wildwilderness's Link
However, new this year you can look at the draw stats and it will show you what is left going into the leftover draw- Look in the red box upper left for "Remaining balance"
http://cpw.state.co.us/Documents/Hunting/BigGame/Statistics/Deer/2015DeerDrawRecap.pdf
Still just floors me that archery tags are so limited in CO vs rifle tags.
Really does not make sense from a deer management perspective. The number of deer killed by bowhunters is next to nothing versus rifle hunters - especially for bucks - and there is more time to spread out the pressure over the longer season.
Not to mention that we have to share deer hunting with muzzle loaders and rifle hunters in a lot of units in the state. Yea, it is a wonder that we have any deer at all in Colorado with the DOW thinking it's OK to hunt them with guns from September through November! Hunting them in the rut with a bow would be good fun, but it would get in the way of the rifle hunters and someone might get lucky and kill a good buck that could have been alive for next year for the gun guys!
Eastern CO is mostly private. The few places with any public access will not have any tags left over.
Amazing that as limited as the numbers of deer are in Arizona, you can hunt most of the state on an OTC archery tag in September and the southern half for December and January. Only have to hunt with the rifle hunters in December and those tags are really limited so it is pretty empty out there that time of year.
Archery tags in CO should be OTC...With no rifle hunts on top of them!!
Now that all deer units are limited the quality of bucks has gotten national attention...up until the last few years when bad winters and the CWD slaughter put a kink in the deer population. I think Colo can be proud of it's muledeer compared to our neighboring states!
I certainly am not one to complain about the current number of archery deer tags! It generally doesn't take hardly any pref pts to draw all but a handful of archery deer units in the entire state and if you play your cards right it's easy to draw great deer tags every year! I can't imagine what the hills would be like with more deer plus OTC elk hunters!
One other consideration is the number of total archery, muzzy, and rifle deer tags in Colo is currently a fraction of what it was 10 years ago...due mostly to winterkill. Obviously when there are fewer deer there are fewer tags for everyone. With the great moisture and relatively mild winters the past 2 years the fawn crop ought to increase dramatically. Hopefully the trend continues with decent winters and tag quotas will increase for all!
The first few years of 100% draw were pretty good and I did notice more big mature bucks in the high country up till about the 4th year when the DOW increased the numbers of rifle tags significantly and added a 4th rifle season. Started to see fewer bucks and fewer mature bucks from that point on. Also started to see more bow hunters in places that they typically avoided prior to deer being draw only. A few of them actually started to actually get serious about deer hunting!
There are definitely fewer mature bucks around now in a number of areas in the high country than there were before they went to 100% draw.
Some of that is due to winter kill, but the shocker was that the DOW did not reduce the numbers of tags to account for the loss of the resource. They also did not reduce the amount of rifle pressure on the bucks - kept 3rd and 4th rifle seasons with the same numbers of tags available and even added new early rifle seasons in areas that have not recovered. The 2nd season does not have much of an impact on mature bucks as they are typically very tough to find at that time. Wouldn't hurt to bring back rifle season combined with the 1st elk season in that time frame either - tough hunting time for mature mulies in October! In order to increase the number of mature bucks, reduce the early and late rifle hunts.
The number of bucks killed by rifle hunters far outstrips the number of bucks killed by bowhunters. CDOW does a lot of statistics based on "hunter success" and claims that bowhunters have about the same success on deer as rifle hunters - this is very skewed as they lump does and bucks together for most of their numbers for bow hunting.
They should look at total #'s of bucks killed as a better metric. An even better would be based on mature bucks. Not sure I believe the statistics that they put out very much anyways as I do not see them doing any real counts or check stations to get solid data.
Colorado is just way out of kilter the number of rifle tags vs. the number of bow tags for deer. The rifle hunts in CO are pretty intense pressure since they are split up. The archery season is far less pressure because it is spread out. Additionally there are a lot of guys that will shoot the first doe they get a chance at. Yes, there are also a lot of immature bucks that get shot by bowhunters as well - probably about equal to the numbers that are shot by rifle hunters.
Deer population dynamics will typically show large numbers of 1 and 2-year old bucks with a rapid decline in numbers of bucks as they get older. They are fairly expendable and don't impact the overall population dynamics to take them out during the hunting season. Taking out does generally has the most impact on reducing populations over time. When you get up to the mature bucks (over 4 years old) there are very few of them in the total herd. The early and late rifle hunts take the lion's share of those mature bucks every year.
There is a reason there are very few big mule deer on most bowhunter's walls...
OTC archery deer tags would probably result in less pressure on the mature bucks in large portions of the state as a lot of hunters would not focus intently on one area over the whole season and would just consider a deer to be an opportunity rather than putting forth the effort to try for a mature buck. There are a few guys that will continue to be serious about getting a big buck, but doubt that you would see any measurable difference in the kill statistics for bow hunters with respect to the total number of bucks killed in any specific area. 98-99% of bow hunters will not put forth the effort it takes to get a good mulie buck above treeline with or without having to draw a tag.
