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Steamboat Springs — A combination of the poor economy and fewer available tags has decreased the number of hunters in Northwest Colorado this year, with repercussions felt from the field to the hotel rooms across Routt County.

Jim Haskins, Colorado Division of Wildlife area wildlife manager, said the final numbers of tags sold have not been tallied but that it’s clear that fewer were sold this year than in previous years.

“We were definitely down in the third season,” he said, which includes over-the-counter elk tags.

That decrease came as no surprise, he said.

“I think there was an expectation that hunter numbers were going to be down this year because of the economy,” Haskins said. “I think everybody pretty much figured that would happen.”

The DOW also offered fewer tags this year as some elk populations started to fall into the target range.

“We’re transitioning from a mode where we were trying to harvest a lot of elk, especially cow elk, to a mode where we’re trying to smooth that out,” he said.

Fewer deer tags also were issued this year, he said, because the deer populations suffered in the winter of 2007-08 and have not fully rebounded.

“Some of the fact that there are fewer hunters on the ground is intentional,” DOW spokesman Randy Hampton said.

Hampton and Haskins also offered several other reasons for a decrease in hunters this year, including warmer weather and the poor economy discouraging out-of-state hunters.

Countywide impacts

The decrease in hunters is affecting businesses across Routt County. In Oak Creek, Colorado Bar owner J Elliott said business was down about 25 percent compared with last year. He said he attributes about half of that decrease to a decline in hunters in Oak Creek this year.

“The tourism was down in the summer, and it’s pretty slow around here in the winter, so what you try to do is tough it through the winter because we don’t get the tourists that you get in Steamboat,” he said.

He said that his business, which he runs with his wife, wouldn’t be hit as hard as others because they don’t have a mortgage or any payments to make. But Elliott said other shops in town probably would be hit harder.

Even the business from locals is down because the locals are being hit hard, as well, he said.

Elliott, who is the mayor of Oak Creek, said he expects business in the winter to remain slow in Oak Creek.

“We’ve got Christmas coming up, but we don’t have a lot of large retailers around here, so they’re going to spend their money in Steamboat or Eagle or wherever they’re going to spend it, and that’s just going to dry up their discretionary income further,” he said.

Farther south in Routt County, the Black Dog Inn in Phippsburg has seen about a 10 percent decline in business, co-owner Marlene Smith said.

She said the hunters have reported good hunts but that not as many newcomers have shown up this year.

In Steamboat Springs, the harvest was strong through the first and second seasons for Steamboat Meat and Seafood, primarily from three ranches near town. Butcher Shelly Perez said the third season was “horrible” and the fourth season is averaging out.

Perez said the animals she has seen have been good, a trend Haskins said he has noted, as well.

“As far as the animals that have been harvested this year, we’ve seen probably the best bulls we’ve seen in years coming off public land,” likely because the past two to three years have not been as good, he said. “We’ve stockpiled bigger bulls, even approaching what some people would consider trophy class.”

Hunting licenses are one of the biggest sources of revenue for the DOW, a system Haskins said needs to be rethought.

“I think it’s something we need to be concerned about. I don’t think we should get in a panic, obviously,” he said. “Going into the future, depending on license sales to fund this agency is probably not realistic. We probably need other funding sources.”