Yeah, and I do realize $100 is cheap for a bear tag. I contemplated grabbing one for elk season last year but opted not to. At $50 though, i definitely would have picked one up. Talked to a sheep rancher last year, his herders had already shot close to 100 bears in 1 unit as of early september. CPW gets $0 for those bears. might as well get $50 and let the hunters do it.
2020 CO hunt brochures are out
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Though they shot those bears in July that were going after their flocks... those bears may or may not be targeted by hunters regardless, but your point, I believe, stands.
Why couldn’t you return your A tag and pick up an OTC with caps in your elk unit?
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I pulled the tag on Aug 13, the season opened Sept 02 for bear.
So I guess I could have returned it for nothing and then paid for another license? Not really the point, I could have figured it out... but CPW wants me to take a bear, I want to take a bear, and I’m willing to buy a tag. The system is just crazy and despite seeing tons of bears in CO, with a gun in my hand and a bear tag in my wallet I haven’t taken one because of weird date/season hiccups. I’ve killed 4 bears... just none in CO.
Logistics aside here are the facts:
are way over object as evident by reduced license prices the fact that most license are now B instead of A and there are lots of C meaning you can get 2 or 3 tags for a unit, and by the DAU reports and per comissioners/biologists.
Revenue for bears is not an issue, per NR license reductions.
Commission and biologists states at the la junta meeting bears are primarily an incidental take.
I’m fully behind CPW having granular control of units to achieve local objects... hence my position on fully limited elk in the San Juan’s, but I believe way in which bears are taken (incidentally) makes the dynamics of that hunt different.
MT, ID, WY, and AK all allow you to buy a single tag and they don’t experience over harvest.
CPW could always remove a unit and make it limited if there was worry about over harvest.
I have talked to numerous hunters who have said that they always see bears, always buy a tag, but it’s never the right tag in the right unit.
The bear season structure is the most complicated of all species and the most complicate of any species I’ve hunted in any state. I believe this the major limiting factor.
Every revision of the bear season structure just gets more complicated, and the problem persists.
Look at the unit I highlighted, @Oak you are one of the most knowledgeable people on the forum about season structure on the forum and have earned your expert tag a thousand times over. Unit 41 has 5 hunt codes for black bear all during September, all B tags. On top of this it has an additional 4 weeks of hunting that are B tags and then a C tag for private land. None of these sold out at any point during the season. How is that not broken.
Oh I don’t disagree with you. Just assumed you drew your A tag in May and was trying to understand. Sorry to make you write all of that. 
I do think that it is inherently difficult for the agency to take a step back and simplify regs. It’s not in their nature to subtract, and the scrutiny of the CLAW Caucus members makes it especially difficult to change bear and mountain lion regs.
I do think that it is inherently difficult for the agency to take a step back and simplify regs. It’s not in their nature to subtract, and the scrutiny of the CLAW Caucus members makes it especially difficult to change bear and mountain lion regs.
Slm864
Well-known member
I still don’t purchase the bear tag even after the price reduction. I have seen bear on all my trips and had them in bow range. I just don’t feel like packing one out of the hell hole I’m already in chasing elk. I just view it as lost time from elk and deer hunting if I’m packing a bear. I can also hunt bear in PA though so maybe that is why it’s not as appealing. Someone from a state that doesn’t have black bear hunting probably thinks it’s great.
Matt Dworak
Well-known member
@wllm1313
I couldn't agree more. I honestly don't think CPW could come up with a more complicated system if they tried. As a CO native (45 yrs.) and someone who does a decent job staying informed on sportsmans isues, the complexity of our bear tags is mind boggling. On a side note, when it comes to recruiting new hunters, IMHO regs like these play a big role on turning folks off...
When a seasoned hunter is scratching their heads trying to make sense of the regs, picks up the phone for clarification and gets three different answers from three different CPW personnel then something is wrong. Sorry for the new guy rant, you just did a great job articulating my gripe and it got me fired up this fine Sunday morning! Ha.
I couldn't agree more. I honestly don't think CPW could come up with a more complicated system if they tried. As a CO native (45 yrs.) and someone who does a decent job staying informed on sportsmans isues, the complexity of our bear tags is mind boggling. On a side note, when it comes to recruiting new hunters, IMHO regs like these play a big role on turning folks off...
