Recession hasn’t killed Western Colorado hunting season | PostIndependent.com

By John Gardner

jgardner@postindependent.com

Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado — If there is a recession in Western Colorado, the hunters haven’t noticed.

According to the Colorado Division of Wildlife applications are down less than 2 percent from 2008. The license applications include pronghorn, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, moose, turkey, fall bear, desert bighorn sheep, spring turkey and the most popular species of elk and deer.

However, the application numbers indicate that the hunting industry remains strong, according to DOW spokesman Randy Hampton. The actual number of licenses were down 9,318 from 2008 to 2009. However they still received nearly 470,000 applications this year.

“Overall, this is nothing that jumps out as a big surprise or concern for us,” Hampton said.

Hunting, according to Hampton, is one activity that people will find a way to do, even during a recession. Over the past few years even with record-high gas prices, Hampton said that the DOW didn’t see any drastic drops in hunting licenses or applications.

“Hunters are going to hunt,” Hampton said. “It’s something they do with their family, and they’re going to continue to do it.”

Hampton said that a decrease in available tags for elk and deer this year could also be a reason for the slight decline in applications. Hampton said the DOW will issue about 10,000 fewer elk licenses and around 7,000 fewer deer licenses statewide.

However, an interesting trend has developed between the number of resident and nonresident applications. This year nonresident applications were down 9 percent (15,920 applications) while the resident applications rose 2 percent (5,740 applications).

“This would indicate that people are staying closer to home to hunt,” Hampton said. “Our residents may stay in Colorado to hunt, and other residents may stay closer to their home rather than coming to Colorado.”

However, the DOW usually receives more resident applications — on average — than nonresident applications.

The biggest decline was in the nonresident deer applications, which were down 11 percent from 2008. However there were still 58,500 applications this year.

But these numbers are not final. Hampton said that over-the-counter tags, which are only available in second and third rifle season for elk, could determine how successful this hunting season is.  Click link below for full story

via Recession hasn’t killed Western Colorado hunting season | PostIndependent.com.