AZ proposed elk hunt changes

Steelermadman2002 · Dec 7, 2005

Got this from another website, but I have seen the same content discussed at a few now. I do not like the idea of moving early hunts to late hunts.

We had a meeting with G&F on this. They are planning to take 1/2 of all archery bull tags and move them to November and make them ANY elk tags. If you do not like this, email G&F at azgfd.com or call 602-942-3000.

1. Harvest among general, muzzleloader, and archery seasons will be allocated according to demand (five-year averages), excluding limited opportunity hunts. An archery hunt structure will be implemented whereby harvest opportunity will be evenly split between the early elk and late any elk archery hunt structures for each unit, excluding limited opportunity hunts.

2. For archery, early bull or antlerless elk seasons will begin on Friday of week 38 and run for ten days. Archery any elk season will begin on Friday of week 47 and run for 14 days unless the season would overlap with a general elk season. To avoid overlapping general and archery elk seasons, the archery any elk season will begin on Friday of week 47 and run for 7 days.

3. Early muzzleloader elk seasons will begin on Friday of week 40 and run for seven days. Late muzzleloader elk seasons will begin on Friday of week 46 and run for seven days. Muzzleloader elk season dates may be established as needed in December to address population management objectives.

4. Early general bull seasons will begin on Friday of week 40 and run for seven days. Late general bull seasons will begin on Friday of week 46 and run for seven days.

5. General antlerless elk seasons will begin on Friday of week 42 and run for seven days. If a juniors-only elk season is recommended, it will begin on Friday of week 42 and run for seven days, and the general antlerless elk season will begin on Friday of week 43 and run for seven days. Late general antlerless elk seasons may be established as needed in December to address population management objectives.

6. "Antlerless elk" hunts will be recommended in units or herds where the elk population goals are to reduce or stabilize population size.

7. Supplemental hunts may be recommended in accordance with A.R.S. 17-239 and R12-4-115.

8. Habitat based management objectives will be included in the determination of elk population objectives, using forage use monitoring results per Department protocol, for individual elk herd units where this data is available.

9. At least five percent of the total elk permits will be allocated to juniors-only seasons as antlerless permits.

coueskiller · Dec 7, 2005

I don't know what the hell the AZGFD is thinking but this whole thing is total BULLS*&# !!!! Everybody better get on the phone and send email to these clowns or our whole hunt structure as we know it will be shot to hell. Late archery elk hunts.... WHO THE HELL WANTS THAT HUNT!!! They also want no more than 10% of the coues tags to be December hunts!!! All I smell is a BIG FAT MONEY RAT!!!! More hunts=More tags=More $$$$ for the AZGFD.. Hell if they want the money, raise the prices but keep the hunt structure the same. The prices will be more next year anyway and who is going to want to pay an even higher price for a archery elk hunt in NOV. If this s#*t happens just imagine how hard the rut hunts (elk/deer) will be to draw, it's already a joke to try and draw these hunts so just think half the tags next year and you know everybody will have these hunts as their 1st & 2nd choices. It has been 8yrs. since I have had an elk tag in my home state of Az. and if this happens it could very well be 8 more before I get to hunt and I know Im only one of the many people in that boat. We ALL need to hammer the AZGFD and stop this where it stands!!!!

Geoff

RLH · Dec 8, 2005

man, a late november elk hunt? buuuurrrrrrr..... the bow hunters are gonna hafta get some warmer clothes. i don't really understand that one. you're gonna hafta be a runnin' son of a gun who can really sneak after ya catch up to em. only thing i can think of is that the bull bow hunters are getting too good and taking too many good bulls. what they oughta do is have a seperate archery bull and archery cow season. no real reason other than it's a pain to be trying to sneak on a bull and have a cow hunter mess ya up and vice versa. one thing about it. nobody is gonna like all of it and ain't no way they're gonna please everybody. i'm gonna hafta read all this again to let it sink in before i can have a good comment. but man, i can't imagine a harder hunt than a late november archery hunt. just all the xmas tree hunters will a pain in the neck to deal with, no to mention the weather and the wild elk.

AZWALKER · Dec 8, 2005

They're doing it so that the early archery tags will fit into the 5% that they can call a class A Elk tag and charge out the wazoo for it. Money hungry pigs!!! More hunter opprutunity, more money for more tags and the harvest levels will either stay the same or go down. Probably go down. This G&F commission that is in place now is the worst I've ever seen. The average Joe can say goodbye to the chance to hunt the rut. We ALL have to get after these idiots and stop this crap. The only good thing that will come of this will be that there will be bigger bulls in every unit but you will have somehting like a 1% chance at getting drawn for one of those hunts. Then on the late hunts the success rate is gonna drop drastically. G&F said themselves on their website, they want to increase hunter opprutunity. It sounds nice and fluffy at first but when you really consider the steps they are taking to make it happen, it is only to financially benefit themselves. I'll tell you about "hunter opprutunity". Unit 10 deer tags. They gave out 700 tags in 04 for that hunt. I saw 5 does and a fawn in 6 days of hunting and the harvest average for the whole hunt was something like 5 or 8 percent. Come on! I was still glad to go don't get me wrong but just think of how many immature bucks were proabaly taken out that 8% success. And we wonder why we're seeing less and less mature mulies in AZ.... DUHHH!!
Oh its the drought, its the drought.....B......S!!!!

Donnie

RLH · Dec 8, 2005

now i get it. all this high dollar class A stuff is gonna be hard to get used to. and you're dang sure right about deer. sure are getting scarce.

RockyMtnOyster · Dec 8, 2005

We finally squash the USO debacle, now this? I don't see this measure as making any sense for the hunter. Hunting the late elk with a bow is nonsense. If the AZGFD needs more cash then make the all the archery rut hunts Class A, but don't cut the tags down.

