Deer

[BPKHunter]

I have heard lot's of complaints this year about numbers. Went up with my son and hunted all day yesterday. Went with a friend to country his family has hunted for 3 generations so there will be not drainage names here. In one day we saw 40+ deer and 12 bucks, of which only 3 were forkies. Most does were hauling twins around also. This was a general unit in SW Idaho, at about 7000+'. The deer did not seem to be moving through during the day, but on our way out we saw 4 groups of does/fawns heading downhill all well after dark.

Feed looked great and I think they are getting some extra time to really pack it on before the rut and winter. This delay before hitting wintering grounds may help save some of that winter feed in case it is a long winter again. I think with this weather the hunter success this year will be way below average.

Despite the fact some changes could surely be made to improve the long term situation, I am hopeful for the next few years.

 

[trophyhunter]

BPK from what I read from IDFG there was a bad winter kill in the SE Region due to last years early cold and snows that weekend the deer herd and with all the late storms this year many deer just could not make it through the entire winter in the SE Region. Not as much of a problem in SW Region or up North. Glad you saw good amounts of game in your area.

))))------->

 

[BPKHunter]

>BPK from what I read from
>IDFG there was a bad
>winter kill in the SE
>Region due to last years
>early cold and snows that
>weekend the deer herd and
>with all the late storms
>this year many deer just
>could not make it through
>the entire winter in the
>SE Region. Not as much
>of a problem in SW
>Region or up North. Glad
>you saw good amounts of
>game in your area.
>
>))))------->

I actually hunted Unit 73 last year and heard from some of the guys I was with that went back the numbers were down. I think part of that units problem is a hangover from the conversion to a 4pt unit to this Unlimited draw any buck unit.

I think SW Idaho has been very affected by the winter, especially in 32 and 32a. As mentioned I saw only 3 forkies. Of those one actually appeared to be a recessed buck 20" tall. So very few "yearlings" left over. Good news is ALL the sets of twins. Let's hope they can make it through this year and start an up cycle.

 

[IDshooter695]

Ya Idaho is in real bad shape.Deer are only in certain small areas. Both my son and I were able to harvest nice deer this year but had to cover many areas before finding them. Certain areas hold little or no deer and then other areas you'll find them in one canyon. I suspect than when you do find them you are seeing all the deer in that area.Without any major changes to idaho's game management there is no hope for Idaho. Don't blame the winter so much as I think the game management here is more to blame. I have hunted four western deer states and this state now has the least amount of game as any.

 

[gb22]

The solution to low deer numbers is certainly not to further restrict hunting. WE only hunt for a couple of weeks per year.

We need REDUCE PREDATOR NUMBERS.

We also need to do more winter feeding. YES, I know the "deer can't digest it" stories. I also know we have put men on the moon and that we have covered HUGE amounts of winter range with cities and roads. We COULD figure that out.

Deer numbers would triple within a decade if we'd do those 2 simple things.

WE (hunters) pay every penny on which F&G operates. We need to demand that F&G once again reflect an effort to INCREASE hunting opportunities...not manage non-game species and not figure our way to let a "lucky few" have Quality LE tags.


Within the shadows, go quietly.

 

[Rizzy]

LAST EDITED ON Oct-27-11 AT 12:55PM (MST)[p]In the area of unit 35 I have been hunting, I have seen very few deer. Granted this area does not have a strong herd to begin with, since July scouting I have seen 1 small buck and about 7 Does. I have been in about 5 different drainage's and the deer are in only a few certain ones. Elk however seem to be everywhere and I am somewhat disappointed in that I have seen no sign of wolves anywhere in the areas I have been, I was really looking forward to filling my wolf tag. From the info. I can gather the fawn survival rate this past winter in this herd was around 9%. Thats about 1 fawn out of 10 survived the winter. In terms of recruitment this is failure for the species and the crop of bucks in the next few years is nonexistent. I don't see the logic in continuing with the general tag status of this particular herd? There is no surplus, the demand has exceeded the supply.

