Quote "Twenty plus years ago Colorado had 20K-40K more elk than the habitat/herd objective could support."
If elk numbers are below objective numbers now, how come we supposedly have 308,901 elk in Colorado now as CPW advertised,and it has grown every year..
From the Colorado Outdoors magazine Preference Point issues here are the advertised elk herd counts for the last six years.I have the last 20 year's issues.
2004 274,570 This was reported in the 2006 issue for the 2004 for herd count (First year they published the figures) 2018 277,750 2019 281,700 2020 286,680 2021 292,760 2022 293,590 2023 308,901
If Colorado has 34,000 more elk than the habitat could support in 2004, we should see elk starving now.
Most of the hunting community believes CPW inflates those numbers to sell more tags.
I'm not aware we are below herd objective on a statewide basis. Quite the opposite. What is important are numbers of elk in the DAU's. In some DAU's they are below what is believed carrying capacity. Carrying capacity changes because habitat changes. If the drought continues the southwest regional biologist has mentioned elk numbers may have to be reduced.
Why do you think beginning in the late 90's Colorado began significantly increasing cow tags, and beginning 7-8 years ago began decreasing the number of cow tags--there were plenty of threads here with people complaining they didn't draw their cow tags that they had easily had drawn in the past.
Estimates in 2000 had an overwintering population of 320k plus elk in Colorado. Last I knew the estimate for the amount of available elk winter habitat for Colorado was 285-300k elk.
Casey
Not being married to any particular political party sure makes it a lot easier to look at the world more objectively... Having said that, MAGA.
