Hey there, I'm new to the forum, I grew up bow hunting whitetail in Michigan and through out the Midwest. I moved to Denver area a couple years ago and finally able to make it out hunting next year(2016), however I am really trying to figure out the Zone lottery system. I really don't care that much about horn I just want my best shot at getting some meat in the freezer. I was thinking of focusing on eastern Co, but really just want some advice on whether I should expect to draw a tag my first year or if id have any luck with the OTC leftovers, or if those are even available in areas with decent public land? I think the problem that I will have is I would have to hunt public land. Are there any zones that are better odds of drawing with public land than others? Either way any tips or information would be hugely appreciated. Best of luck out there!
Hey there. I realize you posted this question way back in November, but I'm going to reply now anyway in case it might help you or others in the future who are asking this question. All of the information you need for all species in CO can be found on the CO Parks and Wildlife website. It is a little bit of a pain to wade through this information. Basically what I would suggest is just to take it one species at a time, and check out the areas you are interested in and try not to get bogged down by the large amounts of data. Here is an example of what I mean. Let's say I want to hunt mule deer out east as you say and I want to try to draw an either sex archery tag. I will just randomly choose unit 103 as an example (I have no idea if that area is any good or if it has any public land or whatnot; this is just an example). You can find the hunt codes from the Big Game book. For this example the code is DE103O1A so you can look that up on the tables. Once you find that, you can see that there were only 40 permits issued for deer in this unit for archery season and there were zero leftover after the draw. You can also see the breakdown of how the permits are issued in the purple box: 24 from the general draw, 6 for youth only, and 10 landowner tags makes 40 total. The yellow and gray boxes show who was successful. So yes, you will need to look through all the hunt codes you're interested in and compare them to the stats from the previous year for whichever species you're hunting. Things change year to year as well, so keep that in mind. Good luck!
