This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Jackson, Wyo. • Bison hunting in Jackson this season has been an exercise in frustration. Those lucky enough to draw a tag have spent months peering through windshields at bison sticking tight to no-hunt zones.
This week, though, 32 hunters caught a break. A large movement of bison across the Gros Ventre River and onto the National Elk Refuge on Wednesday resulted in nearly a third of the overall harvest since the season started Aug. 15.
By Thursday, the herd had moved back across the Gros Ventre and into Grand Teton National Park, where they're safe from gunfire.
Managers striving to reduce the size of the Jackson Bison Herd were heartened by the busy day in the field.
With only a week of the season left, hunters have so far killed about 100 bison — just a third of the record harvest of a year ago.
"This year we've calculated that we need to harvest about 170 bison to keep the population stable," Wyoming Game and Fish wildlife biologist Aly Courtemanch told the Jackson Hole News & Guide. "So we definitely are pretty far below that number at this point."
In collaboration with the National Elk Refuge, Game and Fish has tried to use hunting to drive the herd toward a population goal of 500. That objective — aimed at scaling back supplemental feeding — was established by a 2007 interagency federal plan. It's supposed to be achieved by 2022.
While the 2015-16 hunt may wind up being a setback, the effort to shrink the herd has worked in recent years.
Hunters took down 299 animals last season, bringing the population from 825 to 674, the lowest in a decade. Managers attributed the banner year to the herd migrating to the refuge in early December and staying put, leaving them vulnerable to hunting.
Movement patterns this year have been much different. Refuge managers report that larger groups avoided their jurisdiction entirely from early August until the week after Christmas.
The reason, Courtemanch said, could be that bison have so far avoided the hunger pangs that draw them toward fertile pastures to the south.
"There's really not a lot of snow yet and it's pretty powdery," she said, "so I think the bison aren't really feeling the pressure to move to the refuge because they can still forage up in the park."
As of Friday, the Jackson Bison Herd was still well distributed around the park, Game and Fish warden Jon Stephens said. Broken up into about seven groups, the herd ranged from the Buffalo Fork south to near Kelly, he said.
"I don't have much background to base it off of," Stephens said, "but I would definitely say it's quite unusual for the first week of January for those groups to be so far north."
Hunters who aren't able to fill their tag by Jan. 15 will be out of luck.
Game and Fish considered extending the bison hunting season, but ultimately decided against it, Courtemanch said.