#108 Colorado Parks & Wildlife - Scott Murdoch
Colorado Parks and Wildlife manages 42 state parks, all of Colorado's wildlife, more than 300 state wildlife areas, and various recreational programs. At the forefront of all that is Scott Murdoch, a Colorado Wildlife Officer, District Wildlife Manager, Colorado native, and avid outdoorsman. In his free time, Scott is always enjoying the outdoors, either hunting or fishing, with family and friends. Tune in to today’s episode as Bobby Marshall and Officer Murdoch talk about wildlife, wildlife and human interaction, outdoor life and safety, camping and hiking, public land, hunting, wildfires, and so much more!
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Colorado Parks & Wildlife - Scott Murdoch
Our guest for this episode is from Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and returning guest is Wildlife Officer Scott Murdoch. This was a great conversation. I'd always enjoy having Colorado Parks and Wildlife in the studio to help educate myself and our audience on some day-to-day use in the back country living with wildlife. We cover so much in these episodes. These are some of my favorite ones to do, and hopefully, you as the reader are getting something out of it.
Scott, thanks for coming back in. I always enjoy having you here. For this episode specifically, I'm going to try to refrain from using bad language and stuff so maybe CPW, you can use it someplace. That's been the issue in the past I'm so used to having my rock and roll buddies in here, former operators. Sometimes there's some whiskey flowing, so the lips get a little bit loose. We're going to make this one at least PG-13. I'm going to do my best. You can catch me too. We'll bleep it out or something. How have you been coming off of the hunting season? It’s a crazy time of year.
It was a lull. We got the second season starting here in a couple of days. The first season wasn't busy. We had a few things going on. The first season is usually pretty mild, but now that we get the deer season and the elk season combined, you get lots more guys out there. It’s a bit more chaotic for sure. We had antelope season and I try to hunt a little bit in some of these off-seasons or with different tags that are a little separate from kind of the general tag. There are not a lot of downtimes.
Between you hunting and your job, you are full-on. For people that haven't read this before, this is your third time on the show. Thanks for coming back. I always enjoy having you. Let's run through your job description a little bit. It would be a game warden and then you can dive into a little bit more of your responsibilities and stuff for people that are tuning into this but haven't read prior episodes.
I work for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and my title is technically called the District Wildlife Manager. We've commissioned wildlife officers. You might hear us called Game Wardens Conservation Officers. It's all the same. Here in Colorado, we have a pretty diverse role. We deal with both law enforcement as well as the biological aspect of things. We are all biologists as well as law enforcement officers.
We have the same authority as State Trooper Deputy. Our focus, however, happens to be on Title 33, which is Wildlife Law. Since we're also biologists, we do a lot of biological surveys. Deer elk counts and classifications. Fish electroshocking or sampling, weighing and measuring all the fish. Doing goat counts, helicopter classifications, ground counts and all types of different things. We help with the license set. It's a lot.
It's a lot on your guys' plates. I know we’ve prefaced that before, but the areas that you guys cover are. One wildlife agent is responsible for it. It is pretty vast.
In and around some of these more urban areas, the Denver area, Conifer and Evergreen, our districts tend to be a little bit smaller because we have so many more people. With those additional people, we get a lot more nuisance wildlife complaints, bear complaints, deer cutting fences, and stuff like that. That takes a lot of our time. We have a little bit smaller districts, but some of the more rural districts out on the Eastern plains or in the Western part of the state are 2, 3, or 4 times bigger than my current district here in Conifer. It's a lot of ground. Even with the small districts, there are days I don't see one end to the other. There are usually a couple of guys per county. It's not a lot of coverage.
The counties here in the state of Colorado can be pretty big. Jefferson County's huge.
Yeah, it is.
For a county, it's pretty big. How often do you guys get complaints on wildlife like, “There's a bear in my trash at night,” or whatever the most common things are?
Seasonality plays a big role in what kind of calls that we're getting, but usually, it's daily we're getting multiple calls and I would say over the last many years, we're seeing more and more of those types of calls and complaints because you're getting more and more people that are working from home. You're getting more people that are living in these semi-rural areas. We get more and more of the ring cameras and trail cameras on people's property. Now, they're seeing the wildlife that's been there all along.
People are much more familiar with that type of thing but we get lots and lots of calls on the days that I'm on-call. We've got an officer that's on-call every day and that person is going to respond to any types of calls that are pertinent for that particular day or night. There are days where sometimes we'll get 1, 2, or 3 calls. There are some days you get twenty-plus and it turns into an 18 or 20-hour day. Those are not probably the norm, but they're becoming much more common, unfortunately.
We've seen a huge turn over here where we live on the front range, specifically on people leaving the state of Colorado that have lived here for a long time and then people moving in from other states that haven't dealt with wildlife or have lived in an inner city or something like that. Do you find that most commonly these calls are coming from those people specifically or do you think it's an increase in the technology?
Because for me growing up here, if a bear gets in our trash, first of all, we have those bear-locking trash cans, which they can still open. I go out and clean up the trash and then move it into the garage or whatever. That's my bad for leaving the trash can out when it should be inside the garage or something and then I go about my day. I don't call you guys and be like, “There was a bear in my yard last night.” How often are those calls coming in like that or is it more of a safety concern?
It’s probably the whole range and to get back to your first statement of whether is it, people that have moved here, I would say that's probably a big component of it. I would say probably a lot of the natives or folks that have lived here for some time have been educated. They know the routine, what to do and how to live with wildlife but we get more and more folks that have come here and they get to the mountains and then they're like, “I didn't realize there were bears and mountain lions in my backyard.”
That's a pretty big shock to them or they're from a state where they are feeding dear down in Texas. They come down here to Colorado, “I'm going to put out my salt block like I did in Texas.” I would say the vast majority of our nuisance calls that we deal with revolve around education versus actual law enforcement efforts. We’ve certainly gone down that road if we have to, but we like to start with the basics at first and try and educate folks and say, “This is the most appropriate response for this type of action.”
We don't mind getting those calls and trying to educate folks. We would prefer to address the situation before it becomes a big issue. Some of these folks don't understand that you do need to secure your trash or don't put your trash out the night before. Put your trash out the day of trash day and stuff which might seem common sense to you or me, but if you're not living in and amongst wildlife your whole life, that's just not probably the first thing that pops into your mind.
We educate. We do some talks with realtors in the area. We ar trying to educate the realtors so that they can try and educate prospective home buyers. A lot of that's kind of slowing down with home purchases and stuff like that, but certainly, there are still plenty of people moving in and around these communities.
Not to mention we have more subdivisions going in these rural areas to meet that demand because there are a lot of people that want to live here. There are a lot of people that want to live in rural spaces now. We're building more and we're taking more habitat probably from a lot of these animals so they're going to naturally be pushed into subdivided areas, I would imagine.
You think about our national forests or some of the more rural or remote parts of Conifer and Evergreen. I would say the vast majority of them, the timber in the forests is pretty overgrown. They're thick. There's not a lot of good food in there. It's great shelter, but it's not good food or forage habitat for a lot of our deer and elk, but in and around the subdivisions, everybody thins their property out or they've planted ornamentals or fruit trees or something like that. It's a perfect feeding area for these animals. They’ll refuge in areas of open space or national forest, and then they'll come into these subdivisions and feed in the evenings or mornings. It's a perfect situation to have people and wildlife interacting.
It happens regularly up here. I don't know how many times. I live right by the golf course, especially in the fall, there are people out there playing golf and there'll be a 300 to 400-class bull out there tearing up the green or whatever he is doing in the middle of the rut. The animals around here are more used to people because they're around them all the time. How often do you guys have a call in a residential area like this where it's an actual attack or a problem with some wildlife injuring a person? Is it very seldom or does it happen on a regular basis?
It's not super common. For as many people that are in and around wildlife, it's surprisingly low in particular for bears and mountain lions. It's far lower for bears and lions than it is for deer and elk. We probably have more people that are hurt by deer, elk and moose here in Colorado than bears and lions.
Moose is a big one.
Without a doubt. It’s not so much around here but with our moose population increasing, that is certainly a bigger risk to folks, especially the folks that are higher elevation, walking their dogs off leash in particular. That's going to be a potential risk for those people.
It happened to me bowhunting this year. I came up on a bull. They're so big and I'm not used to being on the lookout for them. I was going up this ravine and we crossed paths. There was no place for me to go. He stared at me for a minute and you could tell. You get that sort of like sense of if you've been around enough elk or in the rut or anything like that. I haven't been around a ton of moose, but in the past couple of years, I've seen more moose than I've seen elk in some of these spots where I go bowhunting. That was a scary moment for a second. I didn't know what I was going to do, honestly.
