Arizona 2010 recommendation review

Overall the proposed guidelines for the 2010 antelope season look rather bleak from an antelope population perspective as Arizona is going to decrease the overall tag numbers from 1007 in 2009 to just 886 thus dropping 121 permits across the board. That's a reduction of over 8%.

There are a few new hunts for 2010, though not everyone gets to participate in all of them.

• Unit 6BS has a hunt with 2 rifle tags
• Unit 34B has 1 muzzle loader tag and
• Unit 27S has 5 archery tags
• Hopi hunt in Units 4A, 5A, and 5B - tag numbers are not specified

None of these new hunts are going to affect where I apply in 2010, especially the Hopi hunt, but they all have the possibility to be fairly interesting hunts.

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The one I'm most interested in is the 27S hunt. In January of 2000 there were 189 pronghorn captured in 19A on the Fain Ranch and 54 of them were released in Unit 27. Certainly none of the original bucks are still alive today, but if their genetics took hold I could foresee some big bucks living in this unit. Unfortunately, even if there are good bucks in the unit we still may never see one of them with only 5 archery hunters in the unit.

There are a few hunts that have been discontinued and split into multiple units.

• The Unit 10/18A archery hunt has become 2 hunts
• Unit 10 now has a 60 tag archery hunt and
• Unit 18A has a 15 tag archery hunt
• The Unit 3A/C archery hunt has become 1 hunt
• Unit 3A now has a 10 tag archery hunt

Both of these changes are unnecessary as they accomplish nothing.

A few hunts gained some tags, though nothing worth mentioning except for maybe the Unit 10 rifle hunt. For some reason G&F increased the tag numbers following what was, from a population standpoint, one of the worst hunts in the last decade in the unit. This is unfortunate for the unit, but hopefully G&F has been severely under-subscribing the unit and this is just a reflection of increasing the tags more toward a normal distribution. Although, I must say, I felt like we were playing bumper cars on the Plateau this year and everyone I talked to, and there were a lot of hunters I talked to, said the same thing - "Where are all the antelope!?" Apparently G&F doesn't see it that way.

A lot more hunts lost tags this year than gained them. Nothing too notable except maybe Unit 19B losing 40 of it's 60 tags. Finally G&F made a good call, but not without causing a lot headaches for a lot of hunters. This should have been done a few years ago, but I guess it's better late than never.