"Putting a Square Peg in a Round Hole" The fall of the Colockum Elk Herd.

[colockumelk]

FYI in 2008 293 spikes were killed in GMU's 328, 329 and 335.  In 2009 222 "True Spikes" were killed.  So this is an increase survival of 71.  So this does show some positive improvement.  However is it too little too late?  I guess time will tell.  Between 2008 and 2009 there was an increase of 13 branch bulls.  The true test wil be this time next year where we will see if there is another increase in branch bulls. 

[alanger]

Good paper colockum elk. 

[colockumelk]

Just thought I'd bump this because the Yakima Herald is going to write a feature in their outdoor section in two weeks. 

[halflife65]

Just thought I'd bump this because the Yakima Herald is going to write a feature in their outdoor section in two weeks. 

On what basis? Did you provide info?  Did they just come up with this on their own?  Do you know who they're interviewing?  Biologists?  F&W?  Tribes?

The only worry I have is some sort of over reaction by uninformed public where someone gets it in their head to try to permanently stop hunting instead of doing more for habitat (primarily abandoning roads or throwing up gates) and make it a limited draw hunt, at least until some recovery takes place and get gates are up.

[halflife65]

Ah, just saw the other thread.  Well, despite my somewhat pessimistic sounding previous post, I'm actually really glad that you looked into this and are doing something about it.  Good for you, good for the elk and good for all of us, hopefully.

[colockumelk]

As someone  already mentioned the Yakima Herald wrote an article about the paper that I wrote.  If anyone is interested here is the paper that I wrote. 

[luvtohnt]

Good read and good info. That is a well organized and designed paper. We just had a class were we had to design an experiment with already existing data and see if we could find a correlation. Someone in class did a project on wether the spike hunting was working or not. What they found is that the Colockum herd is hurting, the Yakima herd is stable, and the Blues herd is on an upswing, as far as the bull:100cow:calf ratio goes. So to me that means that in order for the spike hunting to work there must be limited access such as in the Blues. Another interesting fact is that the Blues went to spike only 5-6 years sooner than every where else, according to their report. When the Blues went to spike only they slowly dropped off until the cow numbers were brought up to the objective. So maybe that is another factor that would allow for better recruitment. I hope something will be done before it is too late. Just some ranom thoughts.

Brandon

[colockumelk]

There has been some renewed interest in the Colockum Elk Herd.  Most likely because of the lack of sightings on elk this year during the modern elk season.  Instead of trying to repeat what is in this paper in various threads I decided to bump this thread back up.  So if you are new or havn't read this paper that I wrote yet please take the time to read it.  If anything look at the graphs.  The stats ALL come from WDFW surveys, harvest data and studies done on the Colockum Elk herd.