They can be intimidating. Number one is they're massive. Even a cow can be substantially larger than an elk. You're not going to outrun them. They look like they should be clumsy animals but they're super athletic.
Especially the bulls and I've seen a ton of cows, but it's very seldom that I run into a bull. This year I did. Luckily, he wasn't huge and super aggressive because I think it would've been a different story because I was maybe 30 yards from him before I realized he was there.
They don't have that same fright response. They're more designed to hold and stay on their ground. Whereas a deer r an elk, the second they see or smell you, they're gone especially in a wilder environment but maybe not so much around Conifer and Evergreen.
What time of year do they rut? Is it around the same time?
Yeah. Usually that first week of October. They're getting into it pretty well.
I heard a couple of bulls going at it and you would've thought it was a WWE match up there when I was up because it was dead silent. They did that crazy type of call. It's not anything that I'm used to. I'm used to hearing elk bugles, which sounds like Jurassic Park if you've never experienced it before. We have this awesome couple that moved in behind us from Maryland. There were a couple of nights when the bulls will be right outside their window coming off the golf course. If they're in a full-on rut and fighting all night, they're screaming. Max was like, “Did you hear that last night?” I was like, “Yeah. That is pretty normal a couple of times a year. It's pretty epic.” He was like, “That was so cool.” They're excited about it.
I never get enough of it.
I don't either. I don't know what it is. I guess you could call me an alcoholic or something like that because I love going out and photographing them too. One of my favorite things to do is to get some still images of them. I love being around it, but I love being up with my bow too. I had an awesome season this season calling and all that stuff. I was telling you prior to this where I went up. I went to two different open game units this year, but one day, I went up and I saw a cat. That's the first time I've seen a cat in the wild where I've been on foot. I'm almost positive it was a mountain lion. I can't tell because it was in my peripheral, and I saw it take-off and I saw a tail. I would imagine it was a cat. I was cow-calling for 2 miles up this trail before I saw it. I would imagine it was coming into my stupid cow-call, which isn't very good.
We've got no shortage of cats. We get lots of calls every fall and winter in particular around Conifer and Evergreen of people surprised that they're starting to see lions in and around the communities. If there's deer, guaranteed you got mountain lions. We track all of our mountain lion and bear reports and sightings. If somebody does call me, I've got an app on my phone that'll pull up and I'll record that. That is one way that we keep tabs on current things that are going on.
People are surprised that they're starting to see lions in and around the communities. If there's deer, it’s guaranteed you got mountain lions.
You'd be amazed where we see mountain lions in Eastern Plains and Downtown Denver. They are all over the place. That's the South Platte corridor, the Bear Creek corridor, the Clear Creek Corridor and Boulder Creek, all those. Those animals are moving up and down constantly and there are critters all over the place.
Has there ever been a mountain line problem downtown like in Lodo Area or 16th Street Mall or anything?
I don't work down there, but when we look at our app, we certainly have sightings along the South Platte.
Do you start to see a trend? I know a lot of these animals are migratory and I know for a fact, especially with the elk, there's one particular bull that I've been photographing for at least 6 to 7 years now. He comes back and I can recognize him. Each year, he gets older and his rack's either bigger or smaller depending on how much rain we've had. I'm 99% positive it's the same bull. When you start to have a problem with a bear or a cat or some of these predators, do they tend to be repeat offenders or once they found a food source I know with bears specifically, once they've found garbage, I've heard rumors that they'll come back for six years or something looking for that food source?
They certainly can. A lot of times it depends on the individual and what kind of natural food sources are available. If there's a lot of natural food available, many of those bears even if there are good trash sources available, they're going to go and forage naturally. It’s the same thing with people. Some people like to be in and around and they don't mind the crowds. A lot of people like to be by themselves. Especially with bears, it feels like some of them certainly tolerate people. They don't care. They'll walk out in the middle of town during the day and other bears are seldom even seen in that area at night. We've put collars on these bears in other parts of the state and we've tracked them as they come in and out of town.
If natural forage is good, that's their preferred food source overall. We're going to have individuals that are going to be trash bears no matter what. It’s an individual thing but we pray for that early moisture in the spring and hopefully, we don't get any late frosts. This year, we had a late frost that killed a lot of the acorn production. That was a bummer but overall, we had pretty good berry production late in the summer. That was certainly helpful.
This seemed like it was a wet summer to me and you could tell by looking at the elk and deer. They were in the velvet a little bit longer and on bigger racks. It was nice antlers.
I think we had a pretty good year overall. From a bear perspective, we had a pretty decent amount of complaints compared to some other years but it seemed to be focused in Evergreen and then up towards the Idaho Springs area. It seemed to be our hotspot this year.
As far as the bear population goes, when did they outlaw spring bear hunting?
I think that was in '92. I can't say for sure. I think it was in the '90s.
I realized the other day how old I was when they were talking about the Bronco's 25-year anniversary of their first Super Bowl. I was like, “That doesn't seem like that long ago.” I was like, “I'm getting old.” I guess that was twenty-some years ago. How much have we seen the bear population grow? Looking at the hunting regs every year and starting to see those bear paws in there and your guys' emphasis or Colorado Parks and Wildlife's emphasis on encouraging guys to get bear tags and making it much more attainable for them. The population's probably larger than it's been in twenty-some years. It might be why we're having some of these issues.
We have a lot of bears without question and probably the biggest challenge is that the bears are in places that we can't necessarily hunt. We do have not a lot of great tools in order to manage bears. Certainly, we Parks and Wildlife can set traps or relocate or move bears and or put down bears that are either deprecating or breaking into homes or attacking people, but that's not something we want to do nor is it a real productive use of our time. There are a lot of other things that we could be doing that would be more productive as far as the total number of things that we have on our plates.
We use hunting as a management tool so if we can get hunters to harvest bears, that's the preference. The challenge is that our window is such a narrow one. If we can't hunt until September 2nd, 50% of our bears are in hibernation by October 15th, and by Thanksgiving, they're pretty much all in hibernation. We've got a real narrow window and then we're done. Many of these bears are not necessarily in the national forest. The ones that are in the national forest where most of the hunters are aren't the ones that are causing problems.
They're so stealth and hard to see. They're like lions. I don't run into them very often.
You get a little dusting of snow in September and you're like, “There are bear tracks all over the place, but you seldom see them.
They are so quiet too.
They're real hard to hunt. They've got such a good nose. If they smell you, they're gone. Managing bears or reducing population size through hunting is ultimately our goal but you know as well as I do in and around Conifer and Evergreen, good luck harvesting a bear because so many of these properties are so small and the bears aren't generally where the hunting is.
I would say all the properties are anywhere from five to five and a half acres for the majority. There might be a few outliers there. That's a tough thing to manage. I only hope that in the future it doesn't hinder the bear because, at some point, they're going to outgrow their habitat.
We see increased road kills. We see increased human conflicts, which often result in a bear being put down and those are all direct mortalities that could have been somebody's bear that somebody harvested through hunting. Ultimately, would've been our preference to have somebody harvest a bear, but when you have high densities and lots of people, and lots of roads, you get increased road strikes.
We had a big one up here on 73.
We have had a few on 73 already or on 74.
It was a big bear. I was taking my kid to his football game in the morning and I was like, “That’s a 400-pound bear.”
We've had quite a few this year, unfortunately.
I don't know if you can speak on this or answer. If you don't want to answer it, just tell me. Do you ever anticipate and I know that this is more of the issue with it everything going to the ballot box? Because now people that are not biologists, in my opinion, are playing a role in biology depending on whether they check yes or no on a box.
Do you ever anticipate that we could get spring bear hunting back or it seems like once and I don't know if it's party-related? I'm sure it is, but once an initiative is passed or a law is passed, it seems like there's no going back, especially on the hunting side of things. Do you ever see that the bear population could get so big that we may have to implement spring bear hunting again to manage it or some baiting or dogs or some of these old ways that they used to hunt bears?
I think that's part of the strategy of folks that want to get these types of things banned or reigned in is that in this instance, this was a constitutional amendment and amending the constitution is very difficult. I think they've since passed another deal where to change the Constitution, it's quite a bit more difficult than historically used to be which I think in the grand scheme of things is probably a good thing, but to change things that are currently on the Constitution, it takes a lot of effort. It takes not only the majority but more than a majority to change that. That's going to come from the people. Somebody has to put out a ballot initiative at a constitutional amendment to reverse that.
Changing things currently on the Constitution takes a lot of effort, not just a majority, but more than a majority. And that's going to come from the people.
