I didnt mean to imply these were the biggest sources of impact on blacktail numbers by any stretch.
I believe the things that have had the most effect may as well be tossed out. One, predator control, its NEVER gonna get better only worse with wolves. And soon I think bears will be closed. But fact is we will never hunt cougars legally in this state again. Bears eat a lot of fawns.
The other is habitat. Again I dont think we will ever see a change here. Mule deer habitat is most affected on the winter range, by people moving in and building subdivisions. Blacktail habitat is most effected on all of their range by
Fire suppression and the huge cutbacks in timber harvest. Many say things are healthier with the current balance. Maybe. But it doesnt make for big population booms of blacktail deer. The fires and tiber cuts of the 70's and 80's made for great blacktail numbers into the late 90's to early 2000's.
The way I feel dropping to one B tag can help is this. Most of the less successful hunters dont buy 2 tags. So the group that buys 2 are much more likely to fill 2 than the others who buy 1 are to fill it IMO. Not always true as there are people who are forever the optimist who buy 2 tags every year and rarely fill one and there are people who always buy 1 one and fill it annually, but on average I think it takes some amount of confidencerhat the first tag will be filled rather easily in order to justify buying the second. This often comes from viewing their own historical successes. In other words about 20% of b zone blacktail hunters kill about 80% of the bucks that are killed annually. Many of these 2 tag purchasers will openly say they will kill a meat buck then hunt for their trophy. Many of them will tell you that if they see a small buck on the last day they will fill their second because like me they like to eat venison. These hunters will likely know where to find a second meat buck because they are the better hunters of the tag buyers and they have probably also spent the most time in the woods.
As for the tags still selling....maybe. B tags sales have fluctuated the last few years from selling out soon enough for them to become a restricted tag to other years being unrestricted. And that is with every serious deer hunter knowing they WILL sell out before deer season. So with a one tag limit I think it would be well into rifle season before they would sell out if they did. And the later tag sales would be to the less serious least successful group of hunter so I think overall hunter success per tag would drop pretty good.
Technology we seem to agree upon. But I will get into more detail about why I think it is having a larger effect than some think. One is the most obvious but maybe not the most detrimental and that is the 1000 yard rifle and its effective use. Then there are the rangefinders that make them possible. But I think the biggest one that is probably optics. From the scopes on those 1000 yard rifles and the rangefinder mentioned above right down to binoculars. In the early 2000's almost nobody my friends and I saw in the blacktail woods owned a decent pair let alone used them to find deer. Sure they may use them (if they had them) to look at a small buck to see if he was legal or occasionally to look at the deer standing in the open across the canyon but they rarely glassed. Huge difference these days.
Dont think I want rid of these tools. I love my ling range setup and my swaro binos. But they had a big effect on my success and I was effectively killing deer at 500 plus with a 3x9 leupold with a simple duplex and using my cheap binos to glass in the timea I described above. I dont want to be told how to hunt or to tell others but I know the effects of these tools.
Sorry for the long post. And again congrats on a great buck.
Bill
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