Bowhunters of Utah

Back by popular demand we are revisiting this topic. It was put out there that it would be a great objective to work towards acquiring the first 21 days of September to bowhunt elk in Utah. Such a proposal would focus on the open bull units.

Other ideas included in the previous thread dealt with giving any weapons tag holders a chance to hunt the last part of Sept say 5 days but they would have to do so with a bow in hand and then later on they could pick up a rifle and do the rest of their hunt at the appointed time. There would be no overlap of any weapons tag season and the archery only season. Archery only tag holders would have to hunt their season (first 21 days of Sept) and the any weapons tag holders would have their separate season that allowed them to use archery equipment (last part of Sept) followed by the use of a rifle at a later time. Biological management practices favor using bowhunting during the rut and at the same time we could provide more opportunity for people to hunt because the harvest rate for bowhunting is really quite low. Last years bowhunting success rate was 6% on the open bull units.

Would you be willing to give any weapons tag holders increased opportunity so that you could hunt Elk the first 21 days of Sept? What other things would you be willing to sacrifice/do, if any in order to get the first 21 days of Sept?

That really wouldn't be a bad idea, I think I could go for something like that,letting the rifle hunters have the last 5 days but the only thing you would run into is the youth hunt. I don't think the State would want to lose money.( youth hunter's )

Does anyone know off hand what the numbers are for the youth hunt? I will have to look but is there a special LE youth hunt that takes place on the open bull units that you are referring to? I'm sure with a little attention we could come up with an amiable solution. Perhaps we could do something similar to what is done for the youth deer hunts by allowing them to hunt both the archery season as well as the any weapons hunt. I would think that would certainly give them plenty of opportunity on the open bull units.

Hey Shaun I don't understand why there's only two of us talking about this issue? This is a big issue. Maybe people don't care, where is the outrage, where are all you bow hunter's that hunt elk?(probley hunting other states, which is where i'm headed soon)

I looked up the numbers for 2007 and I beleive that we are talking 164 youth. If we went to the same system that we use for deer, allowing the youth to hunt all of the seasons, I think that they would be more than compensated. A youth would be able to hunt all of Sept with a bow using both the Archery and Any weapons seasons under the idea that we have been talking about.

Sometimes I get to feeling frustrated about a lack of participation however I have come to realize recently that we have a lot of people who hear and though they don't respond in a public forum will certainly talk and talk about it with their friends. Thus helping us create momentum for a new tomorrow.

"Keep the faith" and "Stay the course" have been motto's of mine since the beginning of BOU. Sure enough it has always proved to be sound counsel.

I don't think the lack of participation necessarily means there is a lack of interest. I would be interested in hearing the proposals and what steps need to be taken to try and implement them. Honestly I'm not sure what steps I/we need to take to get something like this off the ground or if it is already in progress...

I have a few other ideas that I'll throw out now, but I'd be interested in seeing a list of proposals so we have something crisp and concise to debate/discuss.

I posted this in the previous thread but will repeat it again here. Last time we were talking about ways to get the first 21 days of September. The two ideas were allow the beginning of the any weapon to overlap the end of the archery, or alternatively extend the any weapon by 5-7 days and require the use of archery equipment for those first 5-7 days. There wasn't any distinction on if we were talking about LE, General or both groups of tags.

My preference on those two was to extend the Any Weapon with their own season instead of allowing an overlap as there are already crowding issues towards the end of one season as hunters begin getting ready for their season - overlapping I believe will just compound this problem. I think this will be true regardless of LE or General tags.

To tie this thread into another one about an Archery Only unit (This would be LE only I assume) - There was some talk about carving some units up and making the new area Archery Only to allow more opportunity and better seasons. Why can't we take these concepts a step further and really start to micromanage the herds? Area's where they need to cull the herd can maintain a September Any Weapon hunt and those that are maintaining a healthy herd we can begin to look at switching them over to Archery Only or change the Archery Season to increase opportunity and maintain a healthy herd. It seems to me the real concern here should be focused more on what is best for the animal rather then what is fair for the sportsman. My opinion is an Any Weapon hunt when during the time an animal is most vulnerable is not in the herd's best interest. Seems like you could make a much better argument with that then what is "fair" (which is the subject of another great thread on here).

You could also do something like the old AR301 tag and break up several elk units into archery only sub units and allow people to draw one tag and allow them to hunt in several areas across the state. Then you don't need to be so concerned about finding a central location and just finding the best area's to utilize this type of program. Maybe even present it with a 5 year period and analyze the results at that time to see if it makes sense to expand or cancel that type of strategy.