I didn't realize it was at that level.
Parks and Wildlife don't have any ability to do that. The legislature doesn't have the ability to do that. It's through the voters and the constitutional amendment change. That's where it's at. The voters voted for that and that's where we stand. We operate within the framework of what we can do. We can start the season on September 2nd. We can operate within that framework. We can't hunt with dogs. We can't hunt with bait. Whether we like it or not, that's what we are bound to and that's what my job is to enforce and make sure that hunters are following that framework. Ultimately, we want hunters to be as successful as we can because we do need that harvest.
We're relying on those numbers.
We also have to follow the rules. That's one of our challenges is that we want to have harvested, but we also want it to be done the way and within the boundaries of the law.
It makes sense because it's the only way to control it. You have to be educated, number one as the hunter and then you have to have you guys for the checks and balances, I believe. I don't think there's any other way around it. When it comes to some of these other predator issues that have been at the ballot box like reintroducing wolfs, I know we've talked about that and it's something that I'm curious about. I'm not a lion hunter, but you can still hunt lions with dogs. It's the only way to have any success, in my eyes.
There would be a very little harvest of mountain lions if we didn't have that tool. We do need, that tool in order to manage lion populations, whether it's from a strictly conflict standpoint between people and lions or lions and livestock. That's a great tool to manage that. Not only that, it's exciting, it's fun and good recreation. It serves our purpose of managing populations. We don't want to have too many lions that reduce the deer and elk populations, but we also don't want to have too few lions that don't help balance some of that predator-prey interaction too.
They're an important part of our landscape. We need to manage them. One of the things that people often overlook is that they want the West as it was 200 or 300 years ago and let the predators control all of our wildlife populations. The West is not what it was. We've got highways, subdivisions and all of these other conflicting issues, not to mention, 6 or 7 million people in Colorado. This is not necessarily a natural environment anymore. Humans are an integral part of the ecosystem at this point.
We, as wildlife managers, have to take in that human component as part of the management of our wildlife. We value mountain lions. We value the bears and other critters on that landscape, but we need to have those tools to manage the wildlife. I would say a lot of folks, even when it comes to the wolf issue, need tools to manage those animals. If we've got conflicts or over abundance, having those tools in order to manage it is critically important because when those are removed, that's when we struggle to manage the population. Hunting is our primary way to manage populations of all species here in Colorado.
If you look at it, we don't hunt all that many species. We've got 960 species of wildlife here in Colorado, and we hunt a very kind of select few. A lot of our management is hands-off on a lot of other types of species, birds in particular, and a lot of other smaller animals, mammals and amphibians, reptiles and stuff like that. Hunting is an excellent management tool and one that we like to have the opportunity, to be flexible with both season dates and methods and stuff like that.
Now that I think about it, a lot of the time these ballot initiatives always pertain to predators. They're not trying to reintroduce free-range bison. That's never been on the ballot or there are no activist groups out there like, “Bring the bison back,” type of thing. It’s a weird thing. It's this connection that we have with almost these spiritual type animals or animals that you think are cool. I think wolves and mountain lions are amazing. I'm intrigued by mountain lions. I have been since I was a kid. I think one of the things that did it is I'm pretty sure a wildlife officer brought a lion into my elementary school as a kid right up here at Wilmot. It was crazy.
I guess if we're going to do this at the ballot box, there needs to be some education. This is the voting issue, whether you're voting for wolves to come back or you're voting for Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump or whatever. It all comes down to education, what you know and what you think. What's the best way and maybe you don't have a suggestion for this. I'm trying to figure it out myself and I think it's a tricky question, but to get educated on an animal, a species, how do you know that you're listening to credible biologists?
Because on both sides, they each have an agenda. A lot of times these things are one sided. We experienced it firsthand here on the show before we voted on the wolf initiative. I was trying to cover it from both sides and I got thrown some curve balls by political parties. It was hard. It was not an easy thing to do or navigate.
Like it or not, when you deal with wildlife management, we've got this human component. Politics are going to be involved in wildlife management. I guess from my perspective and my role, my job is to educate folks on basic biology. We take feeding for instance. This is what happens when you feed wildlife. These are the biological concerns that we have. We see population-level effects, whether it's a disease or other things that cause problems to that. My job is to try and be somewhat unbiased regarding that.
You guys have to be. You can't be out picketing or putting stickers on your truck saying like, “Vote yes on this or no on that.”
That’s not my role. The public needs to look at both sides and look with an open mind both pro and against whatever the situation might be. Also, look at it from an outside perspective almost.
Try to look at the facts too because I think that that was one of the biggest things that I noticed with the wolf thing. There were all these crazy facts out there that some of them made no sense at all that were pro-wolf and some of them made no sense at all that were anti-wolf. On both sides, you have propaganda going on and some blatant lies, but if you start looking at the facts and what we know already. This pertains to any species. We have to have some management as you said with predators.
Whether we like it or not, wolves do play an important biological role in that ecosystem. That statement isn't one pro-wolf or anti-wolf. That's a factual statement that they have an important biological effect. Does that statement affect whether we're going to have conflicts with livestock and wolves? No. That’s unrelated. You also have to look at these types of situations without having an emotional reaction to them. So much of our job deals with that emotional reaction because people have an emotional bond with wildlife. They see something amazing and I'm sure you've experienced it on a bow hunt where you see a magnificent bull elk and it's captivating.
Colorado Parks And Wildlife: Whether we like it or not, wolves play an important biological role in the ecosystem. That statement isn't pro-wolf or anti-wolf. It’s a factual statement that they have an important biological effect.
There is a bond.
You feel a connection with that animal. I've had situations where I’m like, “I'm not going to shoot that one.” There is something about it. I could, but I don't or whatever. That's the emotional connection that you might be experiencing with that type of situation. That might be somebody who sees a mountain lion go through their yard and they found it to be a very moving experience. Now, in that situation or the future, they don't ever want to see mountain lions being hunted because they had such a magical experience in that instance.
That makes a lot of sense.
Whereas somebody else maybe had ten of their goats get killed by a mountain lion and now, they want every mountain lion to be killed, both of those perspectives are on the far extremes of general perception.
It is basically why wildlife was decimated. With market hunting, number one, it was a food source, but then also at the same time, these people are trying to have livelihoods and their kids are getting eaten. It was the Wild West many years ago. That's why we don't have wolves here now. They were eradicated.
Once the bison were killed, the pelts from the wolves were highly prized. That was one of the big drivers of it, but then as cattle and stuff started moving across the West, anything that affects your livelihood and eat your dollars is going to be eliminated. There are a lot of big challenges. Some folks don't want any predators on the landscape because of that potential conflict with livestock and other things or the potential risk of people getting attacked or eaten.
On the other side of things, there are other folks that don't care about the livestock or people that are in the ranching industry and the financial burden that a big predator will cause on that person. It’s not only time but also the financial aspect of things too. It’s a complicated thing and I wish wildlife management was a cut-and-dry thing, but that's also why we have so many little tools for specific situations. The more tools a wildlife manager has, the better off we are at managing wildlife. Hunting is one of those important management tools.
This is the thing that frustrates me is it ends up at the ballot box and out of the professional's hands. It's like going to a doctor and asking him to fix your car. That's not what you go to a doctor for nor is he probably going to know how to do it. I think listening to biologists and getting the information. If you see something at the ballot box that pertains to wildlife in particular in your local region is important.
I think that's also some of the strategies of some groups that aren't pro-hunting in that they want to utilize or captivate people based on their emotions in order to achieve what they need or what their personal agenda is. It happens on both sides. This is not a right versus left thing. The fact is that both groups handle politics in one way to achieve their particular agendas.
Even with the wolf initiative, from what I recall, when the actual votes came in, it passed, but there was going to be, wolfs weren't on the endangered list at the time that that was voted in. As soon as the new administration took over or a new party took office, all of a sudden they were back. I wondered how many people voted, “I'm going to vote because I know that they can at least manage it. I don't know if people even thought that far ahead but I would imagine the next thing you know, it's almost like somebody pulling a fast one or something.
There are so many rabbit holes and this is not what we talk about generally here. I don't want to burn up all of your time on here about that, but I thought I'd ask. If somebody wanted to reach out to Colorado Parks and Wildlife to get some education on a certain species or maybe how to live with wildlife, is there a way for people to do that? Do you encourage people to do that?
