2013 elk recomendations

[bowhunter81]

Flatlander, your name says it all for me. You live down in the valley and probably get in the woods once or twice a year and have a love affair for the department just like many others from there. You think they are just working so hard to get us the best hunting possible and that they could never be wrong with any decision they make because they are the Game and Fish department. I'm sure in you're head it has absolutely nothing to do with money right? Just great game management and all that..and how do I know? Because when 400 inch bulls come from units that never produce 400 inch bulls and knowing many hunters that were out there everyday and talking to the game warden about bulls killed in the area you hear about things like that. Anyone with a 400 inch bull is gonna show it off. Being from such a small town right in the middle of 4B and 3C you eventually hear about it. Unlike flatlanders who don't know anything about the hunting or quality of bulls in the areas up north. You're happy getting your cow tags and bull tags and kill 300 inch bulls. The majority of us up here aren't.

 

You are right. I don't know why they bother paying WM's. What we ought to do is just have you and your buddies get together at the Red Onion eat some monster burgers and just tell the rest of us ignorant city slickers how many tags there should be. Then everything would be fixed, 400" bulls would abound, everyone could draw a tag, your arteries would be clogged, the elk would be saved from extinction, and there would be peace in the middle east. Problem solved.

 

Packer - You better start looking for a new gig.

Your on to something.....Except for the middle east, I would turn it to glass. Other than that, yeah. We finally agree.

[bowhunter81]

+1

[AverageJoe]

Typicsl white mountain boys! keep telling your lies and dreaming of state high school football championships. Lol! God help us if the game and fish let you guys decide how AnYTHING should be run.

[Alpinebullwinkle]

I live in Alpine and have spent the majority of my weekends in unit #27 since the early 1970's. Usually spend over 150 days a year enjoying our national forest (in some rather remote areas) and have participated in some form in almost all bull hunts in the unit that entire period of time. So I feel compelled to add my 2 cents worth in this interesting conversation.

 

First I would like to congratulate Aaron for sharing his input on this forum. I would also like to congratulate the AGF Department for their increased efforts to communicate with their stakeholders. Admittedly I share some of the concerns that have been previously shared and have voiced my opinion discretely in the past with them. But I do realize that with so many diverse stakeholders it is impossible for AGF to please everyone. AGF has definitely made a better effort with their stakeholders in recent years and one great example is many of the game wardens have joined our outdoor clubs and are very active supporting our activities. This is a very positive change from years ago IMHO.

 

With respect to unit #27 elk herd dynamics the herd numbers peaked around 1999. IMHO the wolf reintroduction program and excessive cow elk permits have resulted in the current herd size being about 1/2 of the 1999 levels. I wish the August cow hunts would be totally eliminated because often the survival of a less than two month old calf from the previous October conception is jeopardized due to the high predator population and minus the protection of the mother. In those cases the herd is often reduced by two when the mother is harvested in August. To balance the bull cow ratio that Aaron referenced as a goal I would rather see an increase in cow survival and herd size although you will never hear me complain about more bull hunting opportunities. I would like to see the AGF allow the herd size to approach at least 75% of what we had in 1999. That would allow more food for the wolf reintroduction program (which I am strongly against), but would also ultimately allow more overall hunting opportunity. I know the herd size has been purposely reduced to appease the ranchers but with the normal dry cycles of our Arizona desert weather patterns ranching seems like it was always hit or miss dependent on those weather cycles. My family and friends that visit Alpine miss seeing the large herds that used to sometimes exceed 200 in the 1990's. Now if we view a large herd it almost never exceeds 60.

 

Additionally I have found numerous carcasses of elk that obviously burned up in the Wallow Fire. Only one has been a bull and over 20 were cows which seems logical to me that the cows that were dropping their calves at the time of the fire would have taken a worse beating from the fire. I agree with Aaron that we do have a shortage of cows compared to years past based on what I see during the hunts and complaints from the cow hunters. I am most concerned about the calf survival rate that I have viewed which has been about 20% or less at least the last 5 years. I remember on good years seeing close to a 50% rate of survival. This year was an unpleasant surprise as I expected a 50% or better survival rate due to the optimum nutrients left from the fire. Not so unfortunately which suggests to me that predators are a more significant problem than possibly acknowledged. With these nutrients and strategic rainfall we received, this year should have been the best calf crop ever but unfortunately not so.

