I'm all for moving the rifle hunt out of peak rut, but I don't understand why anyone would want to stop the general spike hunt unless you switch it to something that manages all the younger bulls that no one will kill on the LE trophy hunts.
It does no good to a herd to have too many bulls that don't get harvested.
We are not "wiping out" our bulls on the spike hunts, not even close.
They estimate 10% survive the hunts.
Then for the next 5-6 years you've got an abundance of "satellite bulls" competing for everything including critical winter forage.
Compound that 10% by the "5-6" years and that's a hell of a lot of up and coming bulls to reach maturity.
I believe the 10% estimation is low, I saw a herd on the Wasatch last year on the rifle deer hunt that had 12 spikes in it alone.
And if you go up into Hobble Creek during the winter, you will see a lot of spike bulls.
How many bulls die of old age because of poor genetics that no one wants to harvest.
Just because a bull reaches his prime doesn't mean he'll even make 300" or even be a 6x6 for that matter.
So what do we do?
Stop killing spikes and issue hundreds more LE tags to keep the herd numbers managed appropriately?