Quote:
Originally Posted by Sooner
In the 500 zone(516) I have hunted in for years now, I have hunted pre supplemental times to now and imo, once supplemental tags came out, the numbers of deer have tanked. I used to see lots of does with 2 fawns and a wide range of young bucks up to some nice ones for that area. It was not uncommon for me to pass on a lot of 2 to 3 point meat bucks waiting for a chance at one of the bigger bucks, if that didn't happen i could always close a tag during the last week on a meat buck. That hasn't happened for a few years now. Now you go all season and only see a few bucks, even the trails, tracks and scrapes you used to see are minimal. Not a biologist but it was better when you could shoot either or on a general tag only. Dad went after either a meat buck or a doe without fawns and I chased bucks. At best 2 deer got harvested. Once the supplemental draw came out, lots of trucks had 2 or more does in them or hanging in camps and then a buck or two. The does took a big hit for a few years and now it shows in the herd numbers. The deer numbers were already going down before the last few bad winters up there. Add in some more wolves which didn't help either. I haven't checked the new regs yet but wouldn't be sad if this zone didn't have supplemental draws anymore.
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I agree 100% on the supplemental tags and would like to see them go away. I hunt the same area and the deer numbers have tanked. Pre supplemental tags we could see 30+ deer a day and more than half would be bucks. Each yr of the supplemental tags the numbers cut in half. 3-4 years after the supplemental tags came into effect, in those same zones a good day was 5-6 deer total. Now a good day is 2 deer! The last couple years deep snow have done a number on the deer in the 509, 510, 516 zones. Last year in 4 days of hunting my hunting partner and I saw only 6 deer total between us.