Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Its official, hunting is dying..

Spotshooter, just get the facts . Outfitters have lost some of their influence on WG&F.
I'm a DIY hunter as well.
Winter kill was very rough in some areas, outfitters do not set season quotas or have that much influence unless they can show concrete numbers to back their "facts".
Application numbers have gone through the roof last few years, pronghorn is a very good starter hunt for folks coming out west first time, tell your friends to look at you and other NR for the pain in drawing tags. Residents are also picking up more pronghorn tags for the meat.
The only areas that folks are paying outfitters for pronghorn hunts are the areas with little to no public access. When residents start getting the tags we are allotted in our 1st draw it takes away form the tags available for the NR draw, left over tags after our draw are swept into the NR draw which expands the quota for NR.
Forums just like this are driving the application increase and if we get a significant winter kill, it greatly affects tag quotas. As does poor fawn recruitment .

Take the time to listen sometime to the season setting meetings around the state, you'll get the facts on tag quotas and have a leg up on which areas may have decreased in tags. The meeting are in April usually and online.

I would take my info from a resident, not a NR with sour grapes.

I guess I have spent a couple hundred thousand on hunting as a NR over the last 50 years between tags and hunts Col, Id ,Wyo, NM, Tx , WA, Mt and Alaska some thruout Canada too. I won't give any of them a fu@$ing cent anymore! Residents cried to raise fees and cut tags for NR then ran the prices of hunts thru the roof for what was left. A lot of mom and pop shops suffered because of those foolish demands.
Today I watch underfunded game depts. try to survive on those resident fees and just laugh!!!!!

It seems to me that there are a lot of checklist hunters now days. So few people actually HAVE to hunt that our numbers are getting smaller. When I was a kid, we HAD to hunt to make ends meet. No deer or elk meant VERY little meat all winter.

Spotshooter -

I understand the frustration. When it comes to WY antelope, we're DIY doe, public land/Walk-In Area hunters except when we can get permission for private. (If the landowners want trespass fees, we pass - but we give them $50 for each doe we take.) Before applying fir our WY tags we study the draw results from previous years, just as we do for our Colorado tags. Our success rate in the WY antelope draw this year was 71%. Last year it was 100%. (In my previous post I stated we drew 5 of 6. That was incorrect, as Daughter #1 informed me she had applied for two and got one. We got 5 of 7. My error.)

Can't say what is going on with buck tags in WY as we don't apply for them. Here in Colorado we bombed as a group trying to get vow tags on a Ranching For Wildlife ranch that had leftover tags last year. The applications for that hunt were way up and they were gone in the first draw. Still, we have 7 cow elk tags for 4 hunters, all from the second draw (100% success) and subsequent leftovers (of which there were thousands). Four of those tags are for 3rd Rifle, three are for 4th Rifle. Colorado still has unlimited bull tags for those that want antlers.

That was my first thought too. Haven't drawn in WY in years.

Maybe next year.

Got me wondering how the actual number of licenses and applications is trending here in AZ. There sure seems to be a LOT of hunters.

App numbers were up not down. And as I stated when more residents put in for antelope it takes those Leftover Tags out of the NR draw. Days of NR welfare are over in Wyoming with your draw coming after seasons and quotas are set.

Funny, our WG&F is doing just fine, looking forward to NR quotas going down to 10% and hoping the increase in tags gets me another chance at a moose.

https://www.wyomingnewsnow.tv/2020/07/21/more-residents-applying-for-hunting-licenses-in-2020/

Let me answer from the other side of the Big Muddy.

My sons love to hunt. We live in Ohio, but do all our hunting in Kentucky, because that's were we found cheap land. We hunt turkey and whitetail. We are willing to pay the nonres fees, but few of their friends feel they can afford it. There is a huge feeling of "why bother?" among their generation.

We have an elk draw every year, but I stopped applying, because non-res chances of winning were about zilch. There is an at-large tag for out-of-zone elk, but it costs nearly $400 to hunt elk on your own land.

Going out West? I've given up on elk. I tried a business trip to Denver once and found out altitude and me don't mix. I'm probably too old and fat as well. The biggest drawbacks as we see it? Unavailability of tags, their cost, and the low chance of success-- compared to what we can do at home.

I would NOT go that FAR.

I'm NOT talking about Wyo, Co, Montana, or Id.

I've been "reading" the last few years that the number of YOUNG hunters IS decreasing.

I can't prove or disprove. IF it's true, I'm not surprised. The TECH age or Inet age is here. There are more 'net' games,
and social media venues than I can count. I'm disappointed in the affect those have on the younger generations.
They (generally) are not experiencing the outdoors, nature, beauty, and hunting.

That leads to more of the ANTI thingS.

