jharrell
Senior Member
When is the deadline on putting in for the draw? Also I heard that 40000 people put in for 1000 tags. Just curious if it is on a points system or do you just have to get lucky and draw?
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Kentucky Elk Lottery
- Thread starter jharrell
- Start date
Buckfever
Senior Member
http://fw.ky.gov/elklottery.asp
How to Enter the 2010 Kentucky Elk Hunt Lottery
Deadline to apply - April 30, 2010
For further information, please go to the 2009-10 Kentucky Hunting and Trapping Guide
How to Enter the 2010 Kentucky Elk Hunt Lottery
Deadline to apply - April 30, 2010
For further information, please go to the 2009-10 Kentucky Hunting and Trapping Guide
golffreak
Senior Member
SheldonMOAC
Senior Member
Just luck of the draw. I have been applying since it started. I am going to get it this year. That would be a dream to kill an elk in my home state.
I've done some surveying in Pike County KY and that is the roughest nastiest terrain I have ever seen. It looks like the license fees if you get drawn are around $500. Not too bad. I wonder how well the WMA are holding them or if finding private land would be the key to getting on one? Seems like a good chance at a do-it-yourself elk!
jharrell
Senior Member
This will be my first year applying. It would be very cool to kill a good bull in the eastern United States.
satchmo
Moderator
We apply every year. Sure can't beat the success if you draw.
golffreak
Senior Member
Worth the chance at only $10.
shdw633
Senior Member
Got a letter from them that stated they had an 89% success rate this year. Hope to get mine next year like everyone else.
QTurn
Senior Member
Holy cats!! I had no idea you could elk hunt in Kentucky! Guess that says a lot don't it....
Just added my name to the list.....
Just added my name to the list.....
Streetsweeper
Senior Member
I enter every year, since my family is from Pike County. Here is the email I got from them on their harvest............
Elk Season Summary
November 2009
County Male Female Archery Firearm Muzzleloader Crossbow Total
Bell 22 2 2 22 0 0 24
Breathitt 17 1 2 16 0 0 18
Clay 7 0 1 6 0 0 7
Floyd 10 1 1 10 0 0 11
Harlan 10 4 3 10 0 1 12
Knott 81 7 9 78 1 0 88
Knox 1 0 0 1 0 0 1
Laurel 1 0 0 0 0 1 1
Leslie 39 3 3 39 0 0 42
Letcher 6 2 1 6 0 1 8
Magoffin 1 0 0 1 0 0 1
Martin 13 0 1 12 0 0 13
Perry 24 1 2 23 0 0 25
Pike 17 1 1 17 0 0 18
Totals* 249 22 26 (20 cows, 6 bulls) 241 1 3 (2 cows, 1 out-of-zone bull) 271
*Includes 1 out-of-zone bull killed with a crossbow in Laurel Co.
290 total available antlered + either-sex permits:
251 regular lottery, including 1 youth
5 youth-only Paul Van Booven hunt (4 tags filled)
10 Special Commission Permits (9 filled)
24 either-sex Landowner Cooperator Permits
6 Begley (5 filled)
11 Corrigan (9 filled)
3 Graham (all filled)
1 CONSOL of Kentucky (filled)
3 ICG (all filled)
Bull hunter success – all tags = 86%; regular lottery tags = 85%
Kentucky Afield Outdoors: Deer harvest down slightly; warm weather likely a factor
Dec. 3, 2009 Contact: Hayley Lynch
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 1-800-858-1549, ext. 4493
Frankfort, Ky. – Kentucky hunters have taken more than 100,000 deer so far this year, with a majority of the harvest occurring during the recently completed modern gun season. The number of deer taken by hunters during the opening weekend of modern gun season was down about 400 animals from the average of the previous three seasons. Harvest for the month of November, most of which comes from hunters during the modern gun season, was down about 5,000 deer from the state’s 3-year average.
The decline, however, is a normal fluctuation that deer managers have seen for years.
