Cries of “wait ’til next year” typically are the late November mantra of losing football teams. Add the voices of Colorado big-game hunters to the chorus.
Thing is, frustrated hunters actually may have something tangible to shout about. Frustrated by hot, dry conditions during the recently concluded seasons, they can expect to find more and bigger deer and elk in their sights when the 2008 hunt begins. They can anticipate more of the most desirable licenses as well.
As so often is the case in outdoor endeavors, the wild card for the recently completed regular season was weather. Following a successful elk- only opening session and the early promise of a snowstorm for the second segment, Colorado’s high country went dry for the two concluding sessions, a condition that continues today.
“I’ve been here in Leadville 30 years and this is the driest season I’ve ever seen,” said district wildlife manager Tom Martin. “It’s hard to believe, really.”
Martin described a situation all too common during what should have been the meat of the hunt: Elk scattered in small groups in dense timber at high elevation near timberline.
“And it was dusty,” he said. “That was the worst of it.”
The third-season experience of Bailey resident Michael Graves was all too typical. Joining six companions in a traditional camp in Unit 81 southwest of Monte Vista, Graves hunted the full seven days and found one bull elk, that below the legal four-point requirement.
“We got zero animals and I didn’t see a single one hanging in any other camp,” Graves lamented.
These and other observations are purely anecdotal; the full story won’t be known until the Colorado Division of Wildlife completes its extensive harvest survey in a couple months. But no one expects anything close to the 2006 result, particularly for elk.
“The general theory is that the harvest is down. That makes sense,” said Rick Kahn, DOW’s state big- game manager.
Kahn scotched any notion that this lagging result could prompt wildlife officials to declare some late add-on hunt to achieve the desired balance of the elk herd.
“I don’t think there’ll be any such recommendations to the Wildlife Commission. We’re not in a situation where it’s a dire deal.”
Chalk it up as one of those periodic ebb-and-flow conditions that mark the state’s big-game hunts.
“That’s a pattern. Boom years followed by busts and then booms again,” said Scott Wait, principal biologist for the Southwest Region.
This year’s damage done, Wait chose the optimist’s view.
“I always look forward to next year and now I’ll look forward even more,” he said. “There’ll be a lot of good bulls and bucks left over, and my observation is that we can expect more licenses next season.”
Most game managers believe success lagged badly during the third and fourth segments because hunters and elk seldom found common ground. Absent snow and cold, animals remained at higher elevation while hunters, creatures of habit, didn’t go up to find them.
“Particularly in the fourth season, elk weren’t where you’d expect them,” said Ron Velarde, manager of the Northwest Region, which contains Colorado’s highest concentration of elk.
“People who hunt the Meeker area were afraid to go up high in the fourth season because if it snowed, they’d have their trailers stuck up there all winter.”
They shouldn’t have worried. The continuing drought cast a pall throughout the hunt, extending even to deer enthusiasts who had hoped to capitalize on a booming population spiked with rousing numbers of desirable bucks.
“Deer hunting was surprisingly slow throughout the season and that’s hard to figure,” Wait said of the southwest hunt.
Wait opined that the early snow event prompted animals to begin moving downslope, a migration that ultimately stalled in a transition zone.
“That’s typically thick cover, steeper and harder to hunt,” he said.
If Wait’s larger theory of famine and feast proves true, then hunters — unlike many football fans — indeed can foresee better times ahead.
