Snow is piling up

BenHuntn

BenHuntn

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Well it's Feb. and the snow is getting deep in Star Valley. I live up against the Salt River Range and we have about 4' and it's still snowing.
 
Talked with a good friend that just retired from the RR, he had the Cheyenne to western side run and it is winter west of Med.Bow he says. Lots of snow and winter kill will be an issue he fears.
 
Im sure itll be 100% fawn mortality like they claimed a few years ago. Was weird when i shed hunted i saw fawns with every group of does. If winter kill was as big of issue as they say and the winters in the passed were as bad as they say i would of thought deer would be extinct by now. Its almost like they live in it every year and are used to it or something.....strange. they need to quit blaming everything else and start looking at their management program
 
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This is what I have to go on when I don't get up there. These are shots today from some critical winter range. Doesn't look too bad in these areas. Star Valley definitely has more snow, but they always get more precipitation. The sun is shining, so that's good.
I love this drag and drop feature with the forums.

Sage Junction doesn't look horrible
US 30 Sage Junction - West


Kemmerer. That's a south facing slope with nothing but yellow grass. Hard to tell, but doesn't look too bad.
US 30 Kemmerer Port of Entry - East


Some burned off slopes at the Opal junction
US 30 Opal - West


Marbleton. Looks like a foot or so along that fence. The south facing slopes and windblown ridges shouldn't be bad at all.
US 189/WYO 351 Marbleton North - South
 
Alot more snow on the ground than what the pics show founder! Those burned off slopes in opal are nothing but dirt blown off from the wind. haven't seen a burnt off slope with feed on it for 2 months in sw wy! Dont believe me take a drive.
 
wytex said:
You can't mange winter.
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They can manage the practically unlimited number of general tags they give out in already struggling areas. That is poor management. They want to blame it on everything except using the declining deer heard for maintaining their revenue
 
hornkiller said:
Alot more snow on the ground than what the pics show founder! Those burned off slopes in opal are nothing but dirt blown off from the wind. haven't seen a burnt off slope with feed on it for 2 months in sw wy! Dont believe me take a drive.
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Well, that's not good. Hopefully the sun melts some snow then.
 
Farson through the Red Desert, across to Muddyngapnand all the way worthy grouch Baggs and arocknSprings has condition as bad as I Have seen it the last 15 years. Right on par with 07/08 it would say massive winter kills in these areas if things do not change soon. 3 Weeks ago the crust was so bad that at 280 pounds I could walk on top of 80 of snow.
 
I'd say we're on track to be an average winter, maybe a tick above across the entire winter range in Sublette. There still are deer that haven't migrated south of hwy 191 north of Daniel, WY, but this last little shot has got them moving. What we really need is for the snow to start coming off the first part of March. Last year, the snow lingered longer than it did in 16/17 and that didn't help. Wind storm this weekend finally cleared off some ridges that've been covered for 2 months.
 
blktljunkie said:
Anyone know how the SW corner down by Evanston is fairing I know it's been hit hard by the last few winters
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I drove through there today. The south facing slopes have some open feed. Lots of deer hanging out above the interstate. Only five dead ones between Evanston and Bridger Valley. Which is a stark contrast from last year.
 
Star Valley has way more snow than those other areas mentioned. I think we'll be ok as long as we don't get another major snow event or two. Deer look to be in decent condition with lots of fawns. Buck/doe ratios are high. Bucks are dropping earlier than usual for some reason. I usually take pictures til late Feb. Not this year! Pretty much done before February. I'm betting 80% had dropped by end of January. We've had lots of snow melting over the past week or so.
 
nontypical said:
Star Valley has way more snow than those other areas mentioned. I think we'll be ok as long as we don't get another major snow event or two. Deer look to be in decent condition with lots of fawns. Buck/doe ratios are high. Bucks are dropping earlier than usual for some reason. I usually take pictures til late Feb. Not this year! Pretty much done before February. I'm betting 80% had dropped by end of January. We've had lots of snow melting over the past week or so.
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That’s good. The weather hasn’t been too bad. I think deer will be fine, I’m hoping to have a tag and find a whopper to hunt and get him....maybe.
 