“We would have to see more than one year of lower harvest before we’d be alarmed,” said Tina Brunjes, big game program coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “One reason I think this year’s harvest may be down, from my own hunting and from what I’ve heard from other hunters out there, is the warm weather during gun season.”
Brunjes said that some hunters reported seeing deer on trail cameras at night, but not during shooting hours. She suspects the warm weather caused more deer to move at night rather than during the warmer daylight hours.
This year’s hunter harvest, while down slightly, still appears to follow a pattern biologists have been seeing for years.
“Season harvest seems to go up, down, up, down, each year in recent years,” said David Yancy, deer biologist for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see it down a bit this year, and we end up with a total around 113,000 or 115,000 deer, and next year we’re back up to 120,000.”
Deer managers aren’t sure exactly why the season harvest total is stair-stepping, but Yancy has a few possible theories. The first is that the pattern is hunter-driven.
“It could be that we kill a lot of deer one year, and the next year there just aren’t as many deer on the ground during hunting season,” Yancy said. “With a smaller herd, the deer are in better condition, with more food to go around. The herd rebounds when female deer have twins more often and a greater number of fawns survive. This leads to another up year for hunters, because there are more deer in the population.”
Another possibility for the fluctuating harvest is that Kentucky’s deer herd has reached its carrying capacity, or the number of deer that the existing habitat can support. The state’s total deer population peaked in 2004 and then began to decline. It now stands at around one million animals. A declining deer herd, Yancy pointed out, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Areas like central Kentucky have too many deer, leading to higher disease rates. Yancy suspects the stair-stepping harvest is something hunters will continue to see.
In addition to lower harvest numbers overall, about 60 percent of the deer taken so far this year have been male. While bucks usually represent a larger proportion of harvest than female deer at this point in the season, a 60-40 split between bucks and does is a larger difference than usual. Brunjes thinks warm weather during gun season played a part here as well.
“Bucks don’t care. They’re going to get out and chase during the rut no matter what, and they’re going to be more visible than does if the weather is warm,” she said. “The does are going to move more at night when it’s warm.”
Yancy pointed out that this year’s modern gun season seemed to fall right during the peak of the deer breeding season. He thinks this is another reason hunters may have seen, and harvested, more bucks.
“That’s going to happen about once out of every three years – the gun season will hit right smack on the peak of the rut,” he explained. “Some years our gun season comes toward the end of the rut, and some years it comes toward the beginning. But I think we’ll see the harvest even out closer to 51 percent bucks, 49 percent does, once the dust settles in January. In the end, this is probably going to look like a pretty typical season.”
Some hunters have voiced concerns about the harvest decline, with questions about last winter’s ice storm and even the possibility of lingering effects from the 2007 outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD.
“At this point, EHD is just a memory,” said Brunjes. “As far as the ice storm, especially in western Kentucky, it did have an effect. It changed the landscape.”
With tall trees damaged by ice, the forest floor received more sunlight, resulting in vegetation growth. Western Kentucky hunters who were accustomed to seeing deer in certain areas may have noticed a big change in deer patterns this year, Brunjes said.
“The ice storm converted areas with no forage into feeding areas,” she said. “It blocked trails. Feeding areas have become bedding areas. Places you used to hunt have changed and may not hold deer now.”
These changes prove that wildlife, in the end, act like wildlife. Hunters have up years, and they also have down years. In the end, hunting opportunity in Kentucky is still far beyond what our grandparents could have imagined.
“We’re hunting a wild animal,” Yancy said. “Part of the allure is that you can’t control it. Part of it is that you’re thankful to get to go and have quarry to pursue.”
The mission of the Kentucky Conservation Coalition is to organize outdoorsmen and women, conservation groups and their members so that their united voices can be heard on important issues impacting fish and wildlife management, wildlife-related recreation interests, and natural resource conservation in Kentucky. Our fishing, hunting, trapping, and natural resource conservation heritage is depending on it. We need to pass the things we hold dear to the next generation, and the time to act is now . To join the KCC and its many partners, including The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, please sign up for this FREE service by clicking here http://www.kycoalition.org.
