"If you get upset or offended by ANY website forum
post.....especially mine, you need serious
intervention!"
Couple of good posts on here this season.
I guess I will stir it up a little, since I have mostly stayed away a year or so.
By now, pretty much everyone has to agree that the quality of deer taken/seen in the Goodale/G3 hunt, has become mediocre at best.
I had a fix for this 15 years ago, when it became apparent to us locals that the system was failing.
The G3 zone is 27 miles long and 7 miles wide?..give or take a few hundred yards. It is a migratory, rut and winter range area. But it is far from being the ONLY area with these 3 combinations, in the Eastern Sierra.
Were the DFW to take the next 30 miles to the south of the Goodale area, and the next two 30 mile strips to the north of the Goodale area, and rotate the "G3" hunt every 2 years, it would allow the bucks in each area 6 years to grow and produce trophy, (30" plus, 5x5 bucks) animals.
This seems way too simple for 6 figure salaried DFW biologists to figure out. Probably take one minimum wage computer programmer a whole week to produce the required paperwork to implement the change.
The deer in these other 3 areas, in most cases, have never seen a hunter. During the regular seasons, they are so far back in the high country, or the parks, that they are almost inaccessible. After the snow falls, and the feed is gone, and the migration to the winter range begins, the only hunt opportunity is the current G3.
The bucks west of Big Pine and west of Olancha, never get hunted. As of right now, there are MANY trophy animals in those areas.
No question, the weather over the past 5 to 7 years has been a huge factor in the quality and quantity of big bucks taken from the G3. This year, while there was snow, it was never cold enough to shut down the food source on the plateau, so the deer simply followed the melting snow back up into the mountains. I would guess that we were short some 2,000 does in the traditional rut areas this season alone.
The bottom line here is, the G3 hunt opportunity, as it was originally designed, no longer exists. At it's inception, DFG had a much more hunter friendly attitude. In todays world, the hunter is only deemed as a revenue source, and providing them with any type of "opportunity" for a better experience, is not even a consideration.
Knowing full well that hunting in California is a political "dead horse", DFW is not about to spend money on updating ANY program that is ultimately going to die.
Obviously, this is just my opinion?..which means nothing, and is subject to derision by my collection of "haters" on this site??whose opinion of me or my ideas causes me zero loss of sleep, or financial stability.
