@Edwin was at the Regional meeting last week and the first thing that was said was to limit archery hunters. I am open to doing so, but rifle hunters gotta give a little bit too IMO.
Currently, I'm of the opinion that before big changes are made to resident archery, we'll need to clean up a few loose ends or any change will have little support from the bulk of ND residents.
1. No more unlimited NR whitetail archery tags - cap it and assign tags to a unit
2. Eliminate the 15% NR archery allocation based on rifle tags
3. Make North Dakotans pick between a mule deer archery tag and a whiletail archery tag. Every resident who wants a tag gets one, but you have to pick species. This absolves the GF from having to include this basic question in surveys, makes the existing surveys much more informative for archery hunters because now we'll know exactly what species they hunted/prioritized with a bow without having to ask them. Success rates will be able to be directly attached to those species. This will also allow us to implement a 90/10 or whatever ratio is desired of NR allocation based on the same weapon instead of rifle. Because we'll know exactly how many residents are getting MD archery tags. Take 10% of that or whatever number ND decides and thats the NR allocation. The segregation of tags by species, to me is somewhat foundational, not just to a potential change, but to data and common sense management.
Once these 3 things are done, going to a unit based limited draw for MD archery would be easy to do, it would just be a matter of taking that archery data and figuring out allocations, and we would have direct data to support or object to that potential proposal.
If the GF tries to go to limited draw archery mule deer for residents straight away, without addressing NR allocation, without segregating species and having clear data of how residents are utilizing their time and priorities, without known mule deer archery success rates, they will be met with opposition. Something they don't need any more of right now.
Again, this all my opinion.