n.idaho deer news

[madmoose]

this past fridays paper(12-26-08). headlines "deer numbers decline for 2008" blaming last winters record snows for mortality.DUH!!!!! just like i had posted in other posts... now come spring they'll change there story so they dont loose any license sales.
here in the panhandle already this year(6 days into winter) we have had alltime record snow falls.. and not by an inch or 2. are record snow fall for one 24hour period was around 13.5 inches, well we beat that with 37 inches in 24 hours... and that wasnt the end of it. i live just north of coeur d' alene, and have already recieved over 50 inches in just a week and a half.
now the F&G panhandle manager has stated that this past 2008 season was like 96/97. when we had bad snow and an ice storm that really wiped out alot of animals. terrible year. well they admitted they knew last year was hard on the animal pop. but they did nothing for it. they stated that harvest was nearly half of what it was in 07. well with as hard as the animals have it so far this year along with 2 plus more months of winter, i would sure imagine we could easily be looking at another 08, which means harvest could be half of what it was this last year. doesn't take a freakin rocket scientist to figure that out!!!!! but regional manager says "were not in a desperate situation yet".
thats FUNNY!!!! know i was just wondering what generalization thats about. either no problem with the deer herds because the previous stated facts that he had just mentioned were a lie and he just felt like saying something other than merry christmas. or that they havent noticed a DANGEROUS shortage in there checking account.
i swear we have dumb and dumber running the show up here in north idaho..... but then again its hard to get anything done when your sitting in your office looking outside saying " brrrr.... looks cold outside"
just venting....

stupid fish and game.... i would sure like to see it come back and bite them in the a@$%. would like to see people drop the license sales because the hunting is so poor, and they might see what they have done.. terrible that it would have to be at the animals expense. they might as well sell an Oryx tag next year. might have a better chance shooting one of those up here than a deer or elk.

 

[gemstatejake]

I'm really concerned about what this winter could do to deer in both north and southern Idaho.............Two hard winters in a row=bad news.

 

[BUGLELK]

Did F&G admit this decline before or after they issued an additional 1500 non-res deer tags? What a sad deal...

 

[madmoose]

after.

 

[excaliber]

Is there a worse F$G department anywhere in the western states than Idaho's?
They remind me of the three stooges.

 

[IDdesertman]

LAST EDITED ON Dec-30-08 AT 09:31PM (MST)[p]That's actually an interesting question excaliber, mainly because it seems like everyone complains that their F&G agency is incompetent, regardless of the state that they live in. I went to school in Oregon for a few years and all the hunters I met there were jealous of me because I hunted Idaho. It seemed like most felt that the Oregon F&W was a bunch of idiots, and Idaho was a way better place to hunt. I'm curious if people in every state are that way, I honestly don't know. What I would bet money on is that there are always going to be people who complain when they only go up for opening weekend, ride their wheelers around, and don't shoot anything. These folks(and I know a few) will blame F&G, wolves and mountain lions, but never their own laziness.

This is not to say that I am oblivious to the low deer numbers in the state, especially mature bucks. I just wonder if there are any states in the west where the vast majority of hunters are happy with the way things are managed.

 

[madmoose]

IDDesertman.... i know you can never make anybody happy, and you will always have folks complaining. its what makes people different.
your comment about complaining about the F&G is true.
i wouldn't think your comment about riding around on a 4 wheeler and not getting anything would be directed at me in any way, because i dont have a 4 wheeler and i manage every year to harvest the animals that i intend to hunt, and have no complaints on seasons or methods. since there are no Deserts in north idaho i would imagine you are from southern idaho, which everybody knows has tons of mulies crawling around every ridgetop and draw.
so wouldnt you say that management 101 being,, if you had stated know information that winter mortality was great, admittedly comparible to a previous season (96/97). in which THEN F&G curtailed both elk and deer season, wouldn't you think they would have kinda done the same thing again this past season. with DOCUMENTED, KNOWN, 100 YEAR SNOW FALL RECORDS, broken that buried the totals that were produced in 96/97. do you think the deer and elk had adapted since then. (snow shoes, food caches throughout the forrest). what would have made them in a better position? then coupled with another record breaker this year that so far beats last year. KNOWN. DOCUMENTED. NO BONES ABOUT IT. F&G says "no desperate situation yet".... my 2 cents... was a desperate situation last year that should have been attended to last year, now its just been amplified.
already stated from F&G that harvest was near half of the previous year, what will it be this year with the real potential of there being an above normal winter mortality again this year?
but im sure they'll do good by the folks that fund the F&G. i know resident and non- residents will not mind paying those higher tag fees to hunt half the amount of animals they got to hunt last year..
i was under the interpertation that good conservation,( there being troblesome years like last), that every year there should be an increase in animal population along with "the growing hunter population". to always try to achieve that perfect balance that SOME people call management.


if an engineer put a screendoor on a submarine, do you think its a good idea and jump aboard?

not trying to mean or an A@#$%#$^ IDDesertman.. just didnt want my post put out of context, as just a complainer about fish and game. you really cant say that those are the best management practices, and that those are the practices that are taught in whatever colleges that these management officers attended.

