What hunts are better today than 10 years ago?

Oak said:
I'm not sure I'd say the hunting conditions have improved, but Colorado bighorn sheep licenses have increased from 246 in 2011 to 319 in 2020, a nearly 30% increase. Those licenses are much more difficult to draw now, though.
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how many of those are ewe tags?
 
Very generalized response, but UT made a concerted decision to manage for quality and not opportunity. Since then there has been an improvement in herd health and mature animals harvested. It has come at the cost of opportunity, though. Ever decreasing habitat as well. So, not sure how you weigh that in terms of whether hunting has improved. Wolves encroaching from the North, and now from the East (thanks to CO). So, all that management probably goes down the tubes 5-10 years from now, anyhow.
 
Bambistew said:
Is this on public land or is it spite of landowners having some control over the hunting. I suppose it would be difficult for LO to manage a large area.

Cool that mule deer are expanding there. Sadly it seems that they are declining everywhere else.
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100% private land.

There just weren’t any deer here. I’ve lived on the same piece of property for just over 20 years and when we first moved here I think we saw 1 deer in the first 5 years. Then we saw a couple the next few years, then a couple each year and now I’ve counted as many as two dozen on my property at once.

They have been slowly opening more and more counties in this area as they have been expanding their range both from the west and east. Some monster mule deer have been taken as they open things up. I think most counties have a deer season now but the deer population is still growing.
 
npaden said:
100% private land.

There just weren’t any deer here. I’ve lived on the same piece of property for just over 20 years and when we first moved here I think we saw 1 deer in the first 5 years. Then we saw a couple the next few years, then a couple each year and now I’ve counted as many as two dozen on my property at once.

They have been slowly opening more and more counties in this area as they have been expanding their range both from the west and east. Some monster mule deer have been taken as they open things up. I think most counties have a deer season now but the deer population is still growing.
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That’s an encouraging report. I transplanted to Texas about 12 years ago. Love to hear things like this. Just wish there was a way to hunt these deer without buying property or leasing. Not complaining. It is what it is. I just haven’t been able to embrace Texas hunting. Guess I’m too stuck in my Western roots.
 
I think there are some train wrecks, like the decline in Colorado elk numbers, but there are some success stories. Mule deer numbers in Utah are at a 20 year high, same with bears.
 
I would argue in many cases that some areas may have been good before but now with social media and forums those secrets are less secrets so it appears an area that was poor or non existent 10-20 years ago is very popular now.
 
JLS said:
We've seen the same thing with pheasants. Current numbers pale in comparison to what they were 30-35 years ago.
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I can easily believe that. I haven't chased pheasants since my teenage years, but that was a lot of fun back then.

Another one I forgot is snow geese, they were overly plentiful and we spent a lot of time shooting them in our winter wheat fields 10-20 years ago but there seems to be even more of them now.
 
It was the late 90s before I even saw a whitetail deer in the area I grew up in. (Union County, NC ) and now they are everywhere. Most cities have urban areas. We had no hogs. Now feral hog hunting is legal and you can hunt at night with night vision and lights. Turkeys were pretty rare too but we have a lot of those now too.
 
JohnCushman said:
Turkeys
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Not in the Southeast. Arkansas wasn't an anomaly, it was just first. Others are following along and the game commissions are way behind the science on optimal season timing and bag limits. Georgia is probably next, especially considering they actually DECREASED harvest numbers during this spring when everywhere else set record numbers. Alabama is next after that with liberal bag limits and such an early season. Hopefully they listen to the scientists like Mike Chamberlain and others who are calling for them to change.
 
Regarding Wisconsin, deer, bear, turkey, and grouse are all worse than they were 10 years ago. We didn’t have an elk season 10 years ago and do now. But does that really count when 5 tags are available to 30,000 applicants? More of a lottery ticket than a hunt and they are already looking at cutting back the number of tags after a few years - which is likely overdue. The help of the RMEF is greatly appreciated on the reintroduction front.

Don’t hunt waterfowl so I can’t say. I am seeing more coyotes, foxes, and bobcats so I’d say that hunting is likely better here. And as others said, our wolf season is hopefully getting reinstated so that hunt will likely be better than it’s ever been for a few years.
 
I would say with the exception of grouse, everything I hunt is better than it was 10 years ago.
 
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