All five RAC's voted to do away with the ML300 and AR301 hunts.
There will now be "choose your weapon" hunts on every LE Elk unit with no auxiliary permits to hunt all three seasons anymore.
It looks like the permit numbers will split up as follows on every LE elk unit.
- 60% rifle = est. 750 permits - roughly 40,000 applicants last year
- 25% archery = est. 312 permits - roughly 5000 applicants if you include the AR301 applicants
- 15% muzzleloader = est. 188 permits - roughly 6500 applicants if you include the ML300 applicants.
These percentages could change at tomorrows Wildlife Board meeting, but it is basically what all five RAC's voted for.
They have added in the AR301 permits to to pot and said basically the total permits next year will be something like 1250. Those numbers could go up depending on what the biologists see next spring on the units.
On a separate issue, the DWR has mandated that the units be managed to age objective. If they actually do this we could see a large increase in the number of permits on most units. Right now 23 or the 26 units are over age objective quite substantially.
On another side note. The DWR acknolledges that archery and muzzleloader success rates are much lower than they have been reporting. They quoted numbers of 93% rifle, 54% archery and 76% muzzleloader success.
Given manditory reporting for every once in a lifetime and LE draw next year, the division will have near perfect data on success rates. This will allow roughly twice the number of archery permits and 25% more muzzleloader permits in 2005.
The rub is that the DWR and Jim Karpowits, in particular, want these additional permits made available to the total before the splits are made. This means that rifle hunters will get 60% of those additional permits alllowed by archers and muzzleloader lower success rates.
Our state could have 3 times as many permits for LE elk hunting without one single extra bull being harvested. If the hunters of this state would only acknowlledge the fact that rifle hunting in the peak of the rut and limiting primitive weapons hunting opportunity is stiffling opportunity for everyone massively.
Cheers,
Pete
