Part of playing the game imo.
In the name of putting more elk on the mountain (or pronghorn on the prairie, or mule deer on some rock-choked hellhole), I wish CO would do a better job of opening private lands to public access. Seems like several other western states-- Montana and New Mexico-- do a much better job of opening access. Another way to clear out cached points would be to make those low/no point hunts more attractive to hunters.
The argument is the tags suck because most hunters, like you and I, can't get onto the private to hunt where the animals are piled up. There are plenty of animals in the units I'm thinking of, just very limited ways to get at them. In five days of third rifle for elk this year, saw 250ish head of elk camped around a center pivot on private and a grand total of one cow on public. Incentivizing private landowners to open access can make those tags a lot less sucky.
I understand your frustration about how this appears, but it really was simply an issue of timing and manpower. If those units had gone 100% limited for elk, then 20% of the licenses would have gone to the LPP. However, the change was not approved until the January Commission meeting, and the LLP registration deadline for 2024 was December 1, 2023. And all registrations submitted are audited and verified by the local DWM for compliance with eligibility requirements of the program before approval.
Yeah I do get that and understand that's what they have to do per the draw rules. But even that just boils down to, "we don't have time to make sure landowners get preference over public land hunters". And I know the LPP program is there so landowners will keep habitat for the elk and I support that. It is just frustrating. I'm also just curious, since they are already considering limiting NR OTC in the state why didn't they say no NR otc in those units. I admit I don't know the statistics, so maybe it is better this way. It just makes me a little suspicious.
I agree 100% and although I've enjoyed many OTC hunts in CO this is just another reason to do away with OTC, it worked until it didn't.
Here we go again....
No offense but 28 lope points is insane. You could have had about 8 good archery or 4 good rifle hunts by now. There isn’t an antelope unit in CO right now where there are a bunch of 80” bucks frolicking around no matter how many points it takes.
Of course I’ve known that for years, but I saved them for a few reasons. First, the season dates never overlapped my other hunts well for combos. Plus I spread out preference point states as opposed to bonus, to be assured I could always have at least one hunt/year I knew I could draw. I don’t do this with most my apps. And thirdly, it’s a little insurance against the rampant bait-n-switching practices states like to do.
