@Pelican
I'm thinking about the letter I'm going to send the commission curious to your thoughts?
1. Any hunt code over 5+ points goes to 80/20
2. Certain units are designated 80/20 and all codes in those units go to that split
This is the difference McDaniel was talking about.
Visual
View attachment 152908
Orange - all hunt codes above point thresshold (76, 2nd and 3rd season are right at 5)
Blue - at least one season 4pts - 9pts ( I included 4pt units as those will likely be heading to 5+ soon with pt creep)
* Resident draw
It looks like your map only includes elk hunt codes. If you add in the units where deer permits take 5 + points there will be a lot more blue units (21, 44, 54, 55, 67, etc).
The one thing that I got out of watching the discussion was that only one commissioner (McDaniel) commented about CO’s high allocation % vs. other states, and five commissioners (McDaniel, Haskett, Adams, Garcia and Schafer) made comments about financial concerns. We are concerned about what we think is fair, they are concerned about money.
If I remember correctly, Ms. Lanter mentioned that if the 3 most recent years of PP data are used there would be about 2500 permits under the 80/20 split vs. about 1000 licenses under 80/20 using 2009 PP info. So, about 1500 tags that are currently allocated under 63/35 would move to 80/20 if CPW used the most recent PP data by hunt code. Residents would get approx. 225 more licenses/year statewide. Assuming ½ of those tags are buck and ½ are bull tags multiplied by the price differential b/t resident and nonresident licenses, the financial impact to CPW for those 225 licenses moving to the resident allocation would be $110,000/year. I think we can all agree that concern about the financial impact to CPW is nonsense when their budget is >100,000,000/year. If you add units with deer tags requiring 5+ points to your map, it becomes apparent that any financial impact to small towns will be minimal as the 225 tags will be spread throughout western Colorado and resident hunters stay in motels, eat at restaurants, and buy gas just like nonresidents. Likewise, it seems tenuous for outfitters to claim they will feel much impact as the tags are spread across many units, many NRs don't use outfitters and some resident do.
My preference would be an 80/20 split statewide, but I don’t see that happening. It seems easier to me to assess it by hunt code rather than unit, as some units it is messy (unit 44 deer 3rd and 4th season take 15+ points, but muzzy and 2nd rifle are <3 points. I see no logistical or financial reasons that CPW can’t calculate which units will be 80/20 prior to the draw. It will probably be a couple week before I send anything to the commission, but I think I’ll start by mentioning that CO has the highest allocation of any state and list allocations by state to drive the point home. Then, I will probably dive into how nonexistent the financial concerns are for CPW or any one town. I’ll probably mention that CO also has a land owner allocation that is twice many other states, and a lot of those tags end up being sold to nonresidents. Hopefully the commission will eventually stop dragging their feet and address this issue.