the precedent i am following here is utah and their elk mangement plan. approximately half of the state is general elk hunting where the meat guys can have their furn and half of the state is quite limited in either the draws or landowner tags. and no i dont think landowner tags are a good idea here. it seems to do a better job of satisfying everyone. do you have any idea how many 400 plus elk utah has produced in the last 10 years? last count was over 30 including the recent world record non-typical at just shy of 500 gross. that is the result of trophy management, not just a lucky bull that slipped through and got lucky. that is what i'm looking at here for our sheep. you say that some of the zones have produced very few record book rams and others produce many legal rams. think about that for a minute. dont you see that is nothing more than a result of hunting pressure. if those rams would be given a chance to mature, they would be bigger......everywhere. i dont know if the highway 1 boundary is the perfect solution, but the facts are what they are. southern sheep over the last 50 years of the management system in place now have a base circumference averaging about a half inch bigger than the rams to the north. the information has been recorded and that is fact. oddly though, the horn size is actually increasing rather than decreasing as a result of trophy hunting. there are several theories as to why, but im not getting into that. anyway, it doesnt matter what changes were to be made there would be guys upset about it. the whole province to a draw would irk some guys who like to hunt every year. my plan would anger those who hunt every year in the south cuz they couldnt hunt and those to the north would whine about increased pressure where they are now. split it up and make a patchwork of draw areas and you would have the same issue. no single solution is going to please everyone, but the way things are now isnt pleasing everyone either. the only guarantee i can give you right now is that the current situation is not the best for trophy sheep hunting. nearly every available legal ram in this province is killed the first year that lamb tip reaches the line through the eye. it certainly is a trophy that way, but it could be much better.
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