Tristate
Long Time Member
- Messages
- 8,859
As expected there wasn't a whole lot of agreement on what "opportunity" actually is. Not only is there disagreement over the definition of opportunity there is an even wider range of what is good or bad or decreasing or increasing opportunity.
I did find it interesting that a couple of posters believe that a chance at getting a tag and actually getting a tag are the only things that influence the dynamics off "opportunity". I am guessing that means all the DWR needs to worry about from certain voters is that they don't run out of ink in the tag printing machines.
One person actually thinks opportunity is good if success rates get as low as %2. At %1 he will start to say herd numbers are effecting his opportunity. At least he draws the line somewhere. At %0 we have to start worrying about extinction.?
One of the other conclusions I saw a couple of responders stating that even in high pressure areas some bucks still reach maturity so there are always mature bucks to hunt even in the worst units. This is actually incorrect. Its been close to 25 years ago but in this state we were doing age studies in two regions of Texas. We were trying to establish the average harvest age, among other things, for 2 of the highest pressured regions in the state. We couldn't get a single deer registered over the age of 18 months. NOT ONE. Out of thousands. It resulted in antler restrictions for dozens of counties. Now the average harvest age is 3.5 years in those counties and sometimes they actually kill bucks 6+ years old. So don't just assume you can always hunt mature bucks as long as you have a tag in poorly managed units.
Thanks for answering questions. We will keep studying the good and bad of big game management.
I did find it interesting that a couple of posters believe that a chance at getting a tag and actually getting a tag are the only things that influence the dynamics off "opportunity". I am guessing that means all the DWR needs to worry about from certain voters is that they don't run out of ink in the tag printing machines.
One person actually thinks opportunity is good if success rates get as low as %2. At %1 he will start to say herd numbers are effecting his opportunity. At least he draws the line somewhere. At %0 we have to start worrying about extinction.?
One of the other conclusions I saw a couple of responders stating that even in high pressure areas some bucks still reach maturity so there are always mature bucks to hunt even in the worst units. This is actually incorrect. Its been close to 25 years ago but in this state we were doing age studies in two regions of Texas. We were trying to establish the average harvest age, among other things, for 2 of the highest pressured regions in the state. We couldn't get a single deer registered over the age of 18 months. NOT ONE. Out of thousands. It resulted in antler restrictions for dozens of counties. Now the average harvest age is 3.5 years in those counties and sometimes they actually kill bucks 6+ years old. So don't just assume you can always hunt mature bucks as long as you have a tag in poorly managed units.
Thanks for answering questions. We will keep studying the good and bad of big game management.