Colorado 4th season unit 3 Mule Deer tag

[labby1]

Well if back door is correct my buddy and I drew the 2 non resident tags for this unit. Any help would be awesome. This is my first Mule Deer hunt. Chased a lot of Elk and Whitetails but never applied for Mule Deer

 

[Hunt_the_West]

Congrats on the tag. You will have a really fun hunt especially with the later season dates. What kind of deer are you expecting? There will be A LOT of late season elk hunters out in those units hunting, but most of them will ride the roads looking for herds of migrating elk in the distant. If the weather cooperates and has pushed deer out of the high country you should see good rutting action and a lot of deer, assuming winter kill wasn't too horrific. If you want to send me a PM Ill give you some areas to start.

 

[jims]

I hate to paint a sorry picture on your tag but you may want to check around to see what the winterkill was like? From what I heard it was pretty bad. I considered applying my son for a tag in that corner of Colo but after hearing sad news decided to apply elsewhere.

 

[labby1]

Well after looking at the license page again I don't think we drew anyway. I thought if you had a 590 you drew but mine is 590 for habitat stamp and 491 for non res deer ap.

 

[elks96]

59 habitat stamp. Nonresident Deer is 591... If you did not draw you might have dodge a bullet. The winter kill was bad and everyone knows it yet they are still increasing tags in 3 by over 50% and on the 4th hunt by close to 50% if I remember right.

They had a little bit of a good thing rolling with deer in the NW and this last winter was hard, but being stupid is even harder.... The CPW is being stupid and choosing to increase tags allocations despite above normal winter kills.

 

[Hunt_the_West]

LAST EDITED ON May-19-16 AT 05:24PM (MST)[p]Elks and Jims seem to either be locals or have first hand knowledge of how winter was, so if they say its bad then there is a good chance they are right. I know back prior to 07/08 it was some of the most fun deer hunting around. Then the winters of 07/08 happened. I hunted it in 08 and couldn't believe how bad it really was. Didn't hunt it again until a couple years ago and it seemed to have rebounded pretty well, but still not to what it was before. The numbers I heard for the area were that they lost up to 50% of the fawns this winter and 20% of the mature deer. The normal rates are appx 20% fawns and 10% mature deer. They are still claiming the herd is at/above objective (which was my basis for still having a fun hunt). The hunting for mature deer may not suffer this fall, but in a few years there will be nearly an entire age class of deer missing. What worries me is if they do not make appropriate allocation changes and next years winter is as bad, or heaven forbid worse, then the herd will be in really bad shape since there will be two age classes of deer missing. Sorry for the rambling and getting off topic but it almost seems like a catch 22. Do you hunt it now if you had the points for a 4th tag while the older age structure is in place? Do you pursue other units? Do you roll the dice and wait several more years hoping for no more bad winters? Food for thought I guess.

 

[tailchasers]

Jims and elk96 speak the truth about that part of the state. The winter was enough that the elk suffered. I witenessed first hand myself the severity of the winter. Really sucks...

"Courage is being scared to death but
saddling up anyway."

 

[jims]

I'm not sure I would agree with the statement to hunt the unit now while the older age is in place? From my experience with winterkill it's usually the older age class bucks and that year's fawns that have the toughest time surviving rough winters.