Stockgrowers disappointed over big game season structure

No limited rifle licensing in northern units
 
The Colorado Wildlife Commission approved the state’s big game hunting season structure for the next five years on Thursday, September 10 and it didn’t include much limited licensing for the Game Management Units (GMUs) in the northern part of Gunnison County.

The Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ Association waged an extended fight throughout the plan’s public comment period to have their nomination to limit the number of elk licenses issued for GMUs 54, 55 and 551 adopted as part of the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Five-Year Big Game Season Structure. That didn’t happen.
The organization contended the fight was largely a matter of self-preservation for the stockgrowers, as the over-population of elk is threatening valuable public rangeland and encroaching on ranches, where the cattle shouldn’t have to compete for food. Some in the local business community argued that limiting licenses would damage fall business in the valley.
In meetings before each of the county’s municipalities and other elected bodies, statistics were presented that showed limiting licenses does increase the number of elk harvested.
“If we don’t change the season structure now, we will have to live with whatever decision they make for the next five years, and the elk can do a lot of damage to the range in that time,” Stockgrowers’ Association president Sandy Guerrieri told the commissioners in January.
But that’s just what the stockgrowers will have to do now that the season structure for 2010 through 2014 was adopted, only placing a limit on the number of tags sold for the first and fourth rifle seasons in the area’s GMUs.
There were actually few substantial changes to the previously adopted five-year season structure.
A couple of the major changes that were made to the season structure were limiting the number of archery tags available for the first time, and requiring muzzle-loading hunters to specify which GMU they will be hunting in, instead of issuing the statewide tag previously available.
Critics of the Stockgrowers’ Association’s effort to limit elk licenses say there isn’t enough evidence of the success of limited licensing to support a plan that could take money from local merchants who rely on the stream of hunters who count on licenses available over the counter.
For the Stockgrowers’ Association’s Sandy Guerrieri, the Colorado Wildlife Commission’s (CWC) decision was disappointing, but it wasn’t a surprise. She said that the CWC’s ultimate decision was really made before the September meeting.
After a meeting of the CWC in August, commission chairman Brad Coors expressed some concern that the nomination for limited licensing, despite all of the hard work people had put into it, wasn’t the proper tool to manage overpopulated elk herds.
“The nomination sounded like it was dead on arrival. The vote was in no way, shape or form a surprise,” Guerrieri says. “From that point forward, the different entities worked to come up with an alternative that could have some mutual compromise.”
Besides placing a limit on the number of tags for archers as well as in the first and fourth season, the compromise plan allows for either sex licenses to be purchased for the second rifle season over the counter. The hope is that the choice will lead more hunters to take cow elk, which is a better way to manage the population.
The seasons will still march through their progression from archery to black powder and into four rifle seasons, led by an elk-only season and followed by three combination elk and deer seasons.
Randy Clark, owner of Trader’s Rendezvous, a store that caters to hunters in Gunnison, says that although he is disappointed the archery season went to draw only, he’s happy the rifle seasons stayed largely intact.
“We do generally get a lot of business from archers, so I’m a little disappointed in that part of it,” Clark says. “But all in all, I’m happy that the draw got voted down.”
He also pointed out that under the new plan, ranchers will have a little more control over elk that wander onto their property outside of the traditional hunting seasons with an option for private landowners to draw tags and hunt on their property through January 31.
While Guerrieri agrees that the new option will give ranchers some control, she warns that the option isn’t as good as it sounds and says many of the private land owners aren’t ranchers anymore.
“Since late season hunts have issues with public opinion, this will not be a way to get the elk herds to objective,” she says.
But for now, the old five-year plan is in place and archery season is turning into black powder season this weekend.
Guerrieri has been seeing elk on ranches in her part of the Ohio Creek Valley throughout the summer, instead of in the high country, but she knows that time will tell if the new plan helps change that.