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Gunnison
Crested Butte Tourism Association can help you plan your Colorado
Hunting vacation. Stalk big game across the mountain side or catch a
flock of wild turkeys across a high country meadow. Enjoy the pristine
Colorado wilderness. Hire a local Hunting Outfitter
for special private land permits and migration corridor expertise.
Relax at base camp in a cozy cabin with a fine cooked meal. Rent
four-wheelers or horses to pack trophy animal back to camp. The deer
and elk outfitters can help hire a local meat packer to chop and send
your prize home for you.
Area Mountain ranges include
Gunnison National Forest, West Elk Wilderness Area, Sawatch Range, and
Saguache Range. Accessible to Game management unit 53, unit 54, unit
55, unit 63, unit 64, unit 65, unit 66, unit 67, and unit 551.
We
can help you plan a group or family hunting vacation. There are plenty
of outdoor activities for everyone through out the year. Create the
ideal vacation for your family, shopping, rafting, horse back riding,
jeep tours and more, while you enjoy time with friends on a hunt. Check
local event calendar and special kid activities. You can book family
and pet friendly lodging. You can plan your ideal hunting vacation
available right now. Enjoy!
Resources
Gunnison
County is known for its big game adventures. For more information on
hunting areas, seasons, rules and regulations and license applications,
please visit the Colorado Department of Wildlife's web site or check out the
List of local Outfitters.
Wildlife Viewing
If you happen to be here inside or outside of season why don't you visit some of our local wildlife viewing areas.
The Gunnison Valley has an abundance of wildlife and areas easily
accessible for viewing. The State of Colorado has designated State
Wildlife Areas and we have seven of them: Almont Triangle, Gunnison
River, Gunnison, Lake Irwin, Roaring Judy, Spring Creek Reservoir and
Taylor Reservoir. Come and see our wildlife in their native habitat.
Hunting News and Stories from Gunnison Country Times
You can sign up for our Sportsman's Paradise Newsletter to
read more stories related to hunting and updated fishing reports on
local rivers with a few clicks, just use the link above to get started.
Big
game bountiful in the Gunnison Basin; will hunters capitalize?
Populations healthy, trophy-quality animals in no short supply. by Will Shoemaker
Big
game hunting in the Gunnison Basin has reached national notoriety in
recent years. That's partly due to the Colorado Department of
Wildlife's incessant work to cultivate strong buck-doe ratios for deer
and bull-cow ratios for elk. The result is that some of the state's
biggest and best bucks and bulls now reside within a few hours' drive
of Gunnison. And populations are healthy, a boon for strictly meat
hunters and trophy hunters alike.
Deer
If any one
year marks the highest of quality deer in the Gunnison country, this
just might be the one. The Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW), after
seeing strong increases in buck-doe ratios since instating a state-wide
limited draw in 1999, is starting to distribute more tags to bring
those numbers down - increasing the opportunity for a great harvest.
It's about time. Monster mules are as thick as fleas on a feral cat.
"The Gunnison Basin is now renowned nationally for its deer hunting,
which means hunters will have to wait several years to draw licenses,"
said DOW terrestrial biologist Brandon Diamond.
But wildlife managers' efforts are aimed at decreasing that wait time.
In recent years the number of deer in local units has increased to
approximately 22,000. In most of the five area Game Management Units
(54, 55, 551, 66 and 67), both deer population and sex ratio numbers
are above the DOW's objectives.
Put simply, that means more licenses have been distributed this year.
For bucks, the number of licenses given for hunting units in the
Gunnison Basin increased by more than 8 percent this year over last
year's numbers.
"There's more interest in our deer hunting than there was even five years ago," said Diamond.
The buck-doe ratio for local units is now 45 to 50 bucks per 100 does,
but wildlife managers' objective is 40 to 45 per 100. Higher sex
ratios, generally, mean that bigger, older bucks comprise a greater
part of the herd.
"We're trying to find the optimum balance between hunting opportunity
and quality, where hunters don't have to wait 10 years to draw a
license," Diamond said.
But hunter success rates for local units are still high - last year, greater than 60 percent, in fact.
"We've had awfully high success rates over the last couple years," Diamond said.
Success rates, Diamond said, are a product of healthy deer populations and "comparatively light hunting pressure."
The good news is there wasn't much "winter kill" this past season,
Diamond said. "I'd expect the hunters should do real well. It should be
a great deer season."
Again this year, DOW
officials are conducting testing for Chronic Wasting Disease - with a
minimal cost to the hunter - for individuals who volunteer to have
their deer tested.
Elk
For the most part,
wildlife managers are trying to ramp up elk harvests in the Gunnison
Basin, mostly to the north. The number of total elk in local units is
now sitting around 16,000, and that's close to wildlife managers'
projections - except for one unit.
Unit 54, which includes the West Elk Wilderness, saw a significant
redistribution of limited-draw licenses this season to ensure that more
animals, especially cows, are harvested. The DOW
shifted the number of limited cow tags - 1,100 - and either sex tags -
1,310 - in 2006 to 700 cow tags and 1,710 either sex tags for 2007 for
unit 54.
"The reason we did that is because cow licenses in (unit) 54 are hard
to give away," Diamond said. "We're considerably over objective and
need to kill elk."
Bull-cow ratios in most local units are now about 20 to 30 bulls per 100 cows.
"Hunters that are willing to walk and can get away from roads will find
elk everywhere in unit 54," Diamond said. "There are a lot of elk in
that unit and they're well distributed."