 

In years past I have proposed to AGF that they could easily increase hunter opportunity for the late bull unit #27 without negatively effecting the herd dynamics. With the normally inclement weather and now that the hunt is one week later, lessor road access than other units should allow more hunters an opportunity at this time of the year. Granted success rate will be much lower and more hunter confrontations due to the limited road access but more hunting opportunity can be achieved at that time if hunters are willing to put up with a few other sacrifices of comfort and get out of their trucks for short hikes.

 

With respect to AGF possibly being more focused on managing $$$ rather than wildlife well I guess I have made that accusation in years past as well. After much consideration I realized due to the limited revenue streams that AGF does need to do a good job of managing $$$ if they are to optimize their success managing our wildlife. Having said that I have less sympathy since they chose to support the rediculous wolf reintroduction program. That just suggests to me that they are not concerned so much about the cashflow drain from that program and devasting impact it has taken on our elk herd size. When I suggested to AGF that us hunters have probably lost about 40% of our elk tags in unit #27 due to the wolf program I did get some acknowledgement from some department officials. The wolf program is a failure, waste of money and needs to be discontinued in my opinion. The root cause for the extinction of the wolf in our area has only worsened. Besides the grey wolf was not native to our area!! The frivoulous spending on this program needs to stop.

 

Aaron I have talked to the USFS about their admitted desire to reduce the elk herd due to their concerns of negative elk impact on aspen trees. I've encouraged them to look at the areas around Hannigan Meadows where the previous Steeple, KP and Thomas fires have burned the last 10 years. The aspen are so thick that hunters and hikers have a difficult time walking thru the former burned areas. There also happens to be high concentrations of elk in these areas. We do not have to reduce the elk herd to save the aspen trees......unfortunately the Wallow Fire addressed that issue last year. There will never be enough elk to make a dent in all the new growth aspen trees that propagated due to the fire!!

 

Please we do not need to "stabilize the elk herd" that has already been reduced by 50% from the high point of the late 1990's. An increased herd size is good for businesses in the area, hunters, viewing and even the few people that support the wolves. Also as hunters on this forum I recommend that we don't cherry pick different management techniques but do focus on the overall game management strategies that can really make a difference for all.

 

Just some food for thought for Aaron and Steve and other stakeholders to consider....... from an old geezer that is really passionate about unit #27.

[coues krazy]

Just another statement from dumb uneducated " white mountain boys". Great post Bullwinkle. I worked all summer fixing roads and pipeline on the shultz fire area. I can tell you elk dont care about aspens when they have as much greens as they had because of that fire. Elk are grazers, not browsers like deer. The new aspens are about 3-6' tall and elk wont touch them. Not an expert, but I would bet unit one could hold more elk than in the past because of that fire. JMO

[Packer]

I will try to answer some of the questions that have come up, although my answers will be somewhat brief as I aleady did this once and lost it when i hit the wrong button .

 

I have a couple of questions:

 

-Is there a possibility of stratifying the hunts more to have less people in the field at once which would help make it more enjoyable for those that would like to have fewer people to contend with? For example, cow hunts that don’t coincide with a trophy bull hunt? Or, reducing the number of tags per hunt, allowin g more hunts, but having shorter hunts to still allow for the tag allocation to be met?

Currently hunt length as well as start dates are dictated by the hunt guidelines. This can definatley be changed just during that process which is in place until 2014. This may be a good option for some but I know alot of guys like to hunt them for a full two weeks. As for moving the cow hunt the problem we run into is where to put it as we end up running out or weekend in a year to put in anywhere else. Also those who draw it still like the experience of hunting during the rut.

 

- On your guess, what number of people would be needed at a dept meeting to actually sway recommendations? You say only 5 people may show up, which doesn’t show a great concern…. I would say that the dept needs to extend its method of receiving input rather than just at face to face meetings. The world is changing in communication purposes and just because folks do not show up at a meeting does not mean that they do not have concern. This is fact.