Absolutely. The homeowners can reach out to their local officer. If they've got an urgent manner that that needs to be handled expediently, they can reach out through Colorado State Patrol. That's who dispatches us. They can get ahold of the on-call wildlife officer that's on for that particular day. If it's a non-urgent matter, they can call one of our offices. They can talk to many of our customer service representatives. They've got lots of information. They handle tons and tons of calls daily about anything under the sun. If a wildlife officer calls you or whatever, we can certainly answer those questions as well.
You guys do a lot of public events too where you're helping educate people on certain things, right?
We occasionally do living with wildlife classes. I did one the summer up at Staunton State Park.
Kids love those classes. I did as a kid. My kids do anytime that there's any interaction with the fire department, police and first responders in general and you mix wildlife in there, it’s so cool.
We'll go to a lot of the schools and talk with them. If you're browsing our website, we've got a lot of Living with Wildlife information on there.
Do you have some publications too that I think are free like the Colorado Outdoors or Colorado Life?
Colorado Outdoors is our magazine. That's a subscription that you can get. Our website's got more information on that, but on our main website, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, you're going to have a ton of information. Species-specific and living with wildlife stuff. Go to Learn up at the top. Learn about wildlife down in the center, Living with Wildlife. We got handling conflict and we've got How to Avoid Wildlife conflicts, bears, geese and coyotes.
Start at this website because there's a ton of information on there. This is how I buy and obtain licenses and look at hunting areas. Sometimes, I look at the rigs on here because I forget to grab one at the gun counter or whatever. You can get all that information here, and that's CPW.State.co.us.
It covers a lot of the basic conflicts that we deal with. It's not like every year there's a new conflict. It's the same conflicts that occur every single year and seasonality, right now. The deer and elk are going into the rut. They're raking their antlers on things and now they're getting entangled into things like swing sets and volleyball nets.
I took down our swing set in our yard after I talked to you that time because I never thought about it. I was like, “I know that we're going to have a bull in here pretty soon.
I had an elk that got tangled and died in one.
When it comes to managing big game species and some of our species like bighorn sheep and some of those iconic animals that are our state animals. Once you guys start looking at numbers and you see that a population looks like it's decreasing rapidly, and to be clear for people that don't hunt maybe and how sought-after that animal is and how fragile that species line is. I think hunting one of those things is pretty much a lifetime. You get one chance in a lifetime, pretty much.
Not necessarily. There are some opportunities. I know a few people that have hunted multiple rams. You can get new licenses every three to five years usually. It's a pretty good option for that. If you hunt, let’s say archery, those are a little bit easier to draw. It depends on the situation but overall, they are difficult licenses to get. We don't issue a lot of them because we don't have a lot of sheep overall. A lot of our populations, especially like on the North side of Mount Evans and along Highway 103 and Highway 5 and Guanella Pass. Those sheep are doing well. We're having really good recruitment. We've increased a lot of opportunities for sheep in and around that area.
In other areas, we monitor and have stayed status quo for a number of years depending, but we've got a pretty good grasp on what all those populations are doing. Those are high-priority, high-visibility things that we spend a lot of time focused on whether it be population monitoring or putting collars on. Also, doing site or marked re-sight population models on those animals and trying to figure out what the total population is. We are doing habitat projects. I'm working on a big habitat project for a sheep right now. We do a lot with our sheep.
When you say habitat project, does that mean that you're going and improving the habitat for that specific species? How does that work?
Anytime we look at a population, there are a few ways that we can alter that population. We can't increase the land mass for a particular animal. What's on the ground is on the ground.
It tends to get smaller every year too, right?
It does, through development, roads, hiking and biking trails. Increased recreation pushes animals out of certain areas. The habitat is always decreasing for these species. If you want more animals, if we're going to have the same amount of habitat, the best way to get more animals is to improve that habitat. I would say in much of our state is in a stagnant state.
Development, roads, hiking trails, biking trails, and increased recreation push animals out of certain areas. Habitat is always decreasing for these species. The best way to get more animals is to improve that habitat.
We've been in droughts.
A lot of our forest fires are helping to rejuvenate some of that forest component. It increases light to the forest floor, increases the food and increases production. There's more water available. Certainly, there are some consequences of some of these large catastrophic fires, especially with water quality and things like that, but I would say the overall fire is a beneficial thing for the ecosystem.
I think it's super important. We've had a couple of wildland firefighters on. We plan to have some more on and fire science people and in that world. Shout out to my buddy, Brandon Dunham, who runs the Anchor Point Podcast. That was an awesome podcast. I learned a lot from that. Talking to them and as far as how much it helps and as a hunter in that burn scar area, there are animals in there. They love it. It's good habitat. If we're able to manage forests like we are with wildlife, I think it's going to be helpful.
Managing habitat and managing wildlife go hand-in-hand. Oftentimes, we can't burn in and around subdivisions or wherever because of some of the risks there. We try and duplicate that by doing timber projects. We'll reduce the total volume of trees in a particular area and it essentially functions the same. We remove a lot of that wood product out of there. It increases light on the forest floor. It increases the amount of grass, forbs and shrubs that are coming in there. Things like sheep can see further. They can see predators that are coming.
Their ability to avoid predation by mountain lions in particular increases. Now, we've increased their fitness in the winter time or in the summertime depending on where we're doing these habitat projects. If a fire does come through, that forest is now much more resilient than it was previously to that. Now, we don't get those catastrophic fires and fires now are going in and maintaining the existing habitat that's there. The Forest Service does a lot of controlled burns and pile burns and stuff like that to accentuate a lot of the habitat work that Parks and Wildlife does or even the Forest Service does for that wildlife.
Also, having a forest that is much more varied than the current state of the forest. We don't want an even-aged forest. We want mature trees, openings, dense patches and maybe a burn. We want a variety of habitat types. Habitat essentially is that component or it's the arrangement of food, water, shelter and space. It's how it's arranged on that landscape. Because we have a lot of dense trees, it might be a great security cover for elk, but it's not great food or foraging area. Those elk may have to move 5 or 10 miles in order to go find somewhere to feed. They're probably not going to utilize this particular habitat all that often but if we can cut openings in there, now we got food next to the preferred shelter habitat. That's going to be much more appealing to things like deer and elk.
It makes so much sense and one of the points that Brandon brought up in that episode that we did with him was he was talking about when we aren't able to manage some of these things and do these controlled burns and stuff, there's so much fuel on the floor that the fires burn so hot where you start seeing these firenadoes and all this crazy stuff that can happen in the middle of a wildfire, but it scorches the Earth so bad that stuff won't regrow then. There's a happy medium of what can be there. I didn't realize you guys took it that far as clearing vegetation and trees out and stuff to create more vegetation. How much does that help that population right off the bat, especially with getting away from predators?
I think improving the habitat makes a big difference. They're doing more and more studies looking at the fitness of deer elk and looking at summer forage quality versus winter forage quality. That summer forage quality they're finding is tied to over-winter survival. If they can fatten up in the summer, their over-winter survival's going to be significantly better than it would be. We often think, “We need to have good habitat in the winter, which is true, but that summer habitat their finding is equally as important because that's what helps get them there through the winter.
What's beneficial for wildlife is also going to be beneficial for people too. We live in and around these communities and if we can improve the forest health and quality of the forage and the habitat, that's going to help us down the road because the forest is going to be that much more resilient to things like wildfire and other things.
I always wonder about those elk out there on the golf course year round and all the chemicals that they put down on the golf course to make that grass green and all that stuff. Do you guys ever run into any issues? Do you think that there might be antler deformities? I know some of the deer running around here look a little crazy sometimes or have these weird growths and stuff on them. Do you think that some of that might be coming from pesticides or herbicides and stuff like that? Have there been any studies on anything like that?
I'm not aware of anything here in Colorado. I did see a study talking about these forever chemicals that exist in perpetuity on the landscape. In particular, I think this study was out of the Midwest area. They're seeing a lot of the fertilizers and things that they're spraying on the ag fields out there that they're seeing that being in deer meat. You see an advisory at certain fisheries where it's got a mercury advisory. “Pregnant women aren't supposed to consume X number of fish per week or whatever,” but the article hinted that it could potentially be a thing for wild game, which is certainly concerning.
There's a ton of wild game on the Western slope and out East that eat corn or peaches or whatever. Some of the best bear meat I've ever had come from the Western slope and it was like a bear that ate apricots or something the whole time. It was incredible.
In general, we have to be wise about what we do or one thing because it often has cascading effects on other things. The perception is that hunters are the original environmentalists. They've got an invested interest in all aspects of the ecosystem, not only the trophy elk, deer or whatever.
I would say most hunters do.
The health of the whole forest, the water, the watershed and the trees and the air. It's all interrelated. Hunters have a vested interest in all of that.