When a seasoned hunter is scratching their heads trying to make sense of the regs, picks up the phone for clarification and gets three different answers from three different CPW personnel then something is wrong. Sorry for the new guy rant, you just did a great job articulating my gripe and it got me fired up this fine Sunday morning! Ha.
I’ve said this before but I probably check all of the boxes on their ‘Target Audience’ ppt slide for bear tags. I hunt a lot of the archery elk season, at least 1 rifle elk/deer season, and help family and friends along the way in 1-2 additional seasons/units. All in units that are “OTC” for bears.
I would buy 1 incidental bear tag. A couple times I have. But mostly I just don’t - because the barrier to entry is high. From what I am reading, To cover myself last year (I.e. to have always had a legal bear tag in my pocket while I was hunting elk and deer, even ignoring when I was just helping), I’d have needed to buy 3 separate bear tags - two OTC rifle tags (1 ‘A’ and 1 ‘B’) and one add-on archery tag (‘B’). That wouldn’t be allowed (can’t have A+B+B), so I’d have to forgo one of them.
The only folks I see this working smoothly for are folks that are rifle hunting 1 season/1 unit for elk/deer. That’s probably the majority, tbh, but everyone else is doing some level of mental gymnastics - particularly residents since we as a group are more likely to hunt multiple seasons/units.
This is likely a very big component- I see it all the time with our practitioners on a new client project - Base human approach to problem solving is to follow twisted threads and try and weave them together and make sense of them, not to clip them off and start over.
I'm still waiting to find out if they're trying to kill all the mature deer because they think it will do something about CWD or if they're going to slash deer tags with these new dates. I think its about 50/50 on which happens.
Deer draws are going to be totally whack this year. People should take past year's points with a grain of salt.
I, too, agree the gymnastics they put you through to have a bear tag in your pocket are ridiculous. When I've asked them about this, the answer is concern over party hunting deer/elk (shooting a deer for your buddy to tag).
Also surprised I haven't seen a thread dedicated to the change in OTC for the SW units. I bet they get a lot of people down there who don't pay attention to the change and try to hunt it with their OTC tag. CPW should have put that change in huge font or something.
Deer draws are going to be totally whack this year. People should take past year's points with a grain of salt.
I, too, agree the gymnastics they put you through to have a bear tag in your pocket are ridiculous. When I've asked them about this, the answer is concern over party hunting deer/elk (shooting a deer for your buddy to tag).
Also surprised I haven't seen a thread dedicated to the change in OTC for the SW units. I bet they get a lot of people down there who don't pay attention to the change and try to hunt it with their OTC tag. CPW should have put that change in huge font or something.
HighDesertSage
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Lmao, I've been waiting for that one as well...
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@cedahm and @Oak
Thought about this more today. Oak you raises a fair point about CLAW.
What if we just went Sept 2-30, then any time a hunting season was occurring 1-4th, all OTC the entire state.
And then just like every other western states, just had unit quotas for total bears and for female mortality? (Female mortality is really the biggest worry correct?)
There is mandatory reporting already, this is how the lions hunts run? Would there be push back from CLAW for running our bear hunts the same way as we do our lion hunts?
Thought about this more today. Oak you raises a fair point about CLAW.
What if we just went Sept 2-30, then any time a hunting season was occurring 1-4th, all OTC the entire state.
And then just like every other western states, just had unit quotas for total bears and for female mortality? (Female mortality is really the biggest worry correct?)
There is mandatory reporting already, this is how the lions hunts run? Would there be push back from CLAW for running our bear hunts the same way as we do our lion hunts?
A quota system makes my head hurt. I’m not sure the people concerned about bear and lion hunting are truly focused on female harvest. I think it’s more that they are not convinced the CPW has accurate estimates of populations to justify harvest levels. At least until they need a new excuse. Same reason ID released their wolf population estimating technique and results that RMEF twisted and caused so much consternation on that thread.
I will admit to never having had a bear tag in my pocket and not caring enough to try and solve the problem. But I agree that the bear regs are ridiculously complex.
