Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Big Game Harvest Survey closes
February 17, 2026
Colorado Parks and Wildlife randomly selected approximately 170,000 deer, elk, and pronghorn license holders to participate in the 2025 Big Game Harvest Survey, and the deadline to complete the survey is fast approaching. The data collected through this survey is vital to CPW wildlife managers and will be used to inform deer, elk, and pronghorn season and license setting for 2026 and beyond. Your response is important, even if you did not hunt or harvest!
Only selected license holders are eligible to complete the survey.
Selected hunters are notified via email, text message, and/or live-operator phone call that they are eligible to complete the 2025 Big Game Harvest Survey. Hunters who have been selected are encouraged to complete their survey before February 17, 2026, by clicking on the link in the email or text message, visiting survey.colobgharvest.com, or by calling toll-free at 1-855-9BG-HARV (1-855-924-4278). Only selected license holders are eligible to complete the survey.
During the quick survey, selected hunters will be asked where and when they hunted, whether they harvested, what they harvested, and whether they were satisfied with the herd. They will also have the option to answer five additional questions on crowding, satisfaction, and preferences for future herd management.
For more information about the Big Game Harvest Survey, please read the Frequently Asked Questions.
Harvest Reports and Hunting Statistics
Big game harvest reports from past seasons are available on CPW’s website. 2025 reports will be finalized and posted in March.
Thanks for your support!
Just 150 years ago, the future of Colorado’s wildlife was uncertain. Overhunting and water pollution had a harsh impact on deer, elk, pronghorn, buffalo, bear, birds and fish, and many feared that some of these species would never recover. In 1870, the Colorado Territorial Legislature passed its first wildlife protection laws, and in 1879, the first wildlife protection agency was formed. The Colorado Division of Wildlife worked to set and enforce limitations, including banning the use of nets for fishing, setting season and bag limits, and even prohibiting hunting of pronghorn and bighorn sheep for over 50 years.
Today, conservation remains a core part of Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s mission. Our State Wildlife Action Plan is the guiding document for the conservation teams and for Colorado Parks and Wildlife as a whole, as we strive to make all decisions with conservation in mind.
Learn more about CPW’s over 150-year history of conserving wildlife in Colorado.
North American Model of Wildlife Conservation
The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation is the cornerstone of modern wildlife conservation across the U.S. This revolutionary model was formed around the turn of the 1900’s when sportspeople realized that market hunting was taking an undeniable and potentially irreversible effect on North America’s wildlife.
Revenue generated from hunting and fishing activities constitutes around 70 percent of Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s wildlife management funds. For almost two centuries, this model has been a large part of the reason why Colorado’s wildlife is so healthy and abundant.
Learn more about the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.
5 Responses
Why are you sending this to me if I wasn’t one of the ones selected?
We regularly receive questions about Colorado big game harvest reporting, so we try to share information to keep the public informed about how the process works.
I have received Big Game hunting surveys for many years, and I always respond.
I am curious. If you only send surveys to 170,000 hunters (and not all of them respond), how many responses do you actually receive compared to how many licenses are sold? And, is that “sample” adequate for you to produce harvest statistics for every big game species in every GMU or group of GMU’s ?????
Just curious… Is someone from DPW going to respond to my questions?
% of hunters contacted ~40%. To conduct the annual Big Game Harvest Survey, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) contracts with an outside firm to collect important hunt and harvest information from hunters. Each year, Colorado has 300,000+ deer, elk and pronghorn hunters, making it infeasible to contact each individual hunter by February. Instead, hunters are randomly selected to participate in the annual harvest survey. The information from the participating hunters is then used with information collected by Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists to estimate annual big game harvest and population numbers, a crucial component guiding herd management in Colorado. The vendor uses phone, SMS, post cards and emails to make sure we achieve the necessary submission rate for a statistically valid random sampling process. Find more details here – http://www.colobgharvest.com/faq/