I've personally watched 18 elk die. 4 during the TRNP thing, 14 on real hunting trips. I've seen them killed with: 257Wby, 270Win, 300Win, and 338Win. I personally killed one w/257Wby, 10 w/300Win. My 270Win hand loads accounted for 2 more by other folks. One via buddies 300Win and his own...
I gotta admit, this spring on the river when my buddy caught a ~10# pike w/big ol' fat belly I had a hard time believing the words that came outta my mouth, "put her in the well". It felt sadistically GOOD when I laid the knife to it and threw 1/2 billion eggs in the garbage with the...
And the generous limits of smaller fish worked to sustain a great fishery, then, by accident, they learned that gizzard shad make for an acceptable substitute for rainbow smelt in the event of a "smelt flush". Because of that they averted forage base deficiencies in '08, '09, '11, and '12.
We could have another flood. We could have a drought. We could lose the food base and Oahe could go back to 14 fish/day. There could be a bajillion more gizzard shad that come outta the Black Hills.
COE is of far more concern than 200-300 boats from Bismarck to the Cannonball on the...
River in and S of Bismarck looked just like this year in spring of '08 and '12, pretty sure '07 as well. I remember leaving my boat/truck on my dad's RV pad next to his house in Bismarck for Apr/May in '06, 07, and 08.
I'm not saying don't keep an eye on numbers but if you think the river...
It saw the same kind of pressure in '08 and '12 for sure. What you see happening on the river in the spring isn't squat compared to June/July on Oahe.
Case in point here's a late-June weekend out of Bush's Landing on Oahe, there's a whole bunch parked and just as many behind me up the hill as...