Southwest Rut Report Season Kickoff: New Regulations and Coastal Blacktail Action

Leaves are changing and snow has started to fall in the high country. The lower ground is hanging onto summer but the transition into fall is inevitable. Elk have been in full rut for some time now with the end in sight. Their bugles have changed from music to a hoarse growl. Antlers are broken and some bulls are already calling it quits, retiring to dark timbered holes to recover.

The elk rut is one of the most anticipated and celebrated seasons in hunting, but in Colorado, changes are being made. One of the most impactful changes in western hunting this year is Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) recently voting to eliminate over the counter tags for archery elk hunting. In the past, tags were OTC for residents and nonresidents alike. Over the years as nonresident hunting pressure has grown, these opportunities have slowly been taken away or limited.

Some units were changed to OTC on private land only and some were just converted completely to draw only with a limited number of tags. 2024 will be the last year with any nonresident OTC archery elk tags. In the severe winter zones of northwest Colorado, rifle tags have been restricted as a result of the horrible winter kill of 2022-23. According to CPW, there are currently no plans to restrict 2nd and 3rd season OTC rifle tags outside of these zones. I must say that I am not against limiting many of the hunts if it means managing for older age class animals, but unfortunately, that is not the case. Only time will tell what new changes will be derived from these as Colorado updates its season structure every five years. I could write a book on my opinion of the CPW s wildlife and license management, but I’ll save that for later.

Another change in 2024 with major implications is the Arizona Game and Fish Commission voting to eliminate tag auctions. While many of us couldn’t afford to play that game, the amount of money raised for conservation directly brought in by auction tags can t be denied. I hope Arizona can come up with a system to replace these dollars. In 2023, the statewide mule deer tag brought $725,000 at the Western Hunting expo in Salt Lake City, Utah. It s going to take a lot of raffle tickets to make up for that.

Don’t Miss: How to Hunt Blacktails

A few other notable changes in the west are New Mexico and Utah changing the rules on muzzleloaders and scopes. Outside of a few special seasons, New Mexico eliminated scopes completely allowing only open or peep sights. Utah now limits a legal scope on a muzzleloader to a scope with no more than 1X magnification. Also, in Utah, harvest reporting is now required for all of the general-season buck deer and bull elk hunts in the state, in addition to the limited-entry and antlerless hunts. I think this is a good thing. Harvest reporting should be mandatory everywhere. If not, we re just guessing.

While we are still weeks away from the deer rut in most of the west, California coastal blacktails are on fire as we speak. According to my good friend Lucas Paugh who lives in the heart of this area, they really got going the last week of September. For the lucky ones holding an A-33 late-season archery tag opening on October 5, you should have good rut activity all through the opening week. A-24 Monterey archery tag holders should still see some rut activity although with opening day on October 12, you will be starting to see post rut activity.

While the coastal blacktail are hitting their prime time, overall as a region, we are still weeks away from any real deer rut activity. The elk rut has been awesome and the pronghorn rut is on fire as we speak. I look for this to continue for another week and then see changes as one rut ends, another seems to begin. Southwest Region Activity numbers are for coastal blacktail only this week.