I guess most people are mostly gun hunters that hunt with a bow for something to do in september rather then actual bowhunters
humm, spent about 25 days archery hunting this year then took my bull with a rifle after 1 day of hunting. What does that make me /I guess most people are mostly gun hunters that hunt with a bow for something to do in september rather then actual bowhunters
Which really brings us back to a bigger issue. We need mandatory reporting and good data. I would never believe that even with a crossbows we would see archery success pushing 50% on bull elk. I have a great example of this... A few years ago in Colorado I always hunted an OTC unit with low elk numbers. It was not a good unit at all, but it was close to home and I knew where the elk were. There were seldom any NR in the unit and those that did show up always left after 2 days of not seeing anything. At any rate the one big ridge is where most all us locals hunted. That year my self and 1 other guy were the only ones to tag out. Out of 20+ locals who hunt the area. The next year the stats rolled out. Our unit showed 66% harvest success on Archery elk. When we dug in me and the other guy both answered our harvest survey. It was us and 1 other guy. They only got surveys from 3 people for archery elk in the unit...One big issue I have with these type 9 tags is the harvest rate is much higher on these hunts than the historical past. Historically we had a 10-12% success rate on archery. I remember seeing one Type 9 unit with an incredibly high 42% harvest success rate. It seems the Wildlife Commission is not using newer updated harvest data of much higher successful harvest on these type 9 hunts when setting harvest quotas. I attribute this to hunters now have to make it happen so they hunt harder and longer and mostly the technology advances in archery equipment has exploded and many more hunters are now successful than past days when we just used recurve bow in the old days, no leverage gain and no crossbows.
same here. As do my wife and kids.I always get surveys for all tags, every year. Maybe I'm just lucky.
As do wesame here. As do my wife and kids.
We focus on trophy elk, mule deer, antelope and moose hunts and take B&C bucks most years.