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Scott, Congratulations on an awesome looking buck. Glad you were able to find a big one to wrap your tag on. Aaron

It is definately not the wolves that caused those bulls to use the Alpine Valley, it was the feed. Before the fire the mixed conifer in the forest was so thick that the bulls could get way better nutrition in the fields of town than they could get in the forest. The only thing that has changed since the fire is the amount of feed in the forest. Now the elk can get better feed in the forest that is why they haven't been in town since other than a day or two here and there. Same can be seen in Nutrioso, Round Valley, etc. I know the wolves are an easy target but that is not the reality of the situation. Aaron

Obviously you will not believe what I have to say but I will say it once again. It is not about money but about maintaining a certain Buck:Doe ratio. If Jr's aren't killing deer then the department would have to allocate more tags to the general hunt to satisfy that same harvest and maintain the ratio within guidelines. Since you don't trust me I don't expect you to believe that but maybe someone will find some value in my comment. Aaron

To change the guidelines to only have one Jr. hunt in a region you would have to provide input during that process which should be either next year or early 2014. The department would not loose any money because we still maintain certain buck:doe ratios and to get there we try to harvest X number of animals. That would mean that the difference may be made up with more general tags. We could also potentially absorb the 25 Jr. tags in the unit 27 hunt. Remember these Jr hunts are for hunter recruitment and retention. Sure we could throw them into a unit like 4 or even the 2's but is that really going to recruit and retain a new hunter, and maybe someone who's dad is also not a hunter? NO!! I don't have any information about the archery hunts or any arguments one way or another. Aaron

Alpinebullwinkle, Thank you for your comments. I appreciate where you are coming from and it sounds like you have had alot of experience in Unit 27. Although I personally do not agree that the wolves are having much of an impact I am with you on wondering why we did not have a great calf crop this year. My only thought is that that rut was so messed up last year and with the stress of the fire I can't say with certainty how many cows were successfully bred and gave birth. With a 38% calf crop this year, which is up from the past few years, i am hoping to see an increase in that for next year. One of the other challenges with managing these herds is that we have already recommended hunt numbers for next year and we are not done with this year's hunts. For that reason I try to be conservative, since it takes two years to make any changes and before you can effect things on the ground. If you send me an email or a PM I would love to sit down with you and get your historical perspective of things and see how we can fix the world. Aaron Hartzell

Now to answer a few of the other questions. A question was asked about taking the tech advances into account when looking at hunt success. I know I personally have thought about this alot and I tend to take it into account. I don't think the advances are necessarily reflected in the hunt success guidelines on paper however. This however is just one of the things we look at and it is given less weight than the biological factors that we manage under. This is evident in Unit 27 where we have had a 40% hunt success for the late bull hunt for the last five years and tag numbers have remained constant. Also guidelines only refer to hunt success for certain rifle hunts so if hunt success goes up for archery or muzzy hunts it doesn't really affect anything. You are correct there are two ways to address the B:C ratios. One way would be to let the cow segment increase. This however does not address the population objectives of a particular herd unit so we do that by adjusting both the cow and bull tags. In unit 27 we increased cow tags to try to maintain the population at current levels. Some would argue that the 27 elk herd could grow without impacting things. In many places this is true but the problem is we can't just grow a herd in some places and not in the whole unit. Currently we have about 90 photo points in place to monitor aspen recruitment post fire. In most of these areas the aspen are doing great and are up to 9 feet tall. We feel that this will be the case throughout the unit but saying something without the documentation to prove it does little to persuade people. There are some areas where browsing on aspen is definately evident (like off the 59 road) and it will take a little more time before we see good recovery. Once we can see this good recovery throughout the unit we may be able to start letting things increase a little. Another segment of the habitat that we need to look at is the winter range. Alot of the country off the rim was impacted by severe fire and it will take a few more years before this country could support (without being negatively impacted) a full elk herd. The relatively mild winters we have had last year and it appear this year have helped this recovery because most of the elk have stayed in the summer range. The other thing we are hoping to achieve by keeping the elk herd at current levels and not impacting the habitat is to allow the mule deer population to start moving back toward historic levels. I am sure there are many opinions as to where this balance should be but I for one would like to see some more deer in the country. The last thing I will try to address in this post is the deer hunt in Unit 3C. I don't have all the information on this but the reason for the Jr. hunt there is that guidelines call for 2 Jr's hunts in the region. We felt that the other units that have deer hunts (1, 2ABC, 3B, 4AB) did not offer the kind of opportunity that we wanted for a junior hunt. We felt that in these other units they would not have a great experience, which is what we want for the kids to get recruited into the ranks. The long term hope is that the wallow fire will allow the deer in unit 1 to recover sufficiently to move that Jr. hunt there in the future. When we can expect that is not known. The other option would be to get the guidelines changed so that we didn't have to have two Jr. hunts in the region. Aaron Hartzell

