CO Senate confirmed 2 of 3 animal rights types to the CPW Commission today, all 3 had been serving on the board for a couple months. 3rd dropped out before the vote due to the backlash from the hunting community. Ballot measure to ban mountain lion/bobcat hunting will go to public vote in November election, assuming enough signatures are gathered (very likely). Language in the ballot measure will set a precedent that could be used to outlaw hunting of anything/everything. Would strongly encourage folks who hunt the west to get involved with Howl.org and donate to CRWM, seem to be the best outfits/avenues for fighting against this stuff and making your voice heard to the powers that be. At the rate the urban centers of TX are growing, this will be on our doorstep before we know it too.

Losing OTC seasons, while not ideal and a double edged sword of less opportunity but less crowding, is unfortunately not the biggest problem facing hunters in CO. I'd imagine CPW is stepping into this with archery first, and then next season structure cycle or two would go to draw on all the rifle seasons.

Apologies for the F16 rant. Planning to burn 6 elk points in CO this year, undecided on season as of now.

BurnetAggie99 said:

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If we go out West it's hard to beat going out to Idaho for Mule Deer and Elk. Non residents can get OTC tags for both. Also ample public land & BLM to hunt

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Used to be able to get otc tags. That went away too. NR are getting squeezed out everywhere. Residents want a few more tags for them selves and continue to put pressure on representatives to reduce NR tag numbers. They selfishly don't see the big picture in my opinion.
When hunting rights are getting taken away, residents will need ALL hunters to help fight that battle. If out of state hunters can't get tags anyway, probably less likely to donate to fight those anti hunting idiots.

BrazosBQ said:

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CO Senate confirmed 2 of 3 animal rights types to the CPW Commission today, all 3 had been serving on the board for a couple months. 3rd dropped out before the vote due to the backlash from the hunting community. Ballot measure to ban mountain lion/bobcat hunting will go to public vote in November election, assuming enough signatures are gathered (very likely). Language in the ballot measure will set a precedent that could be used to outlaw hunting of anything/everything. Would strongly encourage folks who hunt the west to get involved with Howl.org and donate to CRWM, seem to be the best outfits/avenues for fighting against this stuff and making your voice heard to the powers that be. At the rate the urban centers of TX are growing, this will be on our doorstep before we know it too.

Losing OTC seasons, while not ideal and a double edged sword of less opportunity but less crowding, is unfortunately not the biggest problem facing hunters in CO. I'd imagine CPW is stepping into this with archery first, and then next season structure cycle or two would go to draw on all the rifle seasons.

Apologies for the F16 rant. Planning to burn 6 elk points in CO this year, undecided on season as of now.

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This is what infuriates me the most. If you read to the measure, it has lynx in there as trophy hunting. News flash, you cant hunt lynx in CO. The public blindly vote in favor of these feel good measures without reading the data, the proposition and the people behind it before they vote. It is another clever step in the wrong direction by the governors husband and lawmakers to take away hunting rights. Wolf reindtroduction was the first step, this is the second. The next will be state gun rights. I said it before and I will say it again, I cannot imagine wanting to move to CO with the political movements going on here. I liked living here, but F if I cannot wait to leave.

TikkaShooter said:

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That's a solid take.

I'd personally like to see OTC be gone, and have CO go to a hybrid draw like NM.

I'm not a resident. No skin in the game like the locals, but just my experience in the past decade in CO. I'm sure many others have many more decades of hunting to speak from.

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I live in Texas and don't hunt Colorado, but I can't imagine why the NM method would appeal to any nonresident hunters out there. NM residents complain that NR get too many tags. By law, DIY NR get 6% of the licenses per hunt code. But in reality it's much less than that. Many of the hunt codes are resident only. And many of the hunt codes don't have enough tags allocated to even give DIY NR a chance.

In 2023, 22,783 elk tags were issued in the NM draw. Of those, only 921 went to DIY NR. That's 4%.

I don't disagree that unlimited OTC causes overcrowding. I don't know what the solution is. The resident vs nonresident battle is only heating up. It's gonna get worse for the NR hunters out there.