I agree about the intelligence of a 2 1/2 year old bull.
I think we hunt some of the same general areas. My experience has been that raghorns are still with the cows the last week of October. The mature bulls have already drifted away to their post rut areas and are generally in the higher...
Serious question. Do you think that the amount of raghorn bull elk that get killed first week of the season because they are still with the cows will stay the same or be less if elk opener is bumped back to the first week of November?
@Carnage2011 raises a good point about defining what success/improvement looks like to track whether a new season structure is better than the current one.
Speaking personally, I think that it’s very difficult to define “optimal” in an opportunity state like MT where general units are not...
I think the biggest takeaway I have is that FWP seems to project that they have all the data they need for their questions. They just don’t have the hard data (or it isn’t made available) to answer any questions other than the ones they’re asking.
The number of boots on the ground is always pretty squishy. I have the 2021 numbers and if I run the license totals figuring that the elk tags were all carried
by a hunter with a deer tag it comes out to 167,200 resident hunters.
There were also 49,000 NR deer and elk tags sold that year...
I don’t think anyone is going to disagree that the best biological approach to allocating deer tags is that a certain number of tags are issued based on numbers of deer, hunter success, and range conditions. That would be some form of LE.
However, LE across the state would mean that some...
Yes. This. Having to fill in the gaps makes it difficult to follow the logic.
Most folks have only so much vacation time to dedicate to hunting. The further out the different choices of what can be hunted are spaced, by default less animal are killed as targets of opportunity.
I really...
So, obviously as humans we all tend to be biased and are also influenced by folks we respect to trend one way or another with our conclusions when we don’t have direct knowledge of a situation.
As someone who doesn’t have knowledge of the situation I am dependent on accurate information to...