Second and third rifle seasons shortened from 9 days to 7.
Possibly fewer either sex tags .
JSW's Link
Not bashing....just trying to understand what the position is.
I'm with you, Pav. Wish I would have burned those points earlier, now.
What people say is we are putting to much pressure on the elk, we hunt them to long, we need to give them a break, we need more elk, and to grow the herd. No one believes CPW when they say we have 287,000 elk.
But then the reality pf what they propose may be if they adopt shorter seasons, rifle hunters get fewer days afield, but they kill more elk because they all returned to areas with higher vulnerabilty.
The whole conversation is really odd to me.
The breaks between were due to a horrible survey question. The Question stated should be try to have longer breaks between seasons. The answer for a majority of hunters was yes. When you ask CPW why longer breaks, they say because hunters supported in the survey.
However the question did not ask would you favor longer breaks if it meant shorter seasons and hunting deer significantly later into the season.
Archery Elk Season should be Sept. 1. Only reason it is not is because that is when bear season starts. WTH? Why does that matter?
Archery Deer in this state west of I25 is hard enough with the current dates, moving it back will make it even worse.
I am really pissed as hunters of this state agreed to support the Future Generations tag price increase under the promise of a focus of recruitment and retention. As mentioned cutting a weekend will kill youth recruitment.
My family is dedicated to hunting, but I also expect my kids to be in school and to fulfill their commitments. Under the current 2 weekend rifle seasons, We can sneak in 5 days of hunting by taking a monday off and hunting the weekends.
Monday is a huge day for us and many others we know. Monday is never a test day, monday is never a game day, they never schedule dances on monday, band concerts, etc. With the new schedule my kids will be forced to choose hunting or school. I hate the issue but hunting will not likely get them scholarships etc.
If you think animals will move in a couple days you are a fool. The ranching for wildlife in the NW will hold elk for 2-3 months after the rifle seasons ended with the ranches still hunting.
1st and 3rd season will always start on a Saturday and 2nd and 4th will always start on a Wednesday.
There will also be less of a break between archery and first rifle every year
And the rifles seasons being pushed back means more mature bucks will get killed. Our deer quality is gonna go Down
They already hammer the deer enough with the current dates
Later rifle dates are gonna be ridiculous in 2021, and then there'll be a noticeable decline in big deer after the army gets after them the last week of November.
The CPW issued some information concerning the spread of CWD within the mule and WT deer herds and that increased spread seems to coincide with the wandering of mature bucks that may have CWD, to locate does.
I do not know if this "information" may be a/one reason to develop a later rifle deer season to harvest more mature bucks and trying to slow down the CWD spread, but something to ponder and question.
What do you science guys think? my best, Paul
These arent new seasons, as they have been in place for several years.
Does will get bred. If not on the first estrous cycle, they will come in again after about a month. That will repeat for up to 4 months.
Fewer bucks leads to later season breeding. Later breeding is much more stressful for the bucks and and the fawns can be born too late to survive their first winter. Vicious cycle that, over a few years, will result in much lower deer herd numbers.
If a fork horn is the only buck that’s left, he will keep moving from doe group to doe group to get them all bred. If he contracts CWD from one of the does in one bunch of does, he will then potentially spread it to all the subsequent doe groups he comes in contact with.
Killing off more bucks will cause the remaining few bucks to travel farther to find and breed does, potentially spreading CWD even more due to increased interaction with different doe groups that may be infectious.
CPw has this one wrong and it will be a very, very long time before the deer herd recovers. If ever.
That’s a Tuesday next year.
