Curios here. Speaking of snow and elk.We had about a foot over the weekend. I think NW Colorado got a little more
Having just received the Colorado Outdoors Annual Preference Point Issue, I was anxious to see what the elk herd count numbers were since that winter kill last year. I have saved all the issues since 1990 or so.
Comparing the 2023 herd count in E-06 which covers most of the winter kill area to the 2024 herd count, it shows a
herd reduction of 1690 elk ( 40581 vs 38891) which is only about 5 %. The year before count shows a reduction of less than 300 elk. Last winter there was a prediction of 40% winter kill which would be about 16,232.
Can anyone shed some light on this. Am I looking at the right year.
It still shows in excess of 300,000 elk for the entire state
Well SS, the short answer is they lie... a LOT! The long and nuanced answer would require whisky and a fire, which in your case would be worth it. Splitting the difference and giving enough info while not needing to replace any computer keyboard keys is as follows.
I'm going to assume you know the actual physical activities of how the count is done in CO. Flying a section (1 mile) of a given habitat type and extrapolating that count to all subsequent sections of same habitat type. This is a TERRIBLE model for counting during a hard winter when they are very concentrated, it gets better in a winter when they are scattered in more borderline winter habitat. Just the details of this could be one fire/bottle worth of discussion.
Once you understand the mechanics of it... Then you watch how they actually DO it. Sitting on a knob with glasses and scope in -25 windy conditions isn't a very crowded activity I can assure you. You watch them haze and drive animals from one section to another paying special attention to antlered (if they have post hunt buck/doe ratios to make work) Until 3-10 miles later the exhausted animals go over the far hill Having been counted many times over.
as they haze the animals they get them all up and moving in their preferred direction for the next section to be counted then buzz off 5 miles and do the same there, returning to each "drive" after the animals have crossed to the next "to be counted" section.
Now they have raw data, severely flawed by the field work but data none the less. Then they can do the extrapolation to the square miles of lumped in habitat of similar nature. The trouble is the animals will ALWAYS have favourite draws, benches, and flats where for whatever reason and they know exactly what they are, whether it is out of the wind or better food or better sun exposure they will hold 90% of the animals. CPW claims falsely to do a random draw of these sections in 640 acre squares In practice they always fly the same favoured areas and then use their model to say that snow bound empty wastelands have the same # / square mile.
When you go to the meeting and say what you saw they simply say you are mistaken we dont do that, we know what we are doing you are just not capable of seeing the big picture, you dont even have a helicopter.