RockyMtnOyster

AZtrophyhunter · Dec 9, 2005

AZG&F is starting to piss me off. It's hard enough killing a bull in the late hunt with a rifle.....good luck with a bow. Is there a link we can click on to email the G&F? I check the site but couldn't find anything.

AZWALKER · Dec 9, 2005

Thats what I'm saying. They can't make all the archery rut hunts class A because it would go over the 5% cap but.... they could select units as class A hunts. If we make enough noise they will probably do that. I think what they're trying to do is improve the numbers of trophy class bulls and make a dime at the same time. If the temp trend continues up north, you'll still see bulls with cows come Nov but if gets cold early next year you'll see alot of raghorns and cows taken on the Nov hunt. Whats gonna happen is everyone will put in for the early hunt 1st choice, then they'll make their 2nd choice a late rifle hunt and only the die hard archers will put in for the late archery tag. The late hunt will turn into a standby meat hunt. The more I think about it, the more I think it might not be too bad for the guys that just want the chance to hunt but the trophy guys will get screwed cuz they'll only draw every 10 years.

Donnie

sremim · Dec 9, 2005

Unfortunetly tha AZGFD does NOT care what we say about it. They will do what they want regardless of what public input they receive. They only allow for input for PR purposes. They will not do what the public wants but what they want. IT WILL HAPPEN.

coueskiller · Dec 13, 2005

Everybody needs to get involved NOW and do our best to stop this B.S.!!!! If this goes thru hunting AZ. will be shot all to hell and it wont take 10yrs to draw a rut elk hunt it will take 20+yrs. But there will be plenty of opportunity to hunt elk with a bow from Nov.24 - Dec.7... WHAT A F'N JOKE!!!!!! If we don't do something now we can kiss hunting elk in Sept. with a bow GOOD BYE!!! PLEASE GET INVOLVED!!!

Geoff

MNHunter · Dec 14, 2005

C'mon, C'mon love it for the money.....C'mon, C'mon listen to the money talk!

AZbowhntr · Dec 14, 2005

If you want to see the success odds of a Nov. archery elk hunt look in the back of the regs for unit 23. There are some real nice bulls in there and by the time Nov. comes around you are hard pressed to find them. Last year they had 6% success rate. And I couldn't even begin to imagine if we had an early winter up on the rim. You wouldn't stand a chance up there. Just think, the archers would be about 6th or 7th in line to hunt in their unit. I sure hope the the G&F aren't planning on this.

AZtrophyhunter · Dec 15, 2005

So why aren't there more people opposed to this? It seems like nobody cares.

AZ402 · Dec 21, 2005

LAST EDITED ON Dec-21-05 AT 01:17PM (MST)[p]I've sent emails and will be going to the Jan 18th G&F meeting in Flag. This proposal is a bad,bad deal for archery elk hunters, resident and non-res alike. www.archeryelksurvey.com Take a look and this and tell them what you think. This topic is getting discussed on a few other boards. I'm suprised it hasn't got more response on this one.

http://www.hunttalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25083

http://www.bowsite.com/bowsite/tf/regional/thread.cfm?threadid=119647&MESSAGES=188&state=AZ

neb · Dec 21, 2005

Both units 22 and 23 had 17% success on the 2004 November archery hunts according to the most recent stats book.
neb

Boskee · Dec 21, 2005

Ok we have a little misinformation going on here and we need to clear a few things up. The premium price structure was voted down in the Casa grande meeting. There will be no A tag hunt structure. Yes they did vote to go with the fee increase but the tags will be more reasonable then the $3000.00 tags that has been going around. I think someone told me around $1600.00 for a nonres Bighorn permit. The ABA and other groups were able to work to keep the fee structure more affordable. I wasn't there during this vote and don't know how much the actual fees will be.
They were going to reduce the early archery Bull permits by 1300 tags and offer 2600 in the later hunt. That proposal has been shelved until the ABA works out a counter proposal because of the work of the ABA and a few dedicated individuals to stop the action. The reasoning for this is very clear archers have been too successful and they feel that a reduction in harvest will be beneficial and by moving the permits later the success rates won't be as high and they can still offer more opportunity.

This is not etched in stone and is a proposal only at this point. There was a meeting in Phoenix and a proposal being worked up that reduces the number of tags to around 300- 350 with the Game and Fish giving 2.5 tags for each of them to be included in a different hunt time frame to increase hunter opportunity. There currently are talking about a hunt after the rifle rut hunts and early cow hunts but before the general rifle firearms hunts. At the meeting somebody proposed an early August or September bow hunt like NM and the Game and fish is examining the feasibility of that structure. They are concerned with the calf mortality rate and that will be a factor in the decision. If feasible they may break the tags apart into two hunts. Now all of this may not be 100% correct since I didn't take notes at the meeting but the premise is close. Those of you that Bowhunt in AZ should join the ABA since they basically saved our bacon on this deal!! The department is under a directive from the commissioners to increase hunter opportunity and as such must come up with some plans. Those of you that feel that if you take the survey and want no changes to the hunt will find that that viewpoint probably isn't going to fly at the current time. The commissioners made it CLEAR that there would more than likely be some changes and more opportunity.

Don't shoot the messenger. This is how I understood things at this point. They are using the survey to collect data and IT MAY have some bearing on the commission! Hope this helps a bit and if I stated anything incorrectly feel free to post the correct data where applicable. The ABA is still working to develop a counter proposal that looks to be a fair alternative to the departments initial proposal. We basically would be looking at a 10 permit reduction in each unit with those tags being multiplied by 2.5 to come up with 1000 tags total give or take that the department wants to offer. So there you have the basic premise. Hopefully we can get them to accept this as it seems like a reasonable compromise.