I always thought in terms of population dynamics predator species numbers where controlled by prey species numbers, and prey species numbers where controlled by habitat quality. In other words there cant be to many predators in any natural habitat; prey numbers control predator numbers. Despite predators being at the top of the food chain, they are not a controlling factor in a natural environment. Habitat is a controlling factor and the predators are actually the last in line for a meal.

As hunters we are a predator and our numbers increase regardless of weather or prey base. I feel our numbers (hunters in the field) should be managed in sync with the available prey base on a yearly basis so as to coincide with the natural order. The only way to do this effectively is to control the amount of tags given out.

This by far is not the solution to increase herds, but it is something we have control over that can help. Why do we continue to let the demand increase when the supply has been severely decreased? Wildlife Recession; we have set up a sort of systematic decline by replacing habitat with development and continuing to have increasing harvest and/or unlimited tag status. The deer are getting it from both ends (habitat and predation) from us.

 

[SwitchbackMuley]

I agree with you 100%, harvest is negligible when you look at the big picture. However, I don't think winter feeding nor predator control is the answer-- they're wild animals after all. The two solutions you mention treat the symptoms of a much bigger problem rather than getting at the root of the issue itself. This sort of strategy has played out in almost every part of natural resource management and it never works. Take a look at salmon-- when dams and habitat degradation reduced runs to a fraction of what they used to be we treated the symptoms of the problem by supplementing the runs with hatchery fish and never actually got at the problem, we arguably created more problems as a result too.

If people think that mule deer and elk are in that bad of shape (which I don't) then they need to take a hard look at the what is perpetuating the problem. Predators aren't the problem and neither are hard winters-- mule deer and elk both coevolved with wolves, cougars, coyotes, ect. in much greater numbers than they are now. Also, predators are important from an ecological standpoint that many hunters would rather overlook because they would rather see themselves kill elk than wolves. The biggests threats to big game are land-use and developement, plain and simple. If hunters could lobby against winter range developement, public land grazing, off-road vehicle use, ect. they would see big game herds explode. The problem is, this sort of mindset doesn't generally line-up with the political views of the large majority of hunters and it goes against their biased values.

Not trying to make a political statement, but it's funny how the real problem is often easily overlooked. There's a whole thread in this forum right now with guys bitching back and forth about how they can play god and fix the herds and all they suggest are symptom treatments. They don't realize there's little IDFG can do with a state full of rednecks and shitty habitat...

 

[Abiggerfish2fry]

I sure like to know where you seen them bucks! after I won that Elk Super Tag I bought a Deer tag and they sucked $300 out of my wallet for it and since then I have not seen a buck out there!

 

[customweld]

This state full of rednecks was doing just fine until the GD enviros showed up. There is certainly a correlation to degradation of habitat and decline of herd numbers. That being said public land grazing has been going on since the turn of the 20th century.If that was the culprit we would have seen the population crash in the early part of the 1900's. Up until the 80's when logging was still going strong the herds were much stronger. Newly logged areas grew the young brush and forbes that deer thrived on. Hardly any logging is occuring anymore creating older growth coniferous forests that choke out nutritous brush and forbes. Catasrtophic fires in the winter ground has decimated the bitter brush that deer need to carry them through winter.If it weren't for the indians helping Lewis and Clark out,they would have starved to death when they crossed the great divide because there wasn't any game to be found.How many of us shoot rifles at 3,000fps? How many utilize rangefinders? Technology has as much to do with game numbers as anything. How many of us have multiple days of vacation that we use? trucks that get more than 15mpg? Credit cards that we use when we don't have enough in the account to fill the truck up? I grew up in a little town north of Boise in the late 80's.At that time you seen "flatlanders" up there but nothing like you see now. You can say what you will about the economy now but you have to admit that people are able to travel longer and farther now than what they did 30 years ago. There are many contributing factors to decline of the herds and no silver bullet to fix them all. I for one want to hunt every year. If I don't see a buck that doesn't interest me , I simply pass.Limiting hunting is one small foot in the door for the left to ban firearms. No game or hunting what is the use owning guns.