Elk Season Summary
November 2009
County Male Female Archery Firearm Muzzleloader Crossbow Total
Bell 22 2 2 22 0 0 24
Breathitt 17 1 2 16 0 0 18
Clay 7 0 1 6 0 0 7
Floyd 10 1 1 10 0 0 11
Harlan 10 4 3 10 0 1 12
Knott 81 7 9 78 1 0 88
Knox 1 0 0 1 0 0 1
Laurel 1 0 0 0 0 1 1
Leslie 39 3 3 39 0 0 42
Letcher 6 2 1 6 0 1 8
Magoffin 1 0 0 1 0 0 1
Martin 13 0 1 12 0 0 13
Perry 24 1 2 23 0 0 25
Pike 17 1 1 17 0 0 18
Totals* 249 22 26 (20 cows, 6 bulls) 241 1 3 (2 cows, 1 out-of-zone bull) 271
*Includes 1 out-of-zone bull killed with a crossbow in Laurel Co.
290 total available antlered + either-sex permits:
251 regular lottery, including 1 youth
5 youth-only Paul Van Booven hunt (4 tags filled)
10 Special Commission Permits (9 filled)
24 either-sex Landowner Cooperator Permits
6 Begley (5 filled)
11 Corrigan (9 filled)
3 Graham (all filled)
1 CONSOL of Kentucky (filled)
3 ICG (all filled)
Bull hunter success – all tags = 86%; regular lottery tags = 85%
Kentucky Afield Outdoors: Deer harvest down slightly; warm weather likely a factor
Dec. 3, 2009 Contact: Hayley Lynch
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 1-800-858-1549, ext. 4493
Frankfort, Ky. – Kentucky hunters have taken more than 100,000 deer so far this year, with a majority of the harvest occurring during the recently completed modern gun season. The number of deer taken by hunters during the opening weekend of modern gun season was down about 400 animals from the average of the previous three seasons. Harvest for the month of November, most of which comes from hunters during the modern gun season, was down about 5,000 deer from the state’s 3-year average.
The decline, however, is a normal fluctuation that deer managers have seen for years.
“We would have to see more than one year of lower harvest before we’d be alarmed,” said Tina Brunjes, big game program coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “One reason I think this year’s harvest may be down, from my own hunting and from what I’ve heard from other hunters out there, is the warm weather during gun season.”
Brunjes said that some hunters reported seeing deer on trail cameras at night, but not during shooting hours. She suspects the warm weather caused more deer to move at night rather than during the warmer daylight hours.
This year’s hunter harvest, while down slightly, still appears to follow a pattern biologists have been seeing for years.
“Season harvest seems to go up, down, up, down, each year in recent years,” said David Yancy, deer biologist for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see it down a bit this year, and we end up with a total around 113,000 or 115,000 deer, and next year we’re back up to 120,000.”
Deer managers aren’t sure exactly why the season harvest total is stair-stepping, but Yancy has a few possible theories. The first is that the pattern is hunter-driven.
“It could be that we kill a lot of deer one year, and the next year there just aren’t as many deer on the ground during hunting season,” Yancy said. “With a smaller herd, the deer are in better condition, with more food to go around. The herd rebounds when female deer have twins more often and a greater number of fawns survive. This leads to another up year for hunters, because there are more deer in the population.”
Another possibility for the fluctuating harvest is that Kentucky’s deer herd has reached its carrying capacity, or the number of deer that the existing habitat can support. The state’s total deer population peaked in 2004 and then began to decline. It now stands at around one million animals. A declining deer herd, Yancy pointed out, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Areas like central Kentucky have too many deer, leading to higher disease rates. Yancy suspects the stair-stepping harvest is something hunters will continue to see.
