Unit 36 early season

[Work2hunt]

Anyone hunt unit 36 last year? More precisely, in the wilderness area and during the combined muzzleloader and now early high country rifle mule deer hunt? Is it overly crowded? Was the weather an issue this last year?

I'm asking because the new harvest results were posted and the early season high country rifle mule deer success tanked. Down from the 3-yr average of 72 to 10%. I know that last year that the high country early rifle season was about a week later and coincided with muzzleloader so I'm wondering if the extra people, later date or if weather was the issue......thoughts?

Or maybe it was the way Colorado "estimates" there harvest results.

 

[Eric Bailey]

The issue is a very small sample size. There are only a few tags and harvest reporting is done by random sampling of those. Lots of hunts show a 0% success rate for individual years as a result. Best to look at a 3-5 year average especially when there are so few tags.

 

[Work2hunt]

The issue is a very small sample size. There are only a few tags and harvest reporting is done by random sampling of those. Lots of hunts show a 0% success rate for individual years as a result. Best to look at a 3-5 year average especially when there are so few tags.

I agree that this is a small sample size and understand that the harvest statistics are estimates and purely random so for all I know they didn't even talk to a hunter from that hunt and there math equation spit out 8% success.

Im hoping that the low success is from that and not the later season dates.

 

[RICMIC]

I quit applying for the ER tags when they changed the dates to overlap with the muzzle loader season. I would suspect some drop in the success also due to the transition to hard horn by that time. Minnesota has a good registration system where you can call, text, or e-mail to the F&W site and get a carcass tag number to put on your tag. You can also stop at any vendor that sells licenses to get the same. It's simple, and it ensures a very realistic number for game management purposes. It seems to be totally hit or miss as to whether or not I get a harvest survey when I hunt out west, so I always wonder how accurate the "success rates" can be. Kind of like political polling as of late.

 

[Work2hunt]

I quit applying for the ER tags when they changed the dates to overlap with the muzzle loader season. I would suspect some drop in the success also due to the transition to hard horn by that time. Minnesota has a good registration system where you can call, text, or e-mail to the F&W site and get a carcass tag number to put on your tag. You can also stop at any vendor that sells licenses to get the same. It's simple, and it ensures a very realistic number for game management purposes. It seems to be totally hit or miss as to whether or not I get a harvest survey when I hunt out west, so I always wonder how accurate the "success rates" can be. Kind of like political polling as of late.

With today's electronics it doesn't seem like it would be overly difficult to implement even and online check-in of harvested game vs there current method.

 

[Ridgerunner]

What I've heard is that the Colorado harvest reports are not reliable.


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[Work2hunt]

What I've heard is that the Colorado harvest reports are not reliable.


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I agree. After talking with both the game warden and biologist yesterday they both speculated it was due to there survey process rather than the lack of animals.