. We need a wash out. Those that really work at it should be the ones experiencing consistent success. There are no barriers to entry anymore and that’s exactly how we got to this place. Hunting the West needs to be difficult.

 

[Hnthrdr]

This is actually just what is needed. Too many internet age onset hunters in recent years. We need a wash out. Those that really work at it should be the ones experiencing consistent success. There are no barriers to entry anymore and that’s exactly how we got to this place. Hunting the West needs to be difficult.

I mean if we consider picking up a 30-30 difficult… to me it sounds like a freaking hoot! Or a smokepole during 4th rifle. Really not a barrier we aren’t saying go figure out a stick bow

 

[Q_Sertorius]

This is actually just what is needed. Too many internet age onset hunters in recent years. We need a wash out. Those that really work at it should be the ones experiencing consistent success. There are no barriers to entry anymore and that’s exactly how we got to this place. Hunting the West needs to be difficult.

Nice of you to come out and say that all you care about is driving away other hunters.


____________________
“Keep on keepin’ on…”

 

[KurtR]

This is actually just what is needed. Too many internet age onset hunters in recent years. We need a wash out. Those that really work at it should be the ones experiencing consistent success. There are no barriers to entry anymore and that’s exactly how we got to this place. Hunting the West needs to be difficult.

Then when they come for the public land those people will be the people who don’t really care and if it sells it sells. Won’t affect them one bit. Won’t have to worry about barriers you won’t have any where to hunt.

 

[omicron1792]

Freaking Data. Give me a break. “Data” has become an overused and annoying Rokslike buzzword. No one needs freaking data and a study to prove that a turret, an advanced scope, precision rifles, and a ballistic calculator make it easier to kill animals, one just needs common sense.

The question is does that adversely effect herd health. And that does require data.

 

[Macintosh]

"Theres tons of ways to structure tags to maximise opportunity while minimizing crowding, and depending on the season structure in any given state there may be good opportunity for significant change without necessarily having everyone in the field at the same time."

Then do exactly that for the unit information I provided. How do you accommodate more hunters targeting a variety of big game without adversely impacting those same species? Between scouting and hunting, there's folks hitting that unit to some degree for six months straight. Then add in the meth heads, the campers, the squatters, etc.

Fun stuff.

Easy. Arizona has already done exactly what Im talking about—split seasons into a draw-only any-weapon short periods, plus utilize lower-efficacy weapons and season dates to maximise opportunity (otc archery). To the extent that this has already been done there is less opportunity to further slice it up, but it’s clearly there IF there is enough demand for more opportunity (more tags) and hunters are willing. Examples could be splitting the 90-day bighorn season into two, with one being archery-only—which, if a shorter archery season would have a significantly
lower success rate would allow the same harvest, but more tags. Another example
Could be that IF it was shown that a tag reduction was needed, replacing a any-weapon season with a reduced efficacy season (muzzleloader, archery, non-optic sight rifles, whatever) might allow the same # of tags to be issued. Any or all of the above might be terrible ideas, iand its always a tradeoff, its only to illustrate the point.

The fact that arizona has already done this, leaving less of the obvious areas to do it more, does not in any way mean its not a possible asset to have in the toolbox elsewhere.