Colorado Approves 2024 Limited license Quotas

Colorado Approves 2024 Limited license Quotas

By Dave Shaffer

Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) spent the last few months developing its recommended license quotas for 2024, which was an especially challenging task given last year’s severe winter and the associated license cuts for the 2023 hunting season. Overall, the theme for 2024 is minor additional license cuts designed to allow the affected herds to continue their recovery.

During today’s CPW Commissioner’s Meeting, Mr. Andy Holland, Colorado’s Big Game Manager, presented CPW’s limited license recommendation for black bear, deer, elk, pronghorn and moose for all game management units in the state that have limited licenses for these species for the 2024 big game seasons.  Following his presentation, and limited discussion, the Commissioners unanimously voted to approve the recommended license numbers.

The following letter gives detailed breakdowns of the now approved 2024 Big Game license recommendations by region and species. https://cpw.state.co.us/Documents/Commission/2024/May/Item.10_2024_Big_Game_License_Recommendations_Summary_and_DAU_Maps.pdf  

This letter, and its many attached tables, provide a summary and explanation of CPW’s annual limited big game licenses for the 2024 big game hunting season. 

CPW recommended, and received approval for, a total of 236,500 limited licenses for deer, elk, pronghorn, moose, and bear. The statewide total is nearly identical to last year, with an important caveat for elk, described in the letter’s elk summary, which involves converting some Over-The-Counter (OTC) licenses to Limited licenses. The total licenses will populate 2,800 individual hunt code quotas and represent the majority of the hunting opportunity for over 700,000 big game animals. 

While there does not appear to be substantial changes this year, the 2024 license numbers are a continuation of reductions made last year (~32,000 licenses) in response to winter mortality in the Northwest Region. The unprecedented reductions made in 2023 and 2024 in the Northwest Region will allow herds to recover as quickly as possible. For 2024, substantial reductions extended beyond the Severe Winter Zone to include Middle Park, which has had 2 severe winters in a row. 

For the other CPW Regions, it is business as usual with license recommendations intended to manage those herds to Herd Management Plan (HMP) population and sex ratio objectives. 

This attachment presents the approved license allocations by Species and Hunt Code.

https://cpw.state.co.us/Documents/Commission/2024/May/Item.10W-2_Final.pdf