Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Quality Units / Point Creep

For this season Colorado charged only the application fee to apply instead of the entire cost of license plus the application fee.
Evidently it made a big difference.
Some units saw a 4x increase in applicants.
Short term result is that we see a tsunami of applicants coming into the system with 1 preference point next year.

I had heard that the idea had been floated to make some of the premium elk units similar to the moose and sheep draws, i.e. hybrid lottery.

To get back to the original part of the discussion, why did certain units become limited and why aren't more areas limited? I can't remember the %,but there is minimum and maximum number of elk units as expressed by population. I've spent the last twenty minutes trying to find what those numbers are, but can't. Anyway, the policy is to have some available populations in limited draw, and a larger amount over the counter. Now why did some units become the limited entry units? And why did 61 get separated from 62? I don't really know and don't have the history on it. I'm going to take a stab at it to think that the access in some places like 2, 10, 201, etc allowed for higher harvests than OTC could handle, so they became limited, and with limitation increased the quality of the elk. Has next to nothing to do with genetics.
But you have to understand the wildlife is managed for the people of the state. Limited entry units, in order to have the quality that is in such high demand, by definition has to exclude people, and that will primarily be the residents. Residents want to hunt every year. Yes they want quality, but they can't have both. Many families have a place they go back to year after year after year, harvest or not. When all deer hunting became limited 1999, something like 40,000 deer hunters were lost, never to return to deer hunting because they couldn't or wouldn't get on board with drawing a deer license. I personally think GMU 62 needs to be limited, at least in archery season, but it is the highest demand archery unit in the state. If we went OTC there in order to improve the quality and balance out the Uncompahgre Plateau, you'd have a lot of very upset people with 40 plus years of hunting the same spot. When 61 went limited in 1983, it pissed off lots of folks, but they could still hunt the plateau from their normal camp. I guess it was a compromise, but 35 years of learning about hunter behavior has taught the elk where they are safest, screwing the 62 side up further. A DAU should not have split management in my opinion, but we have it.

Casey 62 now has 16-18x the number of hunters in archery season compared to 61. For whatever that’s worth. The growth in archery in 62 should not continue unabated in my opinion. Limiting 62 could soak up a lot of limited entry hunt demand, but would displace a ton of people.

This year I spent 20 points to draw an elk tag in a premium high-early unit, I've been out there seven times since then, five backpack trips and two camping-hiking-driving trips. Several guys from the 'fire have offered advice and a couple guys have gone with me on backpacks trips. Still more to do and more to see. Going on another trip this weekend with my grandson. I'll probably pretty much live in my trailer there starting in mid-September.
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Supply and demand.

Was at the DOW office the other day regarding a tag and heard a guy at the counter bitchin about never drawing a sheep tag. Seriously? We have a declining sheep herd and the number of applicants just tripled. Quit bitchin, save money, and hunt dall sheep in Canada. Told him that and he mumbled about his dream of hunting sheep in his home state. Can't fix stupid.

Another fix? Make elk tags for non-residents $5,000 in units taking more than 10 points, make them $1,000 for residents. That'll start leaning things up a little. If it doesn't, make them $10,000 for non-residents and $5,000 for residents. Helluva deal to hunt big elk really.

Oh yes, reminds me of the King's deer, and Sherwood Forest!!