Thanks Nandy and yes, getting drawn for a tag is tough. Unlike the sunny south where you must have a TON of deer, turkey, etc. up here the winters tend to put a damper on critter populations. Its not every year but every so often we will have a nasty winter that reduces game populations. It might be freezing ice that outright coats and kills pheasants and other game birds. Said ice whether from an ice storm or from a period of winter thaw followed by more cold can seal off and prevent access to food. Deep snow can have the same affect of cutting of a food source and hampering movement.

All of the above means we typically have situations where there are more folks wanting to hunt than there are critters that can feasibly hunted without further hurting the population. This means a balancing act for our Game and Fish plus it means our application has to be selected before we can hunt any of the following critters: turkey, deer, pronghorn, swan, moose, bighorn, and elk. The last three are, for most folks, a once-in-a-lifetime tag. The others are not but depending on the unit or species you apply for, it may be a number of years before your name is drawn/selected for a tag.

In this case, several bad winters in a row reduced the pronghorn population to the point where the season was closed for several years. Slowly one or two units were opened back up to hunting and more units were added as the population continues to grow. Sorry but I thought this might help explain why it sometimes takes so long before we can hunt a particular critter or unit.