This was in the Green River WY news release today... It is not looking good for some areas at all.

Baggs Game Warden Kim Olson reports that the snow started in earnest in December and has continued. "Just to give you an idea, four inches on Jan. 27, three inches on Jan. 30, and five inches on Feb. 3 in Baggs," Olson said. "The pronghorn want out, but every way they go, the snow is too deep. Temperatures have been fairly mild, however. There is still some vegetation sticking above the snow in places, but it continues to slowly disappear." Cokeville Game Warden Neil Hymas reports winter set in seriously in the past week or two. "
 
elks96 said:
This was in the Green River WY news release today... It is not looking good for some areas at all.

Baggs Game Warden Kim Olson reports that the snow started in earnest in December and has continued. "Just to give you an idea, four inches on Jan. 27, three inches on Jan. 30, and five inches on Feb. 3 in Baggs," Olson said. "The pronghorn want out, but every way they go, the snow is too deep. Temperatures have been fairly mild, however. There is still some vegetation sticking above the snow in places, but it continues to slowly disappear." Cokeville Game Warden Neil Hymas reports winter set in seriously in the past week or two. "
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A total of 12”.? That doesn’t sound bad to me at all. Am I missing something?
 
Talked to my son tonight in Craig Co. Said they have 3-4 feet in most places. Had a little melting last week but temps plummeted and was -25 last night
 
NECALI said:
A total of 12”.? That doesn’t sound bad to me at all. Am I missing something?
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We already had 2-3 feet on most of it. I have hunted that area religiously for 15 plus years. The only year it was worse was in 07/08 and we know what that year did.

I feel the snow conditions this year are worse because the crust is so nasty, the antelope are trapped and 3 weeks ago some
Of the deer were bleeding on their front legs from the ice/crusted snow...
 
Not looking good for those Baggs area critters! Rock Springs area is rapidly melting and blowing away even with the cold temps. Looks like a slight warmup over the next couple of weeks with not much new snow. Fingers crossed...
We still have another month to get through...
 
A big stubborn high pressure area is stuck off the coast of California and Oregon. All those Alaska storms are forced inland and then down into your area.
We're shirt sleeve weather and way behind in our precipitation, like 40% of normal.
 
eelgrass said:
A big stubborn high pressure area is stuck off the coast of California and Oregon. All those Alaska storms are forced inland and then down into your area.
We're shirt sleeve weather and way behind in our precipitation, like 40% of normal.
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Where are you at?
 
Areas to the NE of Laramie have been snow covered for months, antelope are having a hard time in parts of the region but it bodes well for spring runoff .
 
Our antelope that did not migrate out here in Idaho are having a pretty tough time, and have taken to staying on the railroad tracks. Unfortunately, with the tracks comes trains. We killed 64 of them 3 weeks ago, and another 32 last week.
 
Antelope are starting to die in the Bates Hole area of central Wyoming. Herds effected are 32, 47 & 48.
 
jm , haven't been north of Bosler but I fear it's the same from there up towards Casper. Lots of snow cover along Highway 34 from the jct. to Morton Pass. 38 and 42 may have issues, been seeing more winterkill in 38 for sure on our side.
 
I live in Bellevue Idaho, were not that far from Star Valley and haven’t seen much snow in a month, the south central mountains are pretty much dry or maybe around 60% of normal persipetation.The desert is dry from Shoshone to the Utah Stateline. Thank God we are having a mild winter over here, we’ve had two bad winter kills in the last four years. The Idaho Farm, Fish and Game is the main reason the deer numbers are so low, this comes from there new strategy of oppurtunity hunting.
 
