CO Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Commission Meeting June 1&2, 2022

[GrantK]

Great point.

My 2cents is that Colorado feels crowded... but you can get away from people, and I've never had problems finding elk in either the OTC, archery, or 5 day rifle seasons.

How much is not seeing some gomers from Michigan on the trail worth to you? I think that's the question CO residents have to ask themselves.

Lots of middle ground though...

I'd tend to agree with this, I hunt as many states as possible and it's hard to say there is anything even close to the number of people in the woods anywhere else (in the west, go to PA if you want real crowds) that said I've also never really struggled to find elk, I'd love to see it less crowded but I feel like NR's are not a significant part of the issue, does it really matter if the people camping right in the elk and screwing it up for everyone are gomers from Michigan or new transplants with 3 week old CO plates? even if you reduce the NR's in an OTC unit there are plenty of new residents to take their place.

I do think limiting NR's to a similar percentage as other states is a good idea, CO should not be every single elk hunter's backup plan, it should be similar to WY or MT in my opinion, as a NR you get to hunt here every 3-5 years, and you should expect maybe a slightly better quality hunt than you currently get...

Where I think CO is way off base is draw tags, CPW should at least update the tags that require enough points to be 80/20 or go in the hybrid draw on a yearly basis, is there any good reason to use data that's 15 years old to gauge demand now? I'm too lazy to dig up the exact numbers but there is a huge number of hunt codes where NR's have a higher percentage chance than they should, it seems to me that offering some tags in the middle ground would be appealing to a NR, right now there is a huge no man's land between about 2 points and something like 8 or 9 points, going to a general tag would maybe help weed out some points and reduce this gap? or at least make more tags draw for NR if you don't make all of them draw.

As to paying more, I'd happily pay a couple hundred dollars for a resident elk tag if I felt that I was getting real preference as a resident, and that my money was being used for hunting, not stocking fish or pit toilets, I'm not sure if it would work but maybe having to pony up a decent chunk would weed out some of the lowest common denominator types who reflect badly on hunters as a whole as well? probably wishful thinking as idiots with money seem to be everywhere now but worth trying?