Hunters had it easy back when the calendar flipped to January 1900. Imagine no limits, no seasons, no three-points-or-better hunts and no licenses, therefore no game officers.
The problem was there wasn't much game to hunt.Some suggest there were more bighorn sheep than mule deer, and not many of either group. There were only a handful of elk, no moose, no Rocky Mountain goats and of the millions of buffalo that roamed a half-century before, there wasn't a single resident bison left in Utah. There were some antelope.
A national report, however, put the number of antelope on U.S. prairies in 1950 at 12,000. Today the count is up to more than a 1 million.
The total number of elk in the U.S. in 1907 was put at 41,000 and the number of whitetail deer at the turn of the century at 500,000. Today the count is 800,000 and 19 million, respectively.
Utah's deer population had been so depleted that in 1894, two years before Utah became a state, there was talk of deer management. It wasn't until 1907, however, that steps were actually taken to protect what small herds remained. In 1907, a license fee of $1 was levied. It didn't work, so between 1908 and 1913 hunting statewide was closed.
In 1913, Utah lawmakers initiated "buck only" hunting, which remained in force through 1950.
Utah's deer herds responded. In 1930, there were four deer management units. Today there are more than 80.
Occasionally, Nature herself dished out management control. Extremely hard winters in 1948-49, 1988-89 and again in 1992-93 resulted in devastating losses within Utah's deer population. In some northern units, as high as 80 percent of the fawns died before the spring thaw. It is estimated that half of Utah's deer died that winter.
The current management objective for deer is around 418,000. Game officers estimate Utah holds 315,000 mule deer.
Elk, once thought to be prevalent in the northern reaches of the state, were nearly eliminated by unregulated hunting. Only a small herd, holed up in the Uintas, survived heading into the 20th century. To save what elk remained, legal hunting was banned in 1898.
To re-establish the elk, animals from Yellowstone National Park were captured and transplanted in Utah between 1912 and 1925. They did so well during those early years that a Board of Elk Control was established and initiated the state's first official hunt in 1925.
Record keeping during the early hunts was rather haphazard. The first year wildlife officials felt safe in estimating hunting pressure, for 1931, it reported 256 hunters tagged 125 elk.
Elk, in the meantime, have thrived in Utah. Under an elk management plan called for by the Utah Legislature, elk counts are only 4,000 under the target number of 65,000.
Uncontrolled grazing on the foothills and plains around Utah's cities resulted in the near elimination of the pronghorn antelope. In 1898, to save what animals still survived, hunters were placed under a no-hunt ban. A count in 1922 showed there were 670 antelope in 10 large units in Utah. For the next 25 years, there was no noticeable increase in pronghorn numbers.
Reduced grazing by livestock and the building of "guzzlers" -- watering stops for antelope -- along with transplant programs, started the pronghorn on the road to recovery. The first official hunt was held in 1945. There were 66 hunters that year and they harvested 62 antelope from a thriving band in Daggett County.
Some antelope units in Utah are doing so well that the state is able to trap and trade the animals with neighboring states for other big-game animals, such as desert bighorn sheep.
The first official sighting of a moose in Utah was in 1906 or 1907, the report said, when one was killed at the head of Spanish Fork Canyon. The next moose sighting wasn't until 1918, when a cow and calf were seen in the Uinta Mountains. But it wasn't until 1947 that game officials were able to say with certainly that Utah had a year-round resident herd, albeit a small one.
An aerial survey in 1957 came back with a count of 57 moose. An aerial count of the same area in 1992 reported a count of 565 animals. In 1973, Utah began trapping and moving the animals to other areas of the state. The first moose hunt in Utah was in 1958. That year, 10 hunters came back with seven bull moose.
Today, Utah's moose herds are doing well. Large herds currently exist in mountains all along the Wasatch Front.
Utah's buffalo herds are much more recent. The first buffalo re-entered the state in 1941, when three bulls and 15 cows were trapped and moved from Yellowstone National Park to the Robber's Roost area on the San Rafael Desert. Eventually, the herd moved to the Henry Mountains south of Hanksville. Today, the herd numbers around 300, which is the management limit for the area.
The herd on Antelope Island was private until the state purchased the island. Today there are more than 700 bison on the island, which again is the management limit.
Early Indian rock art would indicate there were a large number of bighorn sheep, both desert and Rocky Mountain, during the very early years. Even when the pioneers entered the state there were reports of bighorn sheep. By the 1950s and 1960s, however, disease and unregulated hunting reduced numbers to two small herds along the Colorado River.
All of the Rocky Mountain sheep were eliminated. What Rocky Mountain bighorn are in Utah are a result of an extensive transplant program.
There is no evidence of Rocky Mountain goats ever being in Utah. That changed in 1967 when six goats were brought from Washington and settled on the northern slopes of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Eventually the goats moved across the canyon to the south slopes. Today there are herds on Mt. Timpanogos, Tushar Mountain, Bald Mountain-Hayden Pass and Provo Peak.
Utah's big game population has thrived in the past century. Where hunting resulted in the near elimination of some animals at the turn of the century, it has been sportsmen's dollars that have revived herds. A bigger problem facing the larger animals in the next century will be their fight for space against the human population.