 

[excaliber]

Having lived in Nevada for almost a decade and Ca. before that I've seen how other states F&G departments are run first hand.

Nevada actually surveys their herds and they try to get as accurate a count as possible. In bad years they lower the tag allotment, same as Ca.
Nevada has better all around hunting because they only allow harvest numbers that keep their small herds healthy.

Look at Colorado.

Idaho uses some lame modeling system where they fly over, count what they see and X it by 10 or some multiplier so they can inflate their numbers. Who believes there are still 115,000 elk in this state?

This is the last remaining state with no point system. I know some of you are against it. I like it. That's an argument for another time.

This state has the genetics to produce some monster deer and Elk and great herd numbers. We have the habitat. The problem is everyone want's to hunt every year and the F&G gives out unlimited tags to residents.

F&G said Wolves were having no impact on ungulate herds up until this year. Now they say several areas are being severly impacted. Which is it? Look at the Elk proclamation under research on the site. Most zones have below calf recruitment and are under quota on bulls and mature bulls.

Look at the eastern part of the state. What happened to all the deer? Too many tags for too mant years is what happened.

Look at unit 56. They closed it down for a few years then opened it up for a general season slaughter.

In the next few years it's going to be even worse. Something needs to be done but F$G is more worried about revenue than actually protecting the herds.

Tags have to be reduced, seasons shortened?,weapons choices?.Something has to be done. They can't just sit on their hands hoping things will improve. It's hard to make decisions that are not popular with most hunters but somethingneeds to be done here before it's too late.

We can't be chasing these deer all August with our bows and then rifle hunt them for a month then chase them again with our bows.
The resource can't handle that.
My 2 cents......

 

[zboys]

Look at the population of the different states. We just broke 1.5 million. There is no problem in hunting every year.

Fish and game did everything right on the wolves. They said what they had to so the wolf plan could get past and it did get past. Now since on judge put the plan on hold they are taking steps to move forward with there plan.

Unit 56 was open to spread out the hunters from the eastern part of the state. They were having a hard time with that herd. Have you ever hunted that country, its big and has lots of cover. I thing it can handle the hunting pressure.

2point only hunts need to be done away with. Sportsmen need to start controlling the predator problem.pick your favorite unit and start with coyotes on the winter range to save some deer and in the spring will save plenty of fawns. Make a deal with someone with dogs and lets kill as many lions as we can.

The preference point should never be put into affect. We all have the same chance to draw a tag as the next guy. If we keep it the way it is we will lose some of the out of state guys and the F&G will notice. We all want a few less hunters out there, might as well be out of staters.

Lets do what we can for the herds and keep the pressure on the F&G.

My 22cents

 

[springer1]

well boys,since only lived north idaho for 44 years and hunted elk since i was 11 years old i have seen alot of change ,and the last five years go from bad to worse ,i remember when we could hunt in september (10 ) to the end of november foe elk and deer (either sex elk )nt just in the panhandle either ,the elk herds were strong (climbing to their peek )alot more hunters and outfitters ,alot better habit management (more logging -everbody knew the secret was to go where the elk fed ,not where they bedded down,but then fish & game got greedy and added a bow season in september (restricted firearm seasonto october 1-to mid november ,then they decided to make more revenue by having a muzzleloader season so they trimmed more time off the end of general season, talked the forest into closing roads for bull elk went to anterled only season generating more cows and calves ,then the tree huggers got real aggressive stopped all logging(from 40-million board feet to almost 2million board )of timmber no more open canopy for the browse to grow, the early nineties idaho fish & game gets a new big game predator manager with bunny huggy ways he arbitrairly decides to change central idaho predator dynamics by shaving 60 days off of the the black bear & mountain lion season spring and fall hunts ,not beliveing what the people in the woods would tell him(i belive his"words were " i have p.h.d from xxxx university and a masters in biology from maine and i know best(who could argue with logic like that) well 4 years later all the little elk calves were being found in "piles of black bear poop" to parapharse this expert we radio collared 100 elk calves in this one drainage and all 100 calves became bear poop again we told him this would happen he said where did you get your thesis for this conclusion (28 years of living around these animals)i had been fortnuate to have this oppurtunity ,so what happened was we went back to the fifties and sixties management model(two bear and cat per year )hmmmm,i hate to say i told you so but ,anyway the bunch running this department is running the way the see fit, to go along with their agenda ,otherwise they wouldnt hide 400 full time temp. employees ,so shorting the season doesnt do any thing ,restricting the amount of tags isnt the answer either,and more wilderness definately not the answer (selway bitteroot is almost barren of elk and deer (one time in not so long past there was 40,000 in idaho county alone(more than the people population(good thing they couldnt vote )but one extreme nod of stupidity and here we are .now having brought you on aworld wind trip from the past to present you draw your own conclusion

 

[gemstatejake]

I remember when north Idaho was like THE place to hunt elk in the west.................Some of my first elk hunts were up around elk city. You see plates from damn near every state in the country.....And lots of dead elk in those camps.....

 

[Frontier]

What I see is about 100,000 different plans from all the different hunters and if the fish and game don't do it their way, they're a bunch of dum and greedy politicians. I won't argue that the last sentence isn't true in some cases, but I do believe that most of them are trying to do what they think is right. I think as sportsmen we can help by getting behind any efforts the IDFG does to control the wolf situation and other predators can help alot. My 1 cent.

 

[springer1]

actually nobody has come up with a plan,the problem really lies with the fact that to many people stuck their nose where it didnt belong and that has lead everybody down the road of gloom & doom (where we are today) enviros ,bunny-huggers etc. seem to think they know whats best even here(on this blog) i see experts (or as my old mentor from my youth used to say "educated idiots " that moved here from backeast or california or south ,(after a visit ) they wanted to save something . nothing was broke ,then but now it is a sad day,if you didnt get to see the big elk herds of the 70's,80's or the 90's i am truly sorry for you ,you really missed something,the mountain goats on highway 12 in the fall was alaways plus or big mule deer bucks just a few minutes off of the high way 12,moose alaways going to missoula, black bear everywhere,if you think idaho is game rich now your crazy ..TO MANY COOKS IN THE KITCHEN ,SPOIL THE SOUP.(thank the enviros ,the college educators,the 501-3-c groups hiding behind the laws to bilk the tax-payer for legal fees ,and deny you the sportsman your right to enjoy idaho as it was meant to be ,all the while they enforce their perverse ideaolgy on us.)that my friends is known as a power struggle,they force us out,they move in with their fancy homes (example challis ,ketchum,macall ,sandpoint ,should i go on)shoots the theory of enviromental movement in the proverbial butt.oh well iam not just a dumb hick who has seen it ,so i have hard time getting behind iadho fish & game and the group of greenies they have running the department now.

 

[bigbone]

IDFG makes me sick. They waste money flying a chopper to count bucks and does but at the end of the day they fudge the numbers or don't beleive what they see. I have heard them say after flying the winter range "well there are lots of deer just couldn't find many bucks, they must be some where else"

How will we improve the game heards when the guys who are in control are in denial of the facts, when the facts are yelling right in their face???




^BIGBONE^

 

[KamiahKid]

>actually nobody has come up with
>a plan,the problem really lies
>with the fact that to
>many people stuck their nose
>where it didnt belong and
>that has lead everybody down
>the road of gloom &
>doom (where we are today)
>enviros ,bunny-huggers etc. seem to
>think they know whats best
>even here(on this blog) i
>see experts (or as my
>old mentor from my youth
>used to say "educated idiots
>" that moved here
>from backeast or california or
>south ,(after a visit )
>they wanted to save something
>. nothing was broke ,then
>but now it is a
>sad day,if you didnt get
>to see the big elk
>herds of the 70's,80's or
>the 90's i am truly
>sorry for you ,you really
>missed something,the mountain goats on
>highway 12 in the fall
>was alaways plus or big
>mule deer bucks just a
>few minutes off of the
>high way 12,moose alaways going
>to missoula, black bear everywhere,if
>you think idaho is game
>rich now your crazy ..TO
>MANY COOKS IN THE KITCHEN
>,SPOIL THE SOUP.(thank the
>enviros ,the college educators,the 501-3-c
>groups hiding behind the laws
>to bilk the tax-payer for
>legal fees ,and deny you
>the sportsman your right to
>enjoy idaho as it was
>meant to be ,all the
>while they enforce their perverse
>ideaolgy on us.)that my friends
>is known as a power
>struggle,they force us out,they move
>in with their fancy homes
>(example challis ,ketchum,macall ,sandpoint ,should
>i go on)shoots the theory
>of enviromental movement in the
>proverbial butt.oh well iam not
>just a dumb hick who
>has seen it ,so i
>have hard time getting behind
>iadho fish & game and
>the group of greenies they
>have running the department now.
>

+++++++1
Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.