Statewide since 2014 archery OTC resident hunters are down 20% and rifle OTC resident hunters are down 10%. I have submitted a couple CORA requests over the years to get the following stats. No state in the country has numbers like this, where residents of the state are run out of the woods by non-residents, yet that is the trend in archery OTC units and rifle OTC units across Colorado. The surge in hunting pressure is the result of non-residents, in fact, 3 out 5 archery elk hunters on the Grand Mesa are non-residents. The attached Grand Mesa Archery CPW graph that was shared with the commission this fall shows that non-resident archery hunters are up 250% (1200 to 3000) since 2014 and that resident hunters are actually down 20% (2400 to 2000) since 2014.
CPW was responding to overcrowding complaints over the past few years. One of the few CPW Commissioners that is a “Sportsperson” is an outfitter named Marie Haskett, and last I checked outfitters largely represent non-residents, since that is who pays their bills.ĭuring the JanuCPW Commission meeting a couple members of the Colorado Resident Hunter Association (Facebook Group) testified to try and save OTC archery hunting in the five E14 / Grand Mesa units (41, 52, 411, 421 and 521). If you read the bios of the CPW Commissioners, you won’t see many folks passionate about hunting and fishing and you will see that no one is defending resident hunters when it comes to tag allocation and OTC hunting opportunities. Most western states cap non-residents at 10% of limited big game tags, Colorado gives 20-35% of limited elk and deer tags to non-residents and this does not take into effect the soft cap loopholes or landowner vouchers that are sold back to non-residents. Hunting is not a right in Colorado, our legislators do not promote equity in resident tag allocation like other western states. We welcome responses and other opinions as well. This blog is an op-ed article from a Colorado resident hunter’s perspective. Siegfried contacted Eastmans’ Hunting Journals via email regarding his opinion on what the state of Colorado is doing with OTC Archery Elk Tags.
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