HUNTING

in the lottery, purchased one in person, or paid a landowner equipped with a specialized CPW “landowner preference program” voucher to hunt the landowner’s property.

Tyler Emrick, who owns and operates CJ Out tters outside of Craig with his wife, Michelle, o ers fully and semiguided deer, elk, moose, bear and mountain lion hunts for prices ranging from $3,500 to $10,000 per person. Like Fitch, he says the economic impacts he’ll endure this season will be limited compared with others because he has diversi ed his hunts geographically and now has permits to guide in Wyoming as well as Colorado.

But the Colorado towns of Craig, Meeker, Rangely, Maybell and “maybe, especially Dinosaur,” near the Utah border, “will be hurt because each of these places depend on the hunter harvest for their economy,” Emrick said. He knows an out tter participating in CPW’s landowner program who “normally gets 12 to 14 licenses, and this year he’s getting three to ve. It’s those small guys that depend on that $15,000 to $30,000 to pay for hay that are going to be hit hard. I do believe Meeker County will feel it hardest because even though it’s a rich county because of oil, there’s still all those restaurants. And a new brewery that just moved in. And I don’t know how many public hunters will come.” e Colorado Wildlife Council says hunting is a $843 million industry in Colorado. And, combined with shing, hunters contribute $3.25 billion and 25,000 jobs to the state economy. ose potentially 32,000 hunters who could have purchased the eliminated tags? eir absence and the revenue associated with it could impact CPW’s annual budget by as much as $8 million, the agency says.

Public lands hunters often purchase over-the-counter tags if they came up empty-handed in the lottery. But Emrick wonders if OTC hunters will avoid traveling to units in the severewinter zone given the new shorter seasons.

“I don’t know if anyone will come out for ve days or hit some other places out of state that weren’t hit like we were,” he says.

CPW employs a “user pays” model of funding in which hunting and shing licenses, federal excise taxes on hunting and shing equipment and license applications contribute millions of dollars to the agency’s budget.

“But statistics do show that nonresident hunters are gone from home for eight to nine days on average including travel time and that they hunt ve days,” Emrick said. “So with those numbers, it could either be really good or really, really bad. Easier to say hindsight is 20/20, we don’t know yet. I hope everyone can make it through, but I’m sure some out tters could go under this year.”

No matter what happens to the humans, the CPW commission stands by its reductions, saying they are the only way to bring the decimated herds back to healthy numbers.

But at its May 3 meeting to discuss license reductions, Emrick and a handful of other hunters, ranchers and out tters said they wished the agency would do more.

In a letter to the commission beforehand, the Colorado Wildlife Conservation Project, consisting of 11 members representing tens of thousands of hunters, anglers, conservationists and outdoor enthusiasts, said it was willing to take “further reductions to limited licenses and/ or temporary suspensions or caps on over-the-counter licenses” to address the problem, while recognizing “fewer hunting opportunities would mean fewer trips and lost revenue for the state and rural communities on multiple fronts.”

Others who spoke during the public comment period asked the commission to add a mandatory hunter harvest survey to get a clearer picture of what’s happening with various species in the severe-winter zone, adding that a penalty that revokes hunters’ privileges to apply for a license the next year if the hunter doesn’t complete the survey would round out the deal.

Emrick asked CPW to make “an immediate emergency declaration and end cow hunting in (units a ected by the severe winter) along with the whole northwest, or o er a minimum of 10 tags.” He also asked the commission to limit either-sex elk hunting in certain months because “when a hunter harvests a cow they could be killing three elk with one bullet.” is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun.com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.

But as managers had pointed out earlier in the meeting, the average success rate among elk hunters is just 20%, which means with a limit of 10 licenses there’s a good possibility only two elk in one of the severe-winter zone units would be killed.

CPW manages its herds for the health of the population as well as for hunters. is means it keeps hunters in mind when making “sex ratio” decisions — how many antlerless deer to make available for hunting and how many antlered deer, for instance. And the agency expects the lowered number of licenses to help herd health start improving immediately. So maybe the decision to stick with the reductions rather than make further cuts will take some of the sting out of the deadliest winter for wildlife CPW can remember, at least for humans.