Most of the hunters that I know care more about animals than most people that I know that are average or non-hunters. We had John Nores on a few episodes ago. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He's written a few books like the Hidden War. He was a California Game and Fish Warden. He had to learn how to become part of the Marijuana Enforcement Team there because California has this huge problem with cartel grow operations.
It's much more than combating marijuana in general as a narcotic or as a drug, which we've started to accept here in America. It's more about the environmental impacts. I was shocked when I read his book. I did some more research on him and I was honored to have him on the show. He is a great human that's now retired and still combating the same problems.
In California specifically, they're having huge problems. These cartels are taking extreme tactics. They're smuggling in across-the-border carbofuran and all these crazy pesticides diverting full streams or creeks and killing fish habitats to water the crops. They're put in these super lethal pesticides that can even kill humans and it decimate any wildlife that touches it for these plants to get into maturity, not to mention they're poaching.
There are a ton of implications and they're having a heck of a time stopping these guys because of certain laws that are in place. They'll catch it or bust a cartel group, not to mention these guys are getting shot at. Some of these booby traps are like punji pits from the Vietnam era where there are spikes and they're putting poisons and stuff on them, hoping that gay wardens or law enforcement, or even some patrons or just normal people might fall on those before they reach them.
It's this crazy war. It's called Hidden War, his book and I encourage anybody to go check that out. It’s a great audiobook too and a lot of useful information in there. He's been dubbed as the Earth warrior and it's more about the environmental impacts that these cartels are having and these grow operations. Do we run into any of that here in Colorado? It's hard to grow tomatoes here, which I and John talked about, but I wanted to ask you if you've run across anything like that. That's a huge market here.
It does happen here. I would say further North, you get in Colorado, the less of it occurs and I'm certainly no expert on this but we do run into it. We've dealt with them over by Georgetown. We've dealt with them down Buffalo Creek and Deckers. I think further South where it's a little bit warmer. You got a little bit lower elevation or longer growing season, especially in some of Southern Colorado, it's much more remote than around here.
There's not too much country around here that doesn't see people pretty frequently. It's a little bit more of a risk for those cartels to deal with around here. We did deal with one this spring and exactly what you're saying like diverting creeks. Who knows what kind of chemicals you're dealing with and these are bonafide criminals.
Poaching wildlife, chemicals in waterways and water diversions. They've got massive amounts of money and infrastructure invested in there. The risk to law enforcement or the casual person that happens to be walking their dog and going through this particular area, a lot of our growers are found by hunters because they're off the beaten path. It certainly is a risk, but it's not a good situation for sure.
It scared the shit out of me. It's probably the worst thing that could happen to a habitat or an environment and California's struggling big time because it's not only Mexican cartels now. Now, it's all these other cartels from other countries from overseas and stuff that are doing the same thing because of the profit value that's behind a plant. California has a dedicated marijuana enforcement team. These guys are tactically trained. They have air support. They have dogs. They're training with snipers or SEAL teams. Do we have anything dedicated like that in Colorado when you guys do stumble across this or are these normal game wardens' responsibility to go?
From a game warden’s perspective, we're in an assisting role. We're an extra body on the ground. Generally, these types of situations are handled. The DEA gets involved. The Forest Service, if it's on Forest Service or BLM Land, those guys have dealt with lots and lots of these types of grows, but they'll get a lot of their officers from other parts of the state and they will deal with that. We deal with the local sheriffs as well. They'll be involved in these situations as well.
It's a multi-pronged approach with a lot of different entities. Parks and wildlife don't take the lead role. Perhaps if it was on a state wildlife area or state park or something like that, but generally, if it's on federal land, there's a federal nexus and that's usually going to be the biggest penalty, but most of the time these cartels will take off and a lot of times there's never any consequence.
In that book, he explains that they were putting felt on the bottom of their shoes so you couldn't see their tracks in and out. They had at one point where they had made these cow hoof-type things. They are super smart guys at averting people and law enforcement but have no respect for human life, wildlife and the environment at all. I was curious. I wanted to see what we had going on here. Fortunately, you can't grow a lot here and you can't grow year-round as you can in California. I think that's why they have those huge problems over there.
Managing hunters, poachers, and all that sort of stuff. What are the most common things that you have to deal with? There are so many loopholes and ways to get around laws and most of the time that I'm in the back country, there's not somebody looking over my shoulder. I would imagine that's got to be a super hard thing to manage.
It is. We rely on other hunters to do a lot of reporting too through things like Operation Game Thief. That's a big one.
It is a 1-800 number that you can call, right?
Yeah. We've got info on our website here. Go to About Us and then go to Law Enforcement on the bottom right and over on the left is Operation Game Thief.
That resource there, not only does it reward folks that report wildlife violations.
I didn't know that.
You can get preference points. That's a way you can get a preference point. We use that. That's a great thing. Hunters are out there and they see things. They know this is not cool. This is not right. This is beyond somebody taking the liberty and shooting an animal off the road. This is somebody with who we've had a few issues this year where people are cutting the heads off trophy wildlife and leaving carcasses. The actual and willful destruction of wildlife just for trophies. Those folks need to be held accountable and those hunters report folks like that. At least, we can start that investigation through that.
The actual willful destruction of wildlife for trophies is gross. Those folks need to be held accountable.
That’s a huge way that we initiate a lot of our cases. It’s challenging. I would say the vast majority of folks are honest law-abiding folks. If there is a law enforcement issue, it's because they either were ignorant of the law or maybe they made a bad choice at the moment. Everybody's human. Everybody makes bad judgments from time to time. You and I are not immune to any of this.
I made plenty of bad calls in my life.
However, it doesn't make you a bad person but then there's also that component that is the legitimate criminal component. There may be commercialization.
They know they are avoiding the law.
They know darn well what they're doing and they're trying to be malicious about it, avoid prosecution and all that. Those are the folks that need to be hammered.
It probably depends on the severity of the incident but basically, you lose hunting privileges, even some firearm privileges and stuff like that. What are some of its implications of it?
There are a lot of different sentencing things that you can have. It could be jail time. A lot of times, they go to federal prison depending on the severity of violations. I would say most of our violations are fines as well as points. What the points are is essentially it's like a driver's license, but it's solely about your hunting and fishing privileges. If you accumulate too many points over a certain amount of time, it's 25 years. You can lose your ability to hunt and fish in Colorado.
I didn't know there was that system involved. I've never been in trouble for anything.
However, it’s not only in Colorado. It's all of the other states that are members of the Wildlife Violators Compact. You lose your ability to hunt and fish.
You can't go from state to state. It's going to follow you.
You also can't hunt in Nebraska, Florida or Kansas. It's a pretty good deterrent. With that said, you get guys that go to Africa, Mexico or Canada and they're exempt from that. That's how a lot of these guys are getting around it, but that's a high-dollar deal.
This brings up my next thing because I've introduced a ton of people to hunting in the last couple of years. Some of them aren't educated. They're not going and reading the regs. They don't know. They haven't grown up around it. I want to make it very clear and I want to ask you. Let’s say you do harvest an elk, or a deer kill, you can't turn around and sell any of those parts for market. You can't make a profit. You can't put the rack on Facebook and legally sell it, can you?
There are certain things you can and can't do. You could sell a rack. You can't sell meat. Generally, inedible portions. Things that are not edible portion. You're not allowed to sell meat because that's what created a lot of the market. Things like antlers, hide and those things you can sell. When it comes to other animals like bears or bighorn sheep, they're much more restrictive on what you can and can't sell.
It goes by the species.
It’s the same thing with a lot of our fur-bearers. Bobcats and coyotes, beavers and foxes are all hides and with trapping or any of our fur-bearer seasons, you can keep the hide and sell those hides. It's a weird deal because when you allow the legal sale of certain things, it creates a market for things and then it creates incentives for doing certain things.
That's how you get the stock market guys hunting.
It’s the same thing with the antler trade. Antlers are legal to pick up and sell. It creates this market for things and it starts getting people out there to pick up antlers that maybe wouldn't otherwise pick them up.
It’s why there is a season of shed hunting now.
Anytime you create a market, there are unintended consequences to having that market.
The biggest issue with that too would be the black market because that's what truly encourages poaching like people going after ivory. I know with black bears, the gallbladders are highly sought after in certain countries. I don't know if we have issues here with people poaching bears specifically for the gallbladders.
We certainly have.
I had somebody say, “If I get a bear tag, can I turn around and sell the gallbladder?” You can't because that would be part of the meat source.
It’s specifically listed in our statute because we know that's an issue. That'd illegal sale of a big game, which is a felony. It's a big issue.