In addition to lower harvest numbers overall, about 60 percent of the deer taken so far this year have been male. While bucks usually represent a larger proportion of harvest than female deer at this point in the season, a 60-40 split between bucks and does is a larger difference than usual. Brunjes thinks warm weather during gun season played a part here as well.
“Bucks don’t care. They’re going to get out and chase during the rut no matter what, and they’re going to be more visible than does if the weather is warm,” she said. “The does are going to move more at night when it’s warm.”
Yancy pointed out that this year’s modern gun season seemed to fall right during the peak of the deer breeding season. He thinks this is another reason hunters may have seen, and harvested, more bucks.
“That’s going to happen about once out of every three years – the gun season will hit right smack on the peak of the rut,” he explained. “Some years our gun season comes toward the end of the rut, and some years it comes toward the beginning. But I think we’ll see the harvest even out closer to 51 percent bucks, 49 percent does, once the dust settles in January. In the end, this is probably going to look like a pretty typical season.”
Some hunters have voiced concerns about the harvest decline, with questions about last winter’s ice storm and even the possibility of lingering effects from the 2007 outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD.
“At this point, EHD is just a memory,” said Brunjes. “As far as the ice storm, especially in western Kentucky, it did have an effect. It changed the landscape.”
With tall trees damaged by ice, the forest floor received more sunlight, resulting in vegetation growth. Western Kentucky hunters who were accustomed to seeing deer in certain areas may have noticed a big change in deer patterns this year, Brunjes said.
“The ice storm converted areas with no forage into feeding areas,” she said. “It blocked trails. Feeding areas have become bedding areas. Places you used to hunt have changed and may not hold deer now.”
These changes prove that wildlife, in the end, act like wildlife. Hunters have up years, and they also have down years. In the end, hunting opportunity in Kentucky is still far beyond what our grandparents could have imagined.
“We’re hunting a wild animal,” Yancy said. “Part of the allure is that you can’t control it. Part of it is that you’re thankful to get to go and have quarry to pursue.”
The mission of the Kentucky Conservation Coalition is to organize outdoorsmen and women, conservation groups and their members so that their united voices can be heard on important issues impacting fish and wildlife management, wildlife-related recreation interests, and natural resource conservation in Kentucky. Our fishing, hunting, trapping, and natural resource conservation heritage is depending on it. We need to pass the things we hold dear to the next generation, and the time to act is now . To join the KCC and its many partners, including The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, please sign up for this FREE service by clicking here http://www.kycoalition.org.
My parents are from TN just a few miles from Bell County KY. I haven't been drawn yet, but I will keep trying. You can't beat an elk hunt where you can visit your parents on the same trip. The elk numbers are continuing to increase in Bell County. It is not uncommon to travel on the mountain roads and see them from the road. Of course poaching is becoming a problem. I plan on putting in for the TN hunt as well.
MAPSTRE
Senior Member
For $10.00, I'll give it a try.
Darkhorse
Senior Member
I looked into this a few years ago. Seemed like the highest Elk populations were on private property where access was restricted or expensive.
Has this changed?
Has this changed?
limbhanger
Senior Member
This will be my second year applying. Not a bad deal for 10 bucks a year to hunt elk close to home.
GA DAWG
Senior Member
I'm gonna start putting in to..A coonhunter I know has a huge herd on his property..He said I could hunt em
Can you put in on wether or not you want a bull or cow tag?? I want a bull tag..Dont care about killing a cow but will if I have to
Can you put in on wether or not you want a bull or cow tag?? I want a bull tag..Dont care about killing a cow but will if I have to
hayseed_theology
Senior Member
Can't choose the sex on the tag. That's luck of the draw too. I've got a friend who's dad got drawn. I think they were required to meet with the Warden's over there to go over things, and the Warden kinda told them where the herds were. Killed a cow on his first hunt. I applied several times, haven't gotten it yet.