Talked to my rancher buddy from Big Piney a couple days ago. He tells me snow is covering most of the sagebrush. Maybe things aren't as good as earlier reported. G&F sent out a news release a few weeks ago and Gary Fralick( biologist) said things were looking good. Not so sure now..
 
I'm just slightly north of there. We've gotten very little snowfall over the last couple weeks. Sagebrush is still sticking through, barely. However, last week was just flat out brutally cold, 3-4 mornings in a row we were -20 to -30 in the creek bottoms and only warming up to low single digits. Since Saturday we've been warming up and the forecast is we will continue to over the next 10 days. Just another average winter.



nontypical said:
Talked to my rancher buddy from Big Piney a couple days ago. He tells me snow is covering most of the sagebrush. Maybe things aren't as good as earlier reported. G&F sent out a news release a few weeks ago and Gary Fralick( biologist) said things were looking good. Not so sure now..
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Snow is bad in Kemmerer this winter. We keep going from cold to warm so it melts a little then it snows again and back to extreme cold. Pretty tough for deer to get anything to eat with the layer of ice. I had a moose tag out in what would be region K last year and between scouting and hunting it was by far the worst I've ever seen the deer herd. Maybe I was just unlucky but with the amount of time I spent I don't think that was the case.
 
I just finished a trip through the western third of WY. Started here in Rock Springs, over to Rawlins, north to Casper, west to Riverton, back north to Thermopolis, up through Meteetsee to Cody back down to Lander, and home over south pass. There’s a lot of snow with a thick layer of glassy looking crust on top of it in most of those places. Doesn’t bode well for wintering wildlife.
 
From what I'm hearing it's a lot tougher winter than some of the posts above are reporting. There have been a few dry spells but there is fairly deep, crusty snow across most of Wyo.....and it's been pretty darn cold!
 
The winter ranges north of Big Piney I would say avg winter, everything south of Big Piney I would say above avg winter. The first good snowfall on the winter ranges was around the end of November which in my opinion makes a big difference when the deer can stay an extra month in some of those transitional zones and stay off the main winter ranges. I wouldn’t say it’s been a brutally cold winter, but there hasn’t been a lot of nicer days where it gets warm enough to do some melting. We have had some very high winds that has helped open up some ridges which has been good due to the lack of melting. The deer still look pretty good for the most part, a few of the fawns are starting to look a little scraggly. I think one thing that everyone is forgetting is that overall deer numbers are way down from some of these more recent bad winters, so there is less competition for what forage is available. If this wasn’t the case and deer numbers were higher I think there would be a lot more deer looking rough now and we would be looking at a bigger mortality. With that being said I hope they catch a break here in March, if that happens I don’t think the mortality will be to bad.
 
We went out into Lope unit 67/90 mule deer east of Riverton for the day. The conditions there looked really rough. My first winter in the area but what I saw: We found 7 dead antelope 2 dead mule deer. We saw a doe that was walking dead. Both ears had frostbite off and she was bag of bones, it looked like she had a couple others with her that had already passed in the hole where she was stuck, but I could not tell for sure. We found another group of antelope that were also stuck in belly deep snow, you could see where they had tried to go 3 different direction but could not get out of the drifts. Where they were there was no feed visible for a 1000 yards. If they did not get out soon most will die there... The snow was deep crusted and hard as a rock.

Just north in Lope unit 75/Deer 36 it was a totally different story. The ground was open. The deer looked healthy, the antelope moved around a lot and appeared to be in much better shape.

The next few days we are supposed to have warmer weather and south slopes are starting to melt some. But then again we have more snow coming as well....
 
Chesterwyo said:
That’s a good point, less deer on the landscape equates to more forage for the ones that there are.
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I wish more people would remember this simple fact. You potentially sacrifice tomorrow by having more today. On the other hand, if you have less today you are likely building an insurance policy for tomorrow. It's obviously more complex than that, but we often forget. There are a fixed (relatively) number of groceries on the table but the number of mouths showing up to eat can and does fluctuate wildly.