Well, even though I have not had any say in this conversation thus far I guess I have some ownership in it since I wrote the recommendation for unit 27 that so many people are bashing. With that said I will guarantee that the whole money part of the conversation is way off base since that thought never entered my mind. I am sure those who voiced that opinion will continue to maintain that thought and for that I feel bad for you because it is not true. As for the tag increases that you see. First off you need to know that we are looking to maintain the herd at current levels to allow recovery after the Wallow fire. When I say recovery I am referring to recovery of the entire unit and not just in the high elevation where everyone can see that we have more herbaceous forage than ever before. We are monitoring aspen recovery as well as recovery of the mast producing plants and shrubs down off the rim in the blue that were hit hard and where no replanting occurred. Because of this management direction I recommended an increase in cow permits to minimize the overall growth of the herd. Although, with current calf crops and predicted better calf crops in the future these increases may not be enough to stabalize the overall population. Now getting to the bull tag increases, which consist of 75 archery tags and 15 early muzzy tags. These increases were done to address an ever increasing Bull:Cow ratio which was at 45:100 this year. Current guidelines call for a Bull:Cow ratio of 25-35:100. As you can see we are well above this guideline and we are trying to head in that direction. At the current rate we will not get there for 5 years or so, if we do then. Also, hunt success for the late bull hunt is supposed to be somewhere between 20 and 30% . We have been at 40% for the past 5 years. Here is a table of the survey data from the past 10 years. YEAR SPIKES BULLS COWS CALVES UNCLS TOTAL 2002 19 73 226 88 7 413 2003 6 21 88 25 0 140 2004 15 32 143 52 2 244 2005 9 18 117 42 2 188 2006 18 45 214 63 6 346 2007 6 38 116 32 0 192 2008 10 28 143 58 5 244 2009 33 49 391 166 0 639 2010 25 28 275 88 0 416 2011 27 99 472 115 55 768 2012 34 184 485 183 9 895 From this table you cas see that overall observations are up the last two years. I would say alot of this increase is due to increased visibility since the fire in 2011 but even looking at the last two years you can see that we are seeing more elk. Then look at the numbers of bulls we saw. In that category we just about doubled in the last year. Now how do you think that happened? We obviously didn't grow elk that fast so either the elk were already there and we have just been not hunting them as hard as we could have or else we are getting elk that have moved into the area from outside the fire area. Whatever the case may be we have a few more bulls out there than are needed so I thought I would give a few more hunters the opportunity to harvest them. I am not going to go into any further detail on this recommendation and there are those who will look at this and still wonder why I increased tag numbers. I guess you are still entitled to your opinion and have that right. I will say that with the current commission those who want more of a "quality" hunt should be at every meeting and express your opinion. But when we get a total of 5 people to show up for a meeting it is hard to say that that is the voice of the hunting community and take everything they say and run with it. If we actually had a showing it would definately carry alot more weight. Trust me I love to hunt more than the average joe and I would venture so say more than alot of people that spend time on this board. I am also willing to put in alot of work to do it and will spend a majority of my hunts in the middle of nowhere with only a pack on my back for company. Unit 27 has the advantage of alot of roadless areas where a person can get away from the crowds if they want to but they have to be willing to work at it. For those that think there are now too many tags and a ruined hunt, I am sorry but I hope you can find a place where you can hunt and have the experience you want. As for me I am hoping to draw one of those tags and maybe place my hands on another 400" bull. Aaron Hartzell Wildlife Manager

Looks like some good looking rams. Hopefully the hunter can score a good one. Aaron

I had the same experience last year. They were rutting like crazy and I heard more bugles than during Sept because the weather was cooler. Glad to hear the hunters are able to experience it again this year. Last year there were quite a few people killing bulls during the Nov. rifle hunt that said the same thing. Aaron

That is awesome and way to get it done on your own. I am sure that with that kind of persistance there will be many more in the future. Aaron

Thanks, and again an awesome buck.

Wow! That thing has some amazing character. What an awesome buck. Thanks for the closer up pics too. Aaron

Way to make a positive spin out of this. Your right I am sure it is all about the money.

What an awesome buck. Congratulations on a trophy of a lifetime. Aaron