I'm NOT opposed to Conservation but AM opposed to PRESERVATION. There IS a diff and many don't get it.

Jerry

Michigans DNR is changing the regs all the time , hard to keep track of them! I know 7 hunters that have quit since the batting ban, 5 were from Ohio, cant bring the deer back hole any more! the other 2 are older, and said its just not worth it anymore! there selling a lot of doe tags this year, I should say trying to sell them. People are afraid that the state will shut down again, by hunting season! I think the bitch will close it again!

[ They learned, though, and we'll never see a grizzly season in the lower 48.[/quote]


and here i thought it was open all year round. SSS

No extra tags in Idaho. Non residents everywhere and it’s just archery season. Usually try to buy a leftover whitetail tag. Fish and Game sold every tag they had.

I’d be happy to pay more for a resident license and tag if it meant thinning of the non resident herd.

Anyone that thinks hunting is "dying" has never been on public land in the west on opening day of elk season.

No drop off around here..

Apparently folks didn't watch the video, or know I was being sarcastic.

Hunting is far from dead, the application numbers show it, as does the numbers of people out in the field.

But the Hunting preachers will tell you different...

As an easterner, I believe Wolf Hunting would be a challenge & also a reward if it was made more possible.

We have wolf hunting now in Wyoming and some areas they are predators, no license needed to hunt them.

Handy, most of these folks probably don't know how to click the link.

It amazes me how the residents hate non residents but if they want to go after something not in their state it’s ok. Most people would love to hunt elk or moose but can not afford it. I went to Wyoming once elk hunting. The wilderness areas that we all own was off limits without a guide. They claimed it was unsafe but a damn earth muffin with just ten years runners could go anywhere he wanted. Pisses me off. Edk

Depends on where you are, probably.

I have never seen a moose hunter at my remote cabin,15 miles up a tributary from the major river until this year. In that 15 miles there were maybe a dozen camps this year over the space of 3 weeks, and we had 7 boats come booming by the cabin. Coming out, 5 days before season's end, there were another half dozen "hunt from boats" that we passed on the lower 3 miles, which amused me.

We have been running that river for over 40 years, and from the boat, in all that time, I have seen exactly 4 moose up on the 20' high banks, from the boat.. Almost rammed a cow and twins once time (posted about before), and 2 years ago, jumped a nice bull laying on a gravel bar next to the river on a hot June or July day. We tried for him in season and he was coming in until Honey Half Lab "warned" us with a soft yip.

Wife saw a bull one other time, as I was watching the river, driving... We did see a cow with twins in the oxbow behind our cabin this trip, but they were well off the river itself. Scouted several old oxbows/sloughs this trip- will maybe hunt them sans dogs next year.

True, we had high water on a normally more shallow/narrow problematic river. I had to cut 2 trees out on the way up, and one on lower water 3 weeks later between mouth and cabin. It gets worse above my cabin.

2 years back, we went exploring upriver as there had been some big burns up there 10-15 years ago, making I supposed then for good moose habitat. We were blocked by a big log jam in a bluff gorge several miles upriver - which I posted about...

Apparently eyes in the sky also noticed my supposition as true...

The log jam is apparently still there, because all those bozos came booming back down river an hour or two later. :}

Just wish they wouldn't wake gallons of water into my boat as they go by on full throttle. I'm 72, but if I was at least 10 years younger, I'd find a way around that jam (I have it figured, I think, sans TNT, but would need a little more investigation and some doing /equipment...).....those other fuggers are apparently too lazy/dumb. Or too smart.... And I'm not about to open it up for a bunch of other people with their $20-40,000 boats anyway.

Wife was hot to shoot a moose herself, and wants some moose meat- we have been several years without any. With 2 caribou, 30 salmon, and some halibut in the freezer, I wasn't all that enthusiastic, but went through the motions for her anyway . "Hunting" with two dogs who warn of "things out there!" (twice!) doesn't bode well for success, but we did have a cow (I think) come noisily across the river 30 yards from the tent in the dead of night after I'd called before dark. No antler sounds anyway, and that bank brush is thick there! Still, it's amazing how 60" bulls can come thru thick brush, never making a sound!

Given the above, I didn't have all that much fire in the belly. I had to catch myself several times to keep from slipping into the mode...... A moose is a lot of work, and we already had plenty groceries for just the two of us. We would have had to buy another freezer.

Top shelf left is halibut, right is caribou polish sausage freshly made from '19 kills.
2nd down is salmon fillets
third down, left box is freshly smoked '19 salmon, more polish sausage as above, right box and blue and white door packages are freshly made caribou ('19) breakfast sausage.
Left milk crate is '20 caribou roasts and stew, right one is steaks and stew from two cows we killed this year

Bottom shelf is ground '20 caribou.

We be livin' alright off the hunt.