I can poke holes in your whole post but winter take the time too right now, but here is one.
The Henery mountain unit is purposely being managed for very low elk numbers, they don't want elk on the unit, it's a premium deer unit, elk compete with the deer for food, I suspect that is also a big reason they included the Pauns into the general elk management plan, they want to keep the elk numbers low.
As for the age objectives, they are finding that more of the older bulls that are killed are not big trophy bulls, and never we're trophy bulls. My buddy killed a bull last year in a area managed for 6.5 year old bulls that was 13 and scored 330, his wife killed one on the same unit a few years ago that was 4 and went 349. In a video The DWR post earlier this year they have examples of bulls that are 5 that are 370 bulls. Go watch all the material they put out explaining why they do what they do and you will have the answer to all of your questions above.
I agree with what you have said about the Henry’s unit and it being a premium unit managed for deer. And I welcome my whole post having holes poked in it. But the Henry’s unit is still one of the 7 any bull units with a possibility of having 34,000 cow elk “special offer” control tags sold on it. And it can be counted as 1 of 7 units that likely won’t ever (low numbers for hunters that will hunt it for elk)) be hunted for cow elk. So that really puts everyone on the remaining 6 units. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me how good the hunting is on any of those units and I haven’t hunted all of them. Someone did in fact say that they have seen an increase in elk numbers for 26 years on an any bull unit - but who else is seeing this ?
And as far as age for a trophy or mature bull that’s conflicting as well. It has been debated but generally believed to be 6-10 years of age.
“Hunters find it useful to know how to age a wild elk. If you're looking to bag a trophy bull, you'll need to find an elk that's
between six and ten years of age: Before this point, the bull will likely not have reached full maturity.Sep 7, 2020”
The above is from missy oak but can be found over and over again.
But maybe I’m wrong -maybe 4-6 year old bulls produce the biggest trophy potential.?
Here’s something that anyone can poke a hole in so please do it. The glory days for the biggest bulls in utah were around 2005-2006. The top units that were producing many bulls over 400” were being managed for 7-8 year old bulls. Was it ever the best of times to draw a limited - absolutely. Did those units have higher elk numbers than now and did they allow spike hunts on them all like they do now ?
Pahvant has 1/2 the elk numbers now that it did in 2005-2006 - look it up. There could be some valid reasons why this unit has lower numbers. I’m just trying to understand how the new elk management plan is going to improve hunting when it appears to be about selling tags on units with dates that keep success rates really low. “Technologies that impact harvest success” is also being looked at to do what -lower harvest success.And I agree that this needs to be looked at further. I brought this up because the DWR is masking the new elk plan as their own plan to limit harvest success. Looking forward let’s say you sell 350,000 or more unlimited any bull tags- we could go back to that fish lake type of hunting where we wipe the herds out in 1 year.
But the utah DWR will surely address it with excuses that we have heard below.
“Oops we made a mistake”
“We are selling 2 “special offer” tags for the next 5 years on 7 units” (not looking at what the herd counts are at.) because that’s our plan.
Please poke holes in what I have said - so I can have some hope for a better future on elk hunting in Utah. I’m not seeing improvements in elk numbers on the any bull units that I have been hunting (almost extinct numbers) and the limited entry units aren’t producing the 400” bull numbers like they used too.
I would be really upset if I had 26 points for elk and found out that my new hunt would be a 4-5 day hunt now because of point creep. And twice as many hunts were in place back to back. Those hunters are likely to kill a small bull on the last day so they can feel good about not wasting 26 years and eating tag soup. It will be ok for a few years until it’s realized what happened to the trophy class animals that could have been.
“Oops we made a mistake” (DWR) fixes everything
I believe the new elk management plan is already an “Oops”and I hope that the hunters that saw this 2 years ago (any bull elk unlimited tags) will stand up against it again.