I don't have an answer for this as I don't know how many people or comments it would take to change the direction of the department. I believe that comments can also be recieved via email. Another option is to email the commissioners who ultimately dictate the direction of the department. As for other communication methods I am not the person to answer that as I am definately out of touch.

 

Another question is not "why", rather “how” can you accommodate so many folks in the field and expect them to have a quality hunt with the tag increases? For example, unit 22 does not have the room to hold the amount of tags that are recommended for people to have hunting opportunities with fewer people. Take for example the muzzleloader hunt during the rut, 40 tags last year, raise it to 50 this year. Yet, the huntable area and elk habitat for 22 S is ridiculously smaller than units that have a substantial amount of elk habitat and their rut hunts have fewer tags allocated… That doesn’t make sense, especially when other areas have a larger population of animals.

This is a tough question. One of the hard parts of this question is the word "quality". To some if there is another hunter in the unit we ruin the hunt and to others they just want to go and if they are in the field it is quality time. It goes the same for fishing I like to fish in remote streams where there are no other people and alot of others like to fish at big lake with thousands of others shoulder to shoulder. They catch one big fish and they are happy. To me that is not a "quality" experience but there are definately more people who think it is than not. I think another issue is people get locked into "their" unit and look for an experience they want there. We have a vast state and if a guy wants to get away from people there are hunts and places to do that. Hunters just need to be a little more flexible and be willing to try new areas to get the experience they want as we cannot cater to each hunter in each unit. Besided what would a unit 10 archery hunt be without having to fight over a waterhole.

 

- Why not break the numbers down with fewer hunters in the field at once? Give out more hunts to hunt on, which would increase the draw results… With the same number of tags that you want to allocate, the harvest objective would be met, just over more hunts?

Again this comes down to not having any more weekends in the year. We already have a hunt almost every weekend from August through December.

 

- There are things that the dept are doing well and things that can be enhanced to better the system. I very strongly disagree that just because folks don’t show up to a meeting that they are dispassionate about what is happening and I do feel that the dept needs to get their opinion in some other manner than at these meetings and get better involved with the times that we are in with communication. The fact that you have many folks active in this thread shows the passion and imagine the number that "want" to engage in the thread but won't for whatever reason.

First off I hope i didn't give the impression that I felt people didn't care. I totally agree that folks are very passionate about the state's wildlife and how the department manages it. It is easy to see the passion if you go to any thread where the department is looking to make some change. It is also easy to see that the passion usually goes on both sides of the issue, some very strongly opposed and some for whatever the change is. As for different avenues to get these opinions you are talking to the wrong person. Heck I still use a phone to talk to people and dislike typing on the thing. I know that public opinion can direct the department as is evident in our current Bull:Cow and Buck:Doe ratios. These were changed in a commission meeting because of the input the commission recieved. Maybe talking to those who were involved in that process would be a good first step.

 

 

Now to answer a few of the other questions.

A question was asked about taking the tech advances into account when looking at hunt success. I know I personally have thought about this alot and I tend to take it into account. I don't think the advances are necessarily reflected in the hunt success guidelines on paper however. This however is just one of the things we look at and it is given less weight than the biological factors that we manage under. This is evident in Unit 27 where we have had a 40% hunt success for the late bull hunt for the last five years and tag numbers have remained constant. Also guidelines only refer to hunt success for certain rifle hunts so if hunt success goes up for archery or muzzy hunts it doesn't really affect anything.

 