I will admit to never having had a bear tag in my pocket and not caring enough to try and solve the problem. But I agree that the bear regs are ridiculously complex.
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Honestly, I would much rather have you fully focused on sheep. I just appreciate the back and forth, I will continue to write the commission and when appropriate speak about the issue at a meeting. I appreciate the discussion on this, as I would prefer to have any idea that I start pushing to be at least moderately baked.
A couple of the commissioners outlined a couple of the bear specific issues at the one of the recent meetings... maybe La Junta; few people kill more than a couple of bears in their lifetime, most take in Colorado is incidental, few hunters are going to blow up an elk hunt by killing a bear, etc. But I didn't get the sense that any of the commissioners had ever really hunted bear and understood the issue on a personal level.
As far as the quota, in my mind it would be pretty broad strokes... most units would be unlimited, or no quotas, then the few units that have below average pops... any area that is draw or an A tag currently, would have some quota near what the average harvest is now.
All the colored in units would be unlimited quota, no quota, or like 2,000 bears (something high), then all the areas in grey would have specific quotas based on current hunt codes. Like MT, there would be a map on the CPW website would be updated daily to show open units, realistically this would only effect a handful of units every year.
Here is the Montana webmap.
I like it better than the current model, and you’re correct that Bears already have a proverbial “leg up” with mandatory harvest reporting, so that scenario seems to check both the ‘easy’ and ‘biologically sound’ boxes. As you mention some form of the mechanism already exists for lions (but the number of both cats and lion hunters is so much lower than bears that it’s apples to oranges). As you often state, I’m for the resource, and female mortality is biologically a giant piece of the puzzle, but is also a very emotional term to see in print for a lot of people.
To that end, I very much agree with @Oak - it would be tough to jump directly to that square. There will be a giant spew of rhetoric and emotions on both sides if we had a quota that was based on CPW population estimates (one side would say too low, the other too high) and a female mortality limit (one side would say ‘kill em all’, the other ‘none’). Not that discussion and debate, (and yes, argument), isn’t warranted, it certainly is, but it would be a battle.
Case in point, while trying to read the regs, I found it odd that a certain river valley with perhaps the most (at least the most reported on) ‘bear-human conflict’ issues is NOT part of the OTC areas. I would find it hard to believe that CLAW or some similar group didn’t have a hand in lobbying for that.
Sunday night soliloquy aside...
I think you can ease into it by just simplifying the regs. I like WY’s structure for weapon choice - so let’s say the Tag is good for archery only 9/2-9/30, and then switches to ‘any legal method’ from 1st through 4th rifle. Every ‘OTC’ bear tag is a ‘B’ tag (you can only get 2) but you can only have one tag at a time. If you harvest a female on your first tag you are done. If you take a boar on the first you can buy a second. Build in an earmark for some portion of bear tag revenue to go directly to Bear population work and publish the results of that work regularly.
Reading that - it’s still a little complicated but better than the puzzle in the current regulations.
beginnerhunter
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Essentially it’s just opening up the leftover draw to everyone.
The leftover list isn’t going anywhere
The leftover list isn’t going anywhere
I said this to a friend today that thought it would replace the madness on the day when Re-Issue tags hit. That day will be just as chaotic and poorly supported by IT as it has been...Essentially it’s just opening up the leftover draw to everyone.
The leftover list isn’t going anywhere
We need an official name for that day to start getting past the confusion of “leftovers” versus “reissued” - honestly ‘that day’ may be as anticipated as the day(s) the actual draw results are released.
Just made me think of a new revenue mechanism and point creep reducer... just have an online auction for every available hunt code that runs every Saturday (list posted by Monday), and let people bid points for reissue tags. Charge 5 bucks per person per week. If you have no points you’re still eligible but behind anyone willing to bid points.
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Or like don’t let people return tags... like pretty much every other state.
Yeah, there’s always an easy, logical way out...but you could combine these fictitious (and sarcasm-based) auctions with the new sports betting regs and set over/under lines when cool tags pop up and thus generate even more money on side action.
I mean - the point schemes are already here, let’s keep pulling those threads. Maybe we can make tag applications the next e-sport.
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Is it sad that knowing Colorado 5 years from now the system will be closer to yours than mine.
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