Where would you find out if you did want to take something to market? How do you find that information? Is it on the website?
It is.
I always call you. I feel bad sometimes and I called you about my dog the other day. We had a dog trainer in on the podcast and I'm going to get her trained to track, but I want her to track human scent but I have thought, ever shot a buck or a bull or something and couldn't find it, that's my worst nightmare. You are pretty ethical when it comes to it so hopefully, that doesn't happen. It has happened to me before where I've looked for days and haven't been able to find something, but I thought it would be cool if I have this dog with this ability.
In our regulations, we've addressed all of these types of situations even dogs that can track wounded wildlife. We've got a specific set of laws that address that.
Thank you for sending all that to me, by the way. You sent me all the literature and I was like, “This spells it out right here. I guess I could have just looked myself?”
Under our Law Enforcement tabs, go to About Us and then go to regulations. This has got all of our wildlife regulations and on the far right, you'll see Colorado Revised Statutes. It says, “Title 33, Wildlife Parks and Recreation.” That's another website that will get you to the statutes. We've also got regulations. Statutes are things that are set by the legislature and wildlife regulations are set by the Wildlife Commission. Statutes generally are much broader. It’s a big topic. You have to have a license. You have to wear orange. You can't trespass like the big picture things.
Regulations are all the details like a season date for elk is this date to this date. The legislature doesn't care about that. That's out of their wheelhouse. Our Wildlife Commission votes on the regulations and that's much more specific to the nitty-gritty of what's going on, but those are the two locations where you would look for the actual verbiage. The wildlife brochures that we publish, if you're hunting big game and you'd pick up the big game, a brochure that's going to have essentially the summaries of these two items. What I use are these two things because these are in the books. These are the law books. This is the exact wording.
You can pick those up just about anywhere. You can go to Walmart and get one.
The reg books are a great summary of all of the laws that we talk about, but if you ever want to look at exactly what the law says, those are the two resources that you go to.
I want to go back to this Operation Game Thief because you have an email there so you can email or call. That’s at Game.Thief@State.co.us or the number if you want to report a wildlife violation is 1-877-265-6648 or it's a 1-877-COLO-OGT for Operation Game Thief. I'm going to earn some preference points. I don't run into it very often. What I do run into are uneducated hunters. Some of them tend to be out of state. I'm running into hunters more frequently now in the past couple of years than I ever have.
There are times when I'm 6 or 7 miles back. I keep that range because I know that the situation for me to get an elk out from the back country that far in is a lot of work. You do have not a whole lot of time depending on weather situations. If it's cold, I'd risk taking a shot 7 miles back in but this year, I was by myself so I kept that range between 3 and 4 miles from a vehicle to where I could get that to a freezer someplace because that's super important to me is not wasting anything.
It's part of the law. You have to take a certain amount of meat and you can't let it go to waste. Part of that is not only getting it out but not letting it spoil in the back of your truck basically because there is room. I've noticed an increase in hunters. Have we seen a huge influx of people hunting or hunting for the first time? Are you guys running into that a lot?
We're seeing a lot of that. With COVID, everybody was outdoors. Everybody went outdoors because there was nothing else to do and I think people found this kind of empowerment of being able to go get their own meat and being a little bit more independent and self-sufficient. We're seeing large increases in the total number of people. Colorado's one of the few places you can go and get an over-the-counter archery tag or over-the-counter 2nd or 3rd bull tag and have that opportunity. Whereas in a lot of states, you've got to apply and there's a good chance you may not draw even every other year or every 5 years or every 10 years.
Colorado Parks And Wildlife: With COVID, everybody went outdoors because there was nothing else to do. People found this empowerment of being able to get their own meat and being a little more independent and self-sufficient.
There is a ton of opportunity for out-of-state people.
We've got more elk in Colorado than all the other states have. We've got tons of opportunities and I think there's more, especially with social media and different podcasts. People see hunting and fishing, which is great because we've got more advocates for hunting and fishing and they understand the mindset of hunting and fishing. They want to experience that connection with the outdoors more so than watching wildlife. They want to interact with wildlife. That's one thing that I enjoy about hunting is that I'm interacting with wildlife and I'm able to feed my family. That's one of the things that I want.
That's why I enjoy it.
We do get a lot of these folks. There is no cap on the licenses so we have a lot of opportunities and a lot of people that are in the woods. A lot of folks, especially if they come from another state that maybe doesn't have elk. Maybe they never packed an elk out or saw how truly large an elk is.
Still dressing is a task.
Without a doubt. I talked to hunters and I ran into a bunch of folks in the back country this year. Some of these backpack guys were even further in than I was and I had horses. We're seeing fewer of the younger generations with horses just because a lot of us grew up in more urban areas. A lot of it is backpack remote and do-it-yourself.
That’s become so popularized too just on social media. When you have bow hunters like Cameron Hanes and John Dudley and stuff that have millions of followers, that's how many people they're influencing and I love those guys to death. They're awesome. They're great people.
I think it's important for a hunter, especially somebody who's never done it before to put that experience into a little bit more perspective. Go get some sandbags at the hardware store and strap them onto your pack frame. You strap 80 pounds on your back, which in some cases isn't even a hind quarter on the bull.
The difference between a 4x4 bull and 350 class bull is double. Those animals are massive. I've got four quarters. I've got all the neck meat. I've got all the back straps. I've got all the tenderloins. I've got the rib meat head. I’ve got the head and the antlers. Probably on a big bull, you might have 25 pounds of antler plus the actual head. That's another 50, 60 pounds. You're packing out a ton of weight.
That's what you legally have to pack out. There are guys like me that will take the hide and rib meat.
The heart, liver and all that stuff. That's a tremendous amount of stuff that you got to take and not only that, you've got your camp and your bow or your rifle and all of your personal effects.
You're talking on a bull, it's at least on foot at a bare minimum of six trips.
If you're 7 miles in, that's 14 miles round trip times six.
You have 24 hours. That's how I look at it anyways. With the weather, you can get away with it a little bit more if it's cold but typically, during archery season when I hunt, it's not, and there have been days where I've been at 13, 12.5 and had my shirt off because it was so damn hot. I was dying.
I think hunters in general need it to keep that in mind because I ran into a lot of hunters and I talked to them this year. I was like, “Have you ever packed out an elk? Have you ever seen an elk that was dead or seen an elk quarter?” A lot of it was, “No.” One group I was talking to, I was like, “You guys are 9 miles from a road this way and 8 miles from a road this direction. What's your strategy if you would kill an elk here?” I don't know. We'll figure it out later and that's not a good mindset to have because that would make me sick if I knew that I lost half that elk because I didn't prepare ahead of time. Maybe that's having a few buddies on standby.
Having a group of people helps tremendously.
Even 1 or 2 other guys are a huge help but calling an outfitter and seeing if an outfitter can be available to help pack out an animal that's available there because it's our responsibility to get that meat out.
There are ways to rent horses and stuff. You don't have to own horses. There are a ton of guys on the Western slope that make a living off of renting hunting horses.
It’s encouraging to see folks that want to get out and do it the right way. It's also our responsibility as hunters to make sure that we can get this meat out. I think that was much more evident this year than probably any other year that I've been working or hunting was the amount of folks that were probably too far from a road than they probably should have been. That was a bit concerning I think.
I ran into a couple of things and I don't even know if I should bring it up on the podcast because it was something that disgusted me during this hunting season. There were some out-of-state hunters in a unit that I was in. It was an over-the-counter unit and I heard this through a third person. I didn't talk to the guy directly, but the people that I was talking to were pretty cool Colorado people. We were camped next to each other.
I'd been around generations of bowhunting and stuff like that and these out-of-state guys had shot a bull. Are there any laws on the ethics of where you shoot an animal and how an animal's life is taken? As long as they have a hunting license and are meeting all the regulations with a proper bow or rifle or whatever of the right caliber or speed on a bow. Outside of that, are there any laws? I'm just going to tell you this story. These guys were back. There are hunters everywhere. The elk are pretty spooked. It's super thick in these areas where the elk are at. This guy crawled into some oak brush and the only thing he saw was the two back legs and he shot the elk through the Achilles tendons. It's not funny. It made me pissed off. They tracked the thing for three miles. Thank goodness they found it and the thing bled out, but what a horrible way to die. Not to mention at the same time I'm thinking, what if those were my legs or my sons? What if that was a moose?
If that's all he could see, how does he know he was shooting at a bull or a cow? That's a classic sloppy move and very unethical.
Also, arrogant.