You are correct there are two ways to address the B:C ratios. One way would be to let the cow segment increase. This however does not address the population objectives of a particular herd unit so we do that by adjusting both the cow and bull tags. In unit 27 we increased cow tags to try to maintain the population at current levels. Some would argue that the 27 elk herd could grow without impacting things. In many places this is true but the problem is we can't just grow a herd in some places and not in the whole unit. Currently we have about 90 photo points in place to monitor aspen recruitment post fire. In most of these areas the aspen are doing great and are up to 9 feet tall. We feel that this will be the case throughout the unit but saying something without the documentation to prove it does little to persuade people. There are some areas where browsing on aspen is definately evident (like off the 59 road) and it will take a little more time before we see good recovery. Once we can see this good recovery throughout the unit we may be able to start letting things increase a little. Another segment of the habitat that we need to look at is the winter range. Alot of the country off the rim was impacted by severe fire and it will take a few more years before this country could support (without being negatively impacted) a full elk herd. The relatively mild winters we have had last year and it appear this year have helped this recovery because most of the elk have stayed in the summer range. The other thing we are hoping to achieve by keeping the elk herd at current levels and not impacting the habitat is to allow the mule deer population to start moving back toward historic levels. I am sure there are many opinions as to where this balance should be but I for one would like to see some more deer in the country.

 

The last thing I will try to address in this post is the deer hunt in Unit 3C. I don't have all the information on this but the reason for the Jr. hunt there is that guidelines call for 2 Jr's hunts in the region. We felt that the other units that have deer hunts (1, 2ABC, 3B, 4AB) did not offer the kind of opportunity that we wanted for a junior hunt. We felt that in these other units they would not have a great experience, which is what we want for the kids to get recruited into the ranks. The long term hope is that the wallow fire will allow the deer in unit 1 to recover sufficiently to move that Jr. hunt there in the future. When we can expect that is not known. The other option would be to get the guidelines changed so that we didn't have to have two Jr. hunts in the region.

 

Aaron Hartzell

[Packer]

Alpinebullwinkle,

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate where you are coming from and it sounds like you have had alot of experience in Unit 27. Although I personally do not agree that the wolves are having much of an impact I am with you on wondering why we did not have a great calf crop this year. My only thought is that that rut was so messed up last year and with the stress of the fire I can't say with certainty how many cows were successfully bred and gave birth. With a 38% calf crop this year, which is up from the past few years, i am hoping to see an increase in that for next year. One of the other challenges with managing these herds is that we have already recommended hunt numbers for next year and we are not done with this year's hunts. For that reason I try to be conservative, since it takes two years to make any changes and before you can effect things on the ground. If you send me an email or a PM I would love to sit down with you and get your historical perspective of things and see how we can fix the world.

 

Aaron Hartzell

[Coues79]

Packer,

 

Thank you for replying. I will start sending my emails to the commission. Thanks for taking the time to reply back.

[bonecollector777]

 

The last thing I will try to address in this post is the deer hunt in Unit 3C. I don't have all the information on this but the reason for the Jr. hunt there is that guidelines call for 2 Jr's hunts in the region. We felt that the other units that have deer hunts (1, 2ABC, 3B, 4AB) did not offer the kind of opportunity that we wanted for a junior hunt. We felt that in these other units they would not have a great experience, which is what we want for the kids to get recruited into the ranks. The long term hope is that the wallow fire will allow the deer in unit 1 to recover sufficiently to move that Jr. hunt there in the future. When we can expect that is not known. The other option would be to get the guidelines changed so that we didn't have to have two Jr. hunts in the region.

 

Aaron Hartzell

How would you go about changing the guidelines to only have 1 junior hunt in the region? I doubt the department would even think about it because they would lose money but it would be worth a try. According to some peoples logic on here people "just want to get out in the woods and have fun and don't really care about killing anything" and " a great experience is just getting out in the woods" and all that bologna So why do we care about where they hunt? Put them in 4AB and let them chase the 2 deer in the unit. They will still have fun according to you guys and they wont be in a trophy unit. I also forgot about the archery hunts in 3C. I have heard but don't know if it's true that when the department wanted to cut back on the tag numbers certain groups such as the Arizona deer association and others that make money off of hunters hunting there threw a fit so the department changed it back to make them happy. What's up with that? I thought this was about management and not money? I heard this straight from a game wardens mouth during my 3C rifle hunt.

[Packer]

To change the guidelines to only have one Jr. hunt in a region you would have to provide input during that process which should be either next year or early 2014. The department would not loose any money because we still maintain certain buck:doe ratios and to get there we try to harvest X number of animals. That would mean that the difference may be made up with more general tags. We could also potentially absorb the 25 Jr. tags in the unit 27 hunt.

