While a district may hit the population objective, he said the department seemed to be saying that the numbers shouldn’t be trusted. Yet those same numbers are used to justify the shoulder seasons.

Weather

Elk harvest has varied from season to season depending on the weather, with harsher winters providing a greater harvest. FWP has also found that seasons extending later into the winter have higher cow elk harvests.

Those later seasons are ethically objectionable to some hunters and non-hunters since the long seasons can stress elk when their energy levels are low and cow elk are carrying 4-month-old unborn calves. On Aug. 15, when shoulder seasons begin, elk calves are still young and reliant on their mothers.

Vore stressed that FWP is required by law to reduce the elk numbers to population objectives that have been based on what landowners can abide.

“Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that managing elk to objective is the law,” he said.

Even if the population objectives were changed to allow more elk on the landscape, Vore said the problem would simply grow larger.