Frankly, it was careless. That's not good to hear and I would say that is the exception rather than the rule.
I hate telling that story because it gives hunters a bad name. Ninety-five percent of the hunters that I know firsthand were pissed off about it.
That's not a common thing, I would say, and I deal with tons and tons of hunters every year. The vast majority of the stories I hear of a situation where it was 95% perfect. It just wasn't quite. There was one little stick or one little thing and the hunter was like, “No, I'm not going to take that shot because I don't want to wound that animal. Every hunter's goal should be a clean one-shot kill where that animal dies quickly and as painlessly as possible.
I certainly don't want an animal to suffer it and the killing part of hunting is a necessary part of the hunt. If I'm going to consume that meat, an animal's going to have to die. It's the reality of life. Things die constantly, whether you're a hunter or not. You want to get your cereal out of the cupboard, animals died for that cereal because as you're plowing through those wheat fields, animals are physically dying.
Just because you're a non-hunter or a non-meat consumer doesn't mean that you're not killing animals directly. As a hunter, I want to know where my meat comes from for one and to me, if I can have any control over the outcome of that by practicing shooting my bow and training and being physically fit, all of those are going to help me be more successful as a hunter but also, they're going to help me to be more humane when I do shoot that animal.
It's honoring that animal's life is the way that I look at it. That's why I shoot my bow year-round. That's why I put in the time. That's why I'll fill my six-gallon water jug full of water and hike some trails in the summer.
I think that the message that needs to get out to hunters is that, it's okay if you don't fill your tag. You don't have to fill every tag and not every hunter is going to fill his tag.
What is the success rate on elk?
It’s like 10%. You can certainly improve that through different things and I've certainly been more successful than that, but I've also put in a lot of effort to do that, but a hunter should not compromise their morals in order to try and be successful at something. You're either successful because you've done it right or you didn't kill, but you did it right.
A hunter should not compromise their morals to succeed at something.
The worst feeling that I've ever had is shooting an animal, not in the right spot and then having to figure out, “Now, I got to put another arrow in this thing, or what am I going to do?” How am I going to find it? That is the worst and that keeps me up at night.
Any hunter that's hunted for any time is going to have to deal with that. We're not perfect. We're not robots, but it should be our ethic to do as good of a job as we physically can and honor that animal's life both by utilizing that animal's meat and killing that in the most humane way that we can quickly and efficiently. A clean one-shot kill is my goal every time.
For this particular instance, there's no legal implication for that, right?
Yeah. You could potentially go down the road of careless hunting. It is something that could potentially endanger life or property. It is a tough one and a struggle is that there is no perfect law for a lot of these situations because people could make a mistake and hit an animal in a bad location. You can't necessarily punish somebody for wounding an animal. Certainly, intent does play a role, but no law addresses that.
It was something that upset me. It upset me for 2 or 3 days afterward.
If I talked to those hunters, I would've given them a pretty strong piece of my mind.
I did. When I saw him coming out with that last quarter and luckily they packed out the meat and stuff. They were from Alabama. They didn't know any better, but I wasn't happy about it.
At least that's the minority of that situation.
The first time I'd ever had anything like that happen. For the most part, I was out solo this year and 9 out of the 10 people that I ran into were like, “Are you by yourself?” “Yeah.” “You?” “Yeah.” “If you get something down, let me know. I'll come to help you.” It's that mentality and you can tell when somebody's new at something or doesn't care. You can tell when they don't care and that's what ticked me off about these guys.
Hopefully, they won't be in the sport for very long.
That was unfortunate. Moving on to dealing with this influx, what do you think is the best way for people to get educated? If you can't go out and take a hunting class, I know that Colorado Parks and Wildlife offers first-time hunter programs or something like that, but it's not something that everybody can take.
No, we certainly can't accommodate everybody but there are some novice hunter programs. We do some Elk Hunting 101s. There are a million YouTube videos on the field processing an elk.
That is one good thing about social media is some of these influencers like Cameron Hanes is very transparent with what he uses, the process and shows his process.
I think trying to experience that like, “Google, how much does the elk quarter weigh,” and put that on your back and go hike up a hill and say, “Can I do this for 15 miles or 20 miles?” You'll have a whole different perspective on what you physically are capable of doing and understand. “I probably need to limit myself to a couple of miles from the road and you can kill elk there.
Sometimes there are more elk there.
A lot of times, those animals will hang by the road because everybody hikes past them. There is some validity to that as well but I think understanding where your limits are and you don't want to push yourself or you don't want to find your limit when the moment is most critical. You got to push yourself before the season and understand, “This is my limit,” and understand where your boundaries are.
That’s exactly what I do with my hunt every year. I go and shoot my broadheads religiously for a month before. In August, I start shooting broadheads.
You probably shoot them further than you would in a hunting situation. You're honing those skills and then you're like, “I feel confident shooting at 70 or 80 yards, but I'm going to limit myself during hunting season to 50.”
You don't have the same adrenaline. There's that whole factor. I limit myself to about half the range of what I can comfortably shoot on. It’s a pretty flat range. Now, I go up to some 3D courses. I think that's a big mistake too, that I would urge anybody that's read this and thinking about getting into bow hunting. Maybe you live in an urban environment and you don't have a lot of places to shoot. Shooting 20 yards in your backyard or at an archery range that's perfectly polished concrete and that's perfectly flat. There are so many more variables that come into it that you will never experience at an archery range unless you're shooting like a 3D course. I'm fortunate that I have access to an awesome range up here in American Bowman.
I know you guys do some classes up there. Great people that run that spot. This reminded me. If somebody was wanting to get into archery or to figure out maybe not even archery, just hunting in general and wants to figure out how much an elk quarter weighs, they're starting to have some competitions. This Western Hunt challenge is some sort of organization. I think they're on Instagram. It's Western Hunt Challenge. If you google that, I think they have a website, but part of the competition is shooting, and it's shooting at a 3D course and some real-life hunting scenarios where you're shooting downhill or uphill. The foam targets are the size of the actual animals, generally or pretty close to it. You're shooting at life-size elk or moose or caribou and lions.
Also, part of this Western Hunt Challenge is they have a solo backpacker. You have to shoot in your backpack rig. It has to weigh a certain amount. I think it's 40 or 50 pounds or something and then you have to hike the train. You have to do it in a certain amount of time and then part of that is I don't know if they go as far as field dressing like cutting stuff up, but part of it is a packing challenge. You win a trophy or something. I haven't participated in one but that's cool. It's a good way to go and try something before a real-life scenario. It's done on time. It's a competition.
It goes to the fact that hunting season isn't a one-week event. For me, it's a year-long process. Most of the processes that year are training to shoot and shoot well. The other part of it is to be physically fit and make sure that I'm physically capable to get in and around where the elk at because the elk are training all year long to go up those hills. If I'm sitting on the couch eating Cheetos all day, I'm not going to be able to do what I want to do whether it's running a 10K at the park on a Sunday or going and hiking hills or running with weight or packing weight and lifting weights, you're all training and that's part of the reason why I do all of that. It’s not only for my job. I need to stay physically fit for my job, but when I'm out in the field hunting or patrolling, I want to be able to be at my best.
That's exactly why I do it. That's why I stop rolling jujitsu in the summer because I don't want to hurt an elbow or a shoulder because that bow hunting's that important to me. There's a running joke in my hunting buddies and my family. A lot of my hunting partners are my brothers and uncles and stuff like that. We've been hunting for generations, which is super cool because not only do I have what I've learned, but I have all that previous knowledge and to have that is so valuable. When September 2nd rolls around or 1st or whenever the hunting season starts, I always joke, “We only have thirteen more months until the next hunting season.” That's always my running joke. You are already preparing for next year, and this season has not begun yet.
You have 364 more days to next year's elk season.
One thing that's come up that I've helped a lot of guys with this year that had some animals down is I'm old school. I think the rule used to be you had to put the tag on the antler.
In a lot of states, that's the way it is and I think that's pretty common. A lot of folks will do that here in Colorado.
From Colorado Parks and Wildlife, you specifically want that tag in with one of the quarters of meat, correct?
Yeah. The best way to do it is to include it with the carcass because oftentimes the head or the cape or the antlers are going to go somewhere else like taxidermist or wherever. The meat may go to a processor or you process it yourself. The carcass tag needs to stay with the carcass, which generally, you put on one of the hindquarters if you've quartered it. Put it on the hind quarter that's got the evidence of sex and you meet both those requirements. Your carcass tag's been voided properly. It's properly attached to the animal.
Signed and punched.