Remember these Jr hunts are for hunter recruitment and retention. Sure we could throw them into a unit like 4 or even the 2's but is that really going to recruit and retain a new hunter, and maybe someone who's dad is also not a hunter? NO!! I don't have any information about the archery hunts or any arguments one way or another.

 

Aaron

[123456]

Packer- I love that you address these few guys who have major problems with Game and Fish. If you cut back the tags, and it took 20 years to get a tag, these same guys would be crying wolf. So you increase them and now they are pissed about that. You will never win, and they will always be unsatisfied. I hunt a bunch, and even in crowded hunts, I can get away from people. Figure it out. It is not rocket science. Put your boots on and hike. Game and fish asked, and the majority of hunters wanted opportunity over quality. Thanks for doing your job, and keep up the good work. It is easy for a lot of these guys to type a paragraph of dis-content, however they will not go to meetings and speak their minds. I am guessing too much effort. Kinda like hiking off the beaten trail to get away from crowds.. At any rate, love your respone Packer and like that you bring facts with you.

[bowhunter81]

Can't beat the facts straight from the horses mouth.

[AZkiller]

bi

The last thing I will try to address in this post is the deer hunt in Unit 3C. I don't have all the information on this but the reason for the Jr. hunt there is that guidelines call for 2 Jr's hunts in the region. We felt that the other units that have deer hunts (1, 2ABC, 3B, 4AB) did not offer the kind of opportunity that we wanted for a junior hunt. We felt that in these other units they would not have a great experience, which is what we want for the kids to get recruited into the ranks. The long term hope is that the wallow fire will allow the deer in unit 1 to recover sufficiently to move that Jr. hunt there in the future. When we can expect that is not known. The other option would be to get the guidelines changed so that we didn't have to have two Jr. hunts in the region.

 

Aaron Hartzell

How would you go about changing the guidelines to only have 1 junior hunt in the region? I doubt the department would even think about it because they would lose money but it would be worth a try. According to some peoples logic on here people "just want to get out in the woods and have fun and don't really care about killing anything" and " a great experience is just getting out in the woods" and all that bologna So why do we care about where they hunt? Put them in 4AB and let them chase the 2 deer in the unit. They will still have fun according to you guys and they wont be in a trophy unit. I also forgot about the archery hunts in 3C. I have heard but don't know if it's true that when the department wanted to cut back on the tag numbers certain groups such as the Arizona deer association and others that make money off of hunters hunting there threw a fit so the department changed it back to make them happy. What's up with that? I thought this was about management and not money? I heard this straight from a game wardens mouth during my 3C rifle hunt.

Don't forget that 4 of these azda big wigs got drawn for the strip this year also. It is a completely random draw. That's fact.

[bonecollector777]

123456, just one more AZGFD lover huh? Everything Packer said has to be fact right? because he is part of the love affair and would never lead you astray. I found it funny that when I mentioned cutting juniors hunts and the department one of the first things said by Packer was that the department wouldn't lose money. They would just find some other place to slay 25 deer that they don't need to. They would never imagine losing a little bit of money like I mentioned earlier. THAT"S A FACT. Agreed AZKiller, I have seen and heard of this many times. Game and fish informants getting tags for information given, big wigs getting tags just because of who they are. My dad had a friend in the early 90's who turned out to be a Game and Fish informant and before the draw even came out he told my dad he was getting an Early rifle bull tag along with a strip tag. Guess what tags he had when the draw came out? Early rifle bull and a strip tag. Hmmm. . . just more and more things every year I hear and see about the Game and Fish that make me dislike them and not trust a thing they do. While others here can't seem to stop worshiping them.

[123456]

Cut Junior tags??? Good call, Lets make sure that the youth of our nation, never get a tag when they are young. Lets make sure that they are not interested in hunting at a young age. I think every junior ought to be given a tag on their first application for deer or elk. If there are too many juniors applying, just take some tags out of the general pool to satisfy the youth quota. Not worshipping them here, just not ignorant to todays' challenges. You keep on hating them and I will keep on loving them. I will get my tags because they give tags to guys that worship them, and you will get nothing.