Craig Unit 3-301?

[sageman]

How are the deer herds this year?How bad was the drought?

 

[ColoradoRam]

We've been in a drought for about 15 years now. Not just this summer. The herd in this area is struggling. Licences were cut back 10% this year. CPW will probably reduce tags by another 40 to 5n0% if we have an average winter.

 

[BeanMan]

Put it this way, Routt county is having it's driest year in 105 years of record keeping. Moffat county is the next county west and it's not wetter.

 

[sageman]

Not real encouraging but I already have the tag so we will see what happens.

 

[elks96]

I would keep everything in perspective however. There are still deer to be hunted and plenty ground to hunt them on. The drought was bad this year especially in the NW corner of the state. That has animals in weird places and already selecting food not typical for the year.

Earlier season focus your efforts around water and more importantly look for areas that have decent food. After hunting this archery season for over 15 days I found that the last couple rains we got really changed the vegetation in some areas and not in other. To the point where you could literally see the line in the brush/grass where more rain fell. In the buck brush, mountain mahogany, snowberry country alot of the plants died back and lost buds etc. this year. Again however the 2-3 good days of rain we got in Sept. allowed some areas to see some growth back and where I was it only took the animals about 2 days to concentrate in those areas. I believe the same will be true further north in 3.

Good luck. Hope you kill a good one.