Idaho did a study on bull elk mortality about 15-20 years ago before the wolves were brought in an area I used to hunt. The study was done in heavily roaded areas, lightly roaded areas, and difficult access areas. All bulls were radio-collared and located weekly during hunting seasons by air.
In heavy road areas over 60% of the bulls did not make it through hunting season. In lightly roaded areas more survived, but roughly 50 percent of collared bulls wound up dead. In difficult access areas about 30% wound up tagged. If you wanted a chance at a bull older than 2.5 years, the difficult access was where it was at.
Interesting thing from the study was the archery loss was pretty high and not a single elk over the the study died from winter kill or non-human predators (before wolves) The only way bulls in the study died was from bullets or arrows.
That study is about what i'd expect. How about the actual numbers of elk in those three areas? Did they give those numbers?
