Soaring interest in Colorado’s big-game hunting seasons — for animals like deer, elk and bear — far outpaces the number of licenses that state wildlife officials have to offer, driving business for outfitters and raking in cash for the state.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife received nearly 218,000 applications last year for deer-hunting licenses, but the agency only had about 102,000 to give, state data shows. For elk, wildlife officials received nearly 238,000 applications for just over 123,000 available licenses.
For moose, the contrast is even starker. The state received more than 53,000 applications for moose hunting licenses, more than 90 times higher than the 592 allotted last year. That’s a 326% increase from the 16,494 moose applications the state saw a decade earlier.
