A question for Colorado hunters.

WildBillG

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Alberta
As the title states I have a question for those who live in or regularly hunt Colorado. Have you noticed a decline in mature mule deer elk and white tail in the state. I was reading our Alberta hunting regulations and came a cross a article that stated a study in Colorado showed a decrease in mature animals due to CWD. Is this a fact or are the hunters in Alberta being fed another line of malarky as usual when it comes to CWD. Our government is trying to claim they can control this desease which I do not believe.
 
I can't say either way on our CWD but, there has been a decline in mature animals for a while now. It's ALL draw for rifle deer.
Gonna stop now, not going down this rabbit hole!
 
I have big mule and whitetail in my front yard... But do believe the mule deer have been declining the past few years. I live an hour east of Colorado Springs
 
This is what kind of information I am looking for. Would also like to know how Colorado has dealt with CWD. By this I mean did they do cukks or just leave it be or maybe some other means. Here in Alberta they did heavy culls believing that would stop the spread. How ever it has not and CWD now expands half way across the southern portion of the province.
 
As the title states I have a question for those who live in or regularly hunt Colorado. Have you noticed a decline in mature mule deer elk and white tail in the state. I was reading our Alberta hunting regulations and came a cross a article that stated a study in Colorado showed a decrease in mature animals due to CWD. Is this a fact or are the hunters in Alberta being fed another line of malarky as usual when it comes to CWD. Our government is trying to claim they can control this desease which I do not believe.
I hunted Colorado every year since 1993. I noticed a sharp decline in the deer population in area 12 a few years ago after Colorado Wildlife released a significant number of doe tags to curb CWD.

This year I saw more BucK Deer than in previous years but not as many as we usually saw 5 years ago. As for Elk, we may see fewer Elk than years ago, however, we see enough to harvest Elk every year with Archery or Muzzle Loader. So they are not scarce.

However, you should look into historical harvest data by hunt area prior to hunting and it will help if you are familiar with the terrain, hunter density and migration patterns.

Do you plan to hunt Rifle, Archery or Muzzle Loader?
 
I am not planning to hunt Colorado I just want to know if hunters there believe CWD has hurt the herds of cervids. My issue is that Alberts is a big province and we have a population of maybe 300,000 deer in total. Our wildlife managers believe this population is too high and causing yhe spread of CWD. To get an idea of the size of Alberta it is equal to about one and a half Texas's.
 
Cool, we spend 4 weeks year in the mountains and have for many years. In all that time I have seen only one deer that looked quite sick, no Elk. I do not believe it is that much of an issue.
I am not planning to hunt Colorado I just want to know if hunters there believe CWD has hurt the herds of cervids. My issue is that Alberts is a big province and we have a population of maybe 300,000 deer in total. Our wildlife managers believe this population is too high and causing yhe spread of CWD. To get an idea of the size of Alberta it is equal to about one and a half Texas's.
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In NM one of our CWD areas has shown no decline in deer populations since it was discovered. Another of our CWD area has shown a complete
crash of the population with no culling done. But it was also in long term severe drought and lion hunting was stopped during the same time frame so it is hard to say what the exact cause is of the Decline,probably all all 3 are responsible.

Colorado did some seriously culling when it was first discovered not sure if it made a difference in overall populations.

I personally believe CWD has always been around we use to call it winter kill and now we have a name for it.
 
Glad to here about other states to Plinker147. Initially I wanted to include all states dealind with CWD but the article I read used Colorado as it's example. That said hearing from other states is very welcome to this discussion. I have heard that said before about winter kill and I tend to agree. When they started the culls here in Alberta I thought what a stupid idea when we don't even have a 1 deer per square mile population. To me it appears our government is the CWD not the actual disease.
 
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