As far as youth hunts go I think we should allow all Youth to hunt any season (Treat any Youth tag like a Premium LE tag) regardless of the type of tag they hold (LE or General). If we don't get and keep the youth interested in wildlife regardless of what weapon we choose I'm afraid none of this will matter in a few years anyways. If Youth can hunt any/all seasons the changes we make won't have near the impact to them.

I've got a few other ideas but I've gone on long enough and am starting to ramble and loose my train of thought. I'm interested in hearing some feedback on these ideas and suggestions for any others folks may have. If my line of thought is good/bad whatever let's hear it - I'd be interested in hearing why some of these ideas and suggestions would or would not work...

The concern that is raised with the LE tags is that guys have earning points for years and have the expectation of using their rifles during the rut on their "any weapons tag". That is a hard sell to change the game at this venture. However, I do beleive that there wouldn't be as big an outcry on the general seasons because they do not get to hunt with their rifles until after the rut anyway with the exception of the youth hunt. The ideas that we have been talking about would actually extend the current opportunity for the "any weapons tag" holders and nothing would be taken away from them. I agree with the idea of seperate seasons. Who knows, maybe we even stick a couple of buffer days in between where the elk aren't being shot at. As far as the youth I agree also. Let them hunt all of the seasons with the appropriate weapon. We already do this with deer so I don't know why we wouldn't do this with Elk.

AR301 was attacked pretty heavily in it's downfall. We have great records that were kept by the division during that time on what the archery harvest was during those years and that would certainly be good data to use to support the creation of an archery only unit. We actually already have that concept in place with the wasatch front extended deer hunt. I have heard more than one biologist that is concerned that we don't kill enough to truly manage the population but my response has always been that if they want us to shoot does then they should provide more incentive to harvest does. I think that the same thing would have to happen on an archery only elk unit. There would have to be incentive given for bowhunters to take a cow. Just giving them the chance to take either sex is not enough incentive as I think that most will choose to hold out for a chance to harvest a bull if possible. Therefore, if the populations needed to be culled they would need to give out some Archery only cow tags in addition to the bull tags.

I don't know how much resistance there is to the archery only unit but I do know that a group of guys were really debating this a year ago and had selected 5 units I beleive. Perhaps one of them should get on here and tell us more. The idea came from the chat lines on divisions old forums that are now moved to the utahwildlife.net.

I do beleive that it is a realistic idea to bring the general season units into a system where Archery were used the first 21 days of Sept, the last 5 days of Sept were an "any weapons tag"-archery portion of their season- and then the "any weapons tag" rifle portion of their season following in October. Win for Sportsmen all around with increased usage of bowhunting being employed as the tool.

I like both of your guys ideas. I think I let my emotions get the best of me. Shaun tell me more about what they are already doing with the youth on the deer hunt's, I've never heard about this, So I can better understand where your coming from about the youth elk hunt. I agree cmarcher let's come up with a list and maybe bring it up in our next BOU meeting.

I know I'm not Shaun, but I'll chime in.

-If a youth purchases an any weapon tag in the state of utah, they are allowed to hunt all 3 seasons for deer with the designated weapon type.

-The youth hunt is held in any bull areas the same time as the LE any weapon hunt for elk. It is a draw hunt, no points associated with it and as mentioned, there are very few tags given each year.

Last year the proposal to cut spike hunting short by 5 days to accommodate LE archery hunters, which I supported and maintain was a great idea, included a provision to extend the archery elk hunt in any bull areas 1 more week. At the northern RAC, the board shot down the idea and moved on. After some schmoozing and discussion at the break (I won't get into details) it was reopened for discussion and pushed to the wildlife board, the caveat being that the any bull extension get scrapped, because of the youth hunt. Their excuse was the hunter orange issue, which seemed like just that, an excuse.

Taking on the youth is much less of a challenge then taking on any of the any weapon groups and don't get me wrong, I think the youth tags are great, I was able to assist my youngest brother in harvesting a nice bull on the youth hunt, but it is being done at the expense of a whole lot of people and some might argue is giving youth unreasonable expectations of hunting.

Yes, I agree with pushing dates further into September.

Thanks Tye, I also feel the same way. A few years back My brother and I went to a RACK meeting to talk about extending the hunt to, but to no avail. We realized that no hunting was going on for about 2 weeks after the archery elk, and thought to ourselves this would be a perfect time to extend the archery elk hunt. 3 to 4 years later the youth hunt was in place. So you can probley understand what we talked about at the rack meeting went through one ear and out the other. It's an up hill battle and it's one I'm willing to fight for.