Efforts to increase harvest numbers, though to a lesser degree, are
taking place south of Hwy. 50 in units 66 and 67, where wildlife
managers distributed more than 150 additional cow tags from last year's
numbers.
"When we're over those objectives, we're just shooting for a bigger harvest," Diamond said.
Success rates for elk in the five area units last season averaged
around 18 percent. That percentage was in the low teens for northern
units and about 26 percent for the southern units of 66 and 67.
"54 is the problem," Diamond said. "We've tried a lot of things, bottom
line we just need hunters that can kill cow elk, because there's a lot
of licenses available."
"Elk are much more resilient than mule deer herds," he continued.
They're also more difficult to find in rugged terrain.
Diamond urges hunters to come prepared and make sure you have the right
equipment, clothing and a well sighted-in, straight-shooting rifle.
"And then just have patience and persistence," he said. "The rest is
kind of out of your hands."
The limited late season antlerless hunt this year will only include unit 54 and no longer includes areas of 55.
"I think it will be a good season again," Diamond believes. "I
encourage the hunters to get off the road and work at it. Elk find
those nooks and crannies. The hunters that get out there and work at it
should have a real good season."
Antler shed season revisited by Michelle Burkhart
A locally driven effort to restrict when people may search public lands for prized deer antlers has resurfaced.
In July, the Gunnison Basin Sage-grouse Strategic Committee submitted a
petition to the Colorado Wildlife Commission to limit antler shed
collections on public lands in the basin. Local mule deer ‘sheds' have
become a hot commodity, primarily for use in making high-end
chandeliers and furniture.
The
increased commercialization of sheds over time has led to more interest
in the activity and created a greater impact to the imperiled Gunnison
Sage-grouse, according to Gunnison County Sage-grouse Coordinator Jim
Cochran.
"It's beyond the recreational, "Let's go out and walk the dog and pick
up an antler shed," he said. "It has gone to the point where it is
affecting wildlife."
The proposed season would prohibit collection for three months each
spring to protect the grouse, a state Species of Special Concern,
during its mating and nesting season.
The open season would be between June 16 and March 14 annually.
Mule
deer wintering range and sage-grouse leks (mating areas), roosting and
nesting areas overlap in many areas of the Gunnison Basin. So as
collectors gather sheds, they can cause disruptions to grouse during
sensitive times.
One of the goals of the petitioned season is to have collectors follow
travel rules that are often ignored Ñ especially ones that have been
implemented to protect the grouse.
In
2006, Gunnison County and the local branch of the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) began to implement seasonal road closures, primarily
because the large increase in antler shed collection activities was
believed to be impacting the grouse, Cochran said.
Local
Randy Clark, who sells antler sheds at his shop, Traders Rendezvous,
doesn't mind the idea of an antler shed season, but he believes the
current proposal would be unenforceable unless all uses are prohibited
in closed areas during the season.
"I think they're going to
have to stop hikers, snowmobilers, cross-country skiers, snowshoers -
everybody that goes up in the hills," he said. "If they just (ban) shed
collectors and still let people hike, then they are going to have a lot
of guys - quote and unquote hikers - going up in the hills.
"They'll stash a pile of antlers, GPS them and then as soon as the season opens, they'll go up and get them."
That's what has been happing in northern Utah, where an antler shed season was recently introduced, he said.
A lucrative business~
Some
collectors are making $400 to $500 a day by hunting for sheds,
according to Cochran. Buyers have paid over $18 per pound for the fresh
"brown" mule deer antler sheds, he said.
The sheds are most valuable when they first drop off deer Ñ rather than when they have laid out in the sun and bleached.
This leads to a competitive phenomena, where there is a surge of
collection activity beginning in late January when the mule deer start
dropping their antlers.
Collection methods have also become more complex. People have started
to use global positioning systems (GPS) to create searching grids, and
collectors have started to hire crews, Cochran said.
The
strategic committee believes other wildlife species will benefit from
an antler shed collection season as well, because the activity can lead
to harassment of mule deer in the spring when the deer are depleted
from the winter and most susceptible to starvation.
In some cases, collectors have literally herded deer around, trying to
get them to drop their antlers, Cochran said. Antlers usually drop when
deer are on the move Ñ jumping fence lines or gulches.
Local
Navid Navidi, who is a hunter, thinks the antler shed season is a good
idea, but he thinks the dates of the season will amplify problems for
the deer. Collectors will try to get out before the closed season, so
there will be a higher concentration of activity between January and
March, he said. He thinks the season should start near the end of
December.
A revised attempt~
Colorado has never
previously had an antler shed season. Last year the Colorado Division
of Wildlife proposed a state-wide season, but the proposal was
withdrawn primarily because of concerns from ranchers on the Eastern
Plains.
In hopes of side-stepping those concerns, the strategic committee's
proposal does not include private property and is only for the Gunnison
Basin.
The petition also leaves the door open to the Wildlife Commission to consider a collection permit.
A permit system would let officials track who is collecting and could generate funds for sage-grouse projects, Cochran said.
As
a representative of the strategic committee, Cochran will make a formal
presentation of the proposal at the Wildlife Commission's next regular
meeting this fall.
If the Wildlife Commission accepts the proposal for consideration, it
would take agency and public comment at its following meeting. At a
third meeting, it would vote on whether or not to adopt the proposed
season.
In total, it would take the commission about six months to make a decision after the initial presentation.
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