Signed, notched and detached. You've got evidence of sex on that quarter so we can identify, “This did in fact come from the right sex of the animal that's on your tag.” If you’re a taxidermist, it needs to see something. You've got the top portion of your license that you can show that taxidermist for their records or whatever saying, “Here's my actual license.” They can make a photocopy or whatever they need to do for their records. If you take it to a processor or you process it yourself, that carcass tag is going to stay with the meat and I tell folks that that carcass tag needs to stay with the meat until that meat's been consumed.
I got Ziploc bags in my freezer. I probably need to go clean them out. There are probably some tags from last year and most of those are gone.
That’s the easiest way and it's a super simple process. Easily avoid any legal ramifications if you do it that way and it's easy.
That was something I wanted to bring up because it's something that I run into with some of these newer hunters that I've helped out. They're like, “What do I do?” “I got it done, but now, what do I do? There are a ton of people that don't hunt. There are a ton of people that are out recreating and backpacking. Dealing with wildlife for your non-hunters just trying out and enjoying stuff, what are some of the common mistakes that you guys see there when it comes to dealing with wildlife or predator encounters or anything like that? What do you want people to do?
I would say the biggest thing is people get too close to wildlife. Whether it be a hiker or a biker or a dog walker, any of these types of folks that may not be active hunters, see wildlife getting too close to wildlife. Now, that that animal's starting to change its behavior because you're there, that's your going to be your first clue. A lot of times, people don't notice those first clues and then it ends up resulting in somebody getting run over by an elk or trampled by a moose or something like that because they've missed those cues that the animal's trying to tell you. He can't talk to you and most animals aren't going to verbalize, “Get away.”
If those animals even give you any perception that they're aware of you. You walk by and they pick their heads up from feeding. Now, you've entered into their space where now they're aware of you. You should take that as a clue of like, “This animal's aware of me. At least my presence is changing its behavior at that point.” That animal might square up to you. It might pin its ears. It may do anything. It may move away, but it's starting to give you clues that you're at least within its bubble. That's probably the point at which, “I need to go off or give this animal a little bit more space.”
In most cases, you're probably not going to have any interaction, but even walking by an animal. If that deer picks up its head, it looks at you, it doesn't like that. Its heart rate's probably going to elevate. It's going to have some physical response to your presence, even though you may not ever see it. Other groups have done studies on some of these elk that are calving where they're being disturbed by things or people hiking or biking or anything as they're walking through these areas with known elk calving.
Too many disturbances on these elk calves are resulting in the mortality of these animals. You're physically not shooting an animal, but your actions of being present in and around where an animal has given birth are having a direct result in population-level declines. We're seeing that in the Vail and Aspen areas. I know they're seeing a lot of impacts to some elk over there.
Even if you're physically not shooting an animal, your actions of being present in and around where an animal is given birth have a direct result in population level declines.
I would imagine we have it around here in Evergreen. There are not a lot of habitats. Luckily, there is not too far from here. There is some state wildlife refuge.
We can say a wildlife area that's closed.
It’s closed for certain parts of the year for that reason.
It's closed during calving season for that reason ad in the winter for the protection of winter wildlife habitat. We're finding that more and more of that general recreation is having a much bigger impact on our wildlife populations than previously thought but that's one of the reasons why. When you're in and around prime wildlife habitats and you see wildlife, giving that wildlife much more space even if it's not fleeing, if it acknowledges your presence, we need to give that animal space to move on.
Also, be patient with it too. That's one thing that I've noticed around here because I'll go out and photograph the elk in the morning, but I'm doing it with a 500 mil lens and some guys will walk up with their cell phones to some of these bulls, which they're putting their self in danger and not to mention that you are ruining it for every other photographer that's there. Because now, you're in the shot, but I think it's respect for them and being patient. If you're on your mountain bike or something, I've seen people yell at animals. I've seen people with elk in the road and people are laying on the horn like it’s a New York taxi cab.
It's about coexisting with wildlife and not the wildlife living in your world. This is all of our world and that elk has as much right to be where it's at as I do. We're going to live and interact. I'm going to give it space and it'll give me space.
I think that's super important. The next thing that I wanted to talk to you a little bit about is whether there is any sort of education on what are you going to do to avoid hitting animals. Because recently in the area, we've had multiple car pile-ups with elk. You guys do a great job. In Jefferson County, in particular, the sheriff's office puts up these big billboard signs or flashing tickers that say, “Watch out for elk.”
There are signs everywhere. If you're a local, you know that they migrate across the road all the time. Typically, if you're driving at night, they're pretty much black animals. They are super dark brown, but at night, they're hard to see unless you're looking for eyes or know what to look for. If you're speeding, good luck stopping. We've had some pretty horrific accidents. What are some things that people can do to avoid that? Is there anything that you guys are working on to help educate people?
We do track road kills. I've got an app on my phone that whenever I come across roadkill, I'll log it in there and all of our officers will do that same thing. We get pretty good information about what's being hit and where it's being hit, the time of year and all that stuff. That all goes in. We've got a Wildlife Movement Coordinator. That's her full-time job is looking at wildlife movement across the state. We have local issues and then we've got statewide issues.
Oftentimes, there's a lot of concern or uproar in one particular location but when you look at the big picture of things and you realize, “We had six elk that were killed on Evergreen Parkway which is a bummer without a doubt but then you look at the entirety of 285 from Morrison to Bailey, and you've had 50 deer killed, that's a bigger issue. Also, some of these other stretch in the Western part of the state. Highway 9 used to be a horrible one and they've since built overpasses and underpasses and some fencing along there.
There are some of those like wildlife corridors.
They've cut down on the total number of vehicle collisions there. Those are tremendously expensive so from a statewide perspective, they're looking at prioritizing where in the state these make sense. We look at it at a big-picture level. We can't look at it at a local level and have each little local area working independently because we only have so much and we want to prioritize the best projects in the best habitat to help address the biggest populations or the most at-risk animals.
Not every area can be dealt with and that's a common thing that's brought up especially with Highway 74 here in Evergreen. We do have vehicle collisions, but when we look at the vast majority of the vehicle collisions, in the grand scheme of things, it's a little drop in the bucket. Granted every animal we would prefer not to get hit but we got to prioritize where we are going to put these different projects.
My question wasn't so much about that in particular. It’s about building one of those over 73, that would be huge. That's the main artery into here. It costs a ton of money. I guess it’s more of, “Is there some sort of education? Is there a driver's ed course? Are there any talks about incorporating some of that? I haven't taken driver's ed in 30-some years.
I couldn't tell you what's being taught in that and I think that's a good idea. The biggest thing is speed.
Get off your phone.
Distraction and speed are the two biggest factors. If your head is up, you're alert, you're not intoxicated, you're scanning the roadways and you've got decent lights, it's pretty easy to see something or at least have that idea. A lot of times, folks will see one, but they don't think, “There's probably another one behind it or on the other side, but probably speed is the biggest factor and just slowing down in the evenings and being cognizant.
When you do see one, don't keep going and think that you can make the gap. I always come to a complete stop and I think something that we've lost up here is that it used to be the old school like giving a little headlight flash if you saw a police officer or an elk, a deer or something. It's funny because I've done that now during the day and I've had people send me a gesture back. It must mean something somewhere else like in New York or something.
Back in the day, that was something that was pretty relevant to go ahead and give a little flash of your lights to let somebody know that there's something up ahead. I wish we could bring a little bit more of that back. When I do see something, I come to not a complete stop because that's not entirely safe too to stop in a 55-mile-an-hour speed zone unless you have to but slow down enough to where if something does dart in front of you, you have enough room to stop. I think that those are big things. I don't want to take up too much more of your time. We've been in here for two hours. We've covered a lot and I know that you're going to come back. Is there anything that you want to close with before we get out of here?
No, I appreciate you having me.
I always enjoy having you.
I’m looking forward to the next few seasons. Hopefully, we'll get some good harvest of deer and elk and Yeah. Hopefully, you'll be able to get some critters too.
I'm hoping next year will be more successful than this year but I had a great time regardless. It's always the best time. At some point and I don't know if you guys do it, I would even enjoy coming and spending an afternoon with you. Doing a ride-along or something would be cool and hanging out with you outside of here.
We'll do that.
Thanks, everybody for reading. Go check out CPW.State.co.us if you need any information on wildlife laws, safety, and all that stuff. You guys are also on Instagram. There are a bunch of Instagram pages, but the one that I think has the most stuff is @CPWWildTalk. Go check those out. Give them a follow. That's a great page. You guys post photographer stuff from all over the state. It's cool. Go check them out. Give these guys a follow. If you see a game warden, be nice to them.
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