 

[BPKHunter]

There have been a lot of good points made. As I get more into this conversation I look for more support. Fish and Game has some of their reports available on their website. A new series of them was just recently posted:

https://research.idfg.idaho.gov/wildlife/Wildlife Technical Reports/Forms/Show All Reports.aspx

Interesting on Unit 39 alone:

Population: 20,000 - 23,000

Does: ~85% of herd

Fawn Recruitment: ~60%

Fawn winter survival: ~60%

Doing this math: 20,000 x .85 x .60 x .60 = 6000+ net new adult herd members in an "average" year. Assuming half are does and half are bucks, then in an average year that is well more than was is taken out by hunters. I can see now why they focus on habitat and weather.

They basically say predators and hunters have little impact. Doe hunts are only limited if the herd gets below a certain threshold. If this past year is as bad as everyone says and this winter is not mild I would guess that next year the doe hunts will be cut back like in the mid-90's.

I wish they could do population studies annually in each unit, but that takes a lot of $$.

 

[twsnow18]

I agree with the math and focus of the IDFG regarding deer numbers but here is something to think about. This might be the only flaw to your equation. While passing through the Mores Creek check station last Saturday I spoke with a few IDFG biologists for a while. Apparently the deer counts in 39 were conducted at the end of this last January. Well according to her they completely blew this in that if everyone remembers correctly, the SW region of our state received little to almost zero precipitation that month. I know this because I'm an avid skiier. It was one of the poorest snow conditions for one month that I've seen in the last ten years riding at Bogus/Brundage/Tamarack. January was dry as a bone (dirt spots on Bogus Basins runs mid season!), but in late February, March and April is when we had record setting monthly precipitation totals. Mostly in the form of very cold heavy snows thanks to La Nina weather patterns. This is I believe when most of the winter kill took place, due to the late late winter. So therefore making their deer counts inaccurate this year according to Michelle with fish and game. But who is to tell HOW inaccurate I guess.

 

[BPKHunter]

twsnow18, I expected this may be the case.

"If this past year is as bad as everyone says and this winter is not mild I would guess that next year the doe hunts will be cut back like in the mid-90's."

One of the difficulties that F&G faces is that you can't really tell the affect of a hard winter until May/June, when we are well past setting seasons. This is why I expect any modification may come this next year.

 

[SwitchbackMuley]

Custom-- I think it's reasonable to say that technology plays a major roll in hunters' success rates. But that's something that f&g can easily regulate and consider, i.e. they can adjust tags in relation to higher success rates or restrict gear. My arguement was that the factors driving deer and elk herds are out of f&g's control for the reasons I mentioned. I'm going to have to disagree with you on the rest of your points though, I've heard all that rhetoric before. Intense fires do destroy the brush component of winter range and convert the dominant understory to cheat grass, and you know what-- those fires are the direct result of overgrazing rangelands. BLM's been suppressing range fires for years for the sole reason of keeping range-magotts out there longer and so they can continually graze year after year-- the result is fuel build-up and huge fires when the do actually occur. In many cases, by the time fire season rolls around the cows have by then usually taken off the fine fuels that historically allowed low-intensity fires to spread and bring life to those areas. Now, you've got fuels building up, because cows don't eat brush, and when a fire starts it's catastrophic because it runs right through the sagebrush canopy and you lose all that would-be winter forage.

As far as logging goes, it not cutting trees intself that affects wildlife, it's all the roads/traffic/people associated with a logging operation. A few year back I helped out on a project that looked at mule deer responses to oil/gas development around Pinedale, WY and the results from that would make you cringe. In that case it wasn't the footprint from a well that disturbed deer it was all the traffic. That paper has been cited by other studies that have looked at the same thing in response to logging and they documented the same sort of results. Another interesting point, the Lolo zones, which have always been managed for timber production, haven't had a major fire years and the elk habitat is now nearly nonexistent because of that, but NO, NO-- it's the damn wolves up there, that's why there's no elk!

Land use in ID doesn't and never has lined up our concerns about wildlife. So, instead of going after the real enemies, hunters sit around and point their finger at wolves and other hunters and Blah Blah Blah. Hunters could be such a powerful ally for wildlife, people gotta wake up and face the music first. Everyone's a 150 years behind the times and thinks it's still the frickin wild west out here.