On another note, hope the Casper and further west units do alright. On the cusp of cashing in dad's points for Unit 34 deer and really enjoy hunting the 32, 73, 75 units for lopes.
 
I can say only one year have we seen so much snow along 34 from Bosler jct to Morton Pass.
Once over the pass it's a normal winter but the snow is deep and crusty on the west side .
 
Well from what I have recently noticed we have lost about a foot and a half or 2 feet of snow on the ground at my house. It has been very warm out. Hopefully the south facing slopes are showing bare ground on the winter range. It just feels like winters grip is letting up. All we can do is hope our favorite hunting grounds still have game.
 
I drove thru the Gunnison Colorado valley Sunday and was surprised at the lack of snow until almost the East end. Saw a few deer and lots of ice fishermen
 
Well, we have a blizzard warning for Thursday in SE Wyoming and into Nebraska.
Snow is melting but this storm could be a death sentence for some stressed animals.
I saw some hungry trout Sunday morning but had no rod with me, hoping the snow doesn't pan out and I can get to them by late weekend.
 
It hasn't snow a significant about in No Ut in a month, temps above average, all total around no Ut Id and WY are average.
 
Any updates on the weather situation? Over here in the Midwest spring is definitely here.

South West Wyoming got the break it needed, the last 10 or so days have seen temps hitting the 40’s and low 50’s the last few days. The snow is going fast on the winter ranges and has opened up some more feed for the animals. I still think most of the deer and antelope still look pretty good, I have seen a few with dull looking coats and are pretty scraggly looking. I talked to the G&F about a week ago and they had just went out and recovered the first two radio collared deer that had died and one was 13 year old doe...which can be expected. I think this warm up definitely saved a few animals, we will still loose a few but I don’t think it will be bad at least in the SW part of the state.
 
Spring is in the air. Hillsides are showing dirt. We may have seen the worst of winter. Will have to wait to see how many animals made it.
 
I'm guessing they did fine. I'm excited to get into the mountains this summer and look around.
 
Even during mild years there are these guys screaming "doomsday" and "if F&G doesn't do something then this is the end!" Crying wolf only makes people ignore the actual conditions when they are bad.
 
SE Wyoming came through well. The wind is a blessing and a curse. It kept the ridge tops open and the critters got through the worst of it. Winter is on the downhill and most areas are fine. The Shirleys got hit again and the area around Rawlins had it tough, too. I'm sure some antelope are gone there. And probably deer, too. but in the Laramie Range it is fine.
 
The east side vs west side of the Laramie range is night and day difference. There are localized areas that had it very rough.
 
ICMDEER and HiMtn both have it right in our area it seems. From Bosler Junction to Morton Pass I have not seen that much snow in 32 years or so. Get passed Morton Pass and it's another world. Not near the snow. I've never seen the machinery needed to keep 34 open like was used this winter.
Hope you have some good snow pack ICM !
 
That Thursday blizzard they predicted wasn't much. We got an inch or two of snow and the wind wasn't even as bad as predicted. They call that are between Morton Pass and Bosler little Siberia for a reason. The antelope there used to all migrate east over into the draws with enough wind protection and topography to help them through tough winters. Back in the 70's and early 80's there were some tough ones, and that was before they re-did the highway. The road was terrible then.

But things have really opened up the last month or so. We have green grass that's 3-4" tall at home now. The deer are chasing it. I saw 85 deer on the way to work last Wednesday. A couple of old does and some fawns look scraggly, but the rest are in good shape. I walked a fair part of the river 8 days ago. Did not find a single dead deer. Which with CWD is a little amazing.

Over in our country, things seem fine. Over at Elk Mountain, the wind was bad there - as usual. But it opened the ridges between I-80 and Highway 30. Most of the deer where we hunt winter there. I looked a week a go Saturday and they looked pretty good. Antelope