KHunter

Just a quick update. Hunted the entire 2 week season I posted about above Oct 8-21 except opening day. Tried sitting in a blind by water and salt, and simply still hunting. Pulled out all the stops in terms of effort to no avail... Saw a group of bulls right on the boundary one day. Of the 10 hunters a guy I was hunting with one day and he and I were also the ONLY ones to even see a cow and we were the only ones who reported seeing a bull. Was in contact with 9 of 10 hunters througout 5e hunt. Problem was the herd of cows/calves we saw was 200 darn yrds from a blind we sat and it was too dark too see and we were walking to the truck and walked up with 20 yrds of them before they bolted from a water puddle (and gave me a mini heart attack as I did not know they were there) in a 2-track they were drinking from instead of at our waterhole we sat for the entire day. ouch. Got about as skunked as you could get. Only 3 of 10 hunters were still hunting on the last couple days. Seven gave up or just did not have to time. With no animal sightings the motivations for same waned pretty quick. Final score: 10 cow hunters and zero kills and zero shots. And almost zero sightings. A review of a bunch of game cams from a bunch of waterholes yielded exactly one year old bull. Why was it to terrible lat August? We had two snows, including the 2nd day of season. Seems that moisture kept them from leaving the park for the most part. Walked miles in the snow and bp ever cut racks aside from the cow/calf group we walked up on. I can still hear that stampede for “miles” through the timber. LOL, no actually not even funny after almost a year. Tough hunt! Bad luck for sure for all 10 hunters but will apply again. Did not this year cuz i drew TWO moose tags and a great NM Antelope to sty busy with. All archery hunts.

Ended up being the Oct 8-21 cow bison hunt I drew. I should see first hand if there is any discernable impact on the kaibab bison hunt from the cull since that is smack in middle of the cull period. Guessing not a lot of impact since it is actually just a dozen or so bison to be culled a couple per week.

No WT but drew cow bison Oct 8th hunt on the Kaibab. A fun challenge with a bow I have been hoping for since forever, basically.

And Randy did exactly that in great detail, yesterday. I hope it is OK to post a link here as I do not want to break CWT rules but seems relevant. My view is it defuses and de energizes the whole notion of game and fish paying him or these personalities begging for the work and the money. Even though the guy prodding for answers was and is a total douche, Randy calmly and clearly laid it all out there in a response. The douche bag stirring the pot joined that site just yesterday for the sole purpose of stirring the pot and looked a fool in the process. Maybe that person went over there from CWT but who knows as they never identified themselves, What I learned is the G&F and particularly tourism arms (since G&F are always short of funds) of state governments hire media communications and PR firms to come up with campaigns to boost revenue. It is those firms that invite and hire outdoors focused companies with the audience reach, and ready made media content, to get out messaging. And the funds are a drop in the bucket of what these outdoors oriented business bring in as revenue. I am not some fanboy of any of the guys with hunting shows, and watch almost none of them, ever, but this whole topic just seems much ado about nothing. Nobody is getting rich promoting for game and fish departments or tourism departments, except possibly the PR communication firms leading the design and implementation of marketing campaigns, and if they are I bet the added revenue to state coffers makes up for it in spades or it would be unsustainable and would stop?

Now that is a bunch of hooey. Conspiracy theory absent a shred of credibility. A mighty big jump to assume the draw is rigged. Come on now.

What do y'all think the impact of the 12 hunter (plus team of helpers) cull inside the GCNP will be on Kaibab cow bison hunters for the Oct 8-21 and Oct 29 through Dec 31 seasons? Cull is Sept 20-Oct 29 As a rookie bison hunter who just drew one of those two fall tags I could see potential positive and negatives. Imagine 400 bison streaming into the forest and camping out to avoid the inside park hunters, LOL. Gotta dream. KHunter

thanks, hoping for dry... Have sure learned a lot on this site already as relates to folks who chose to do it their own way versus joining the outfitter’s hunting coop. Such a unique hunt opportunity.

Nice write up! Drew that tag as a non resident for this year, Oct. 8-21 or the Oct 29 to Dec 31 season. should know which in a week. Be happy to hear thoughts from experienced folks for those later hunts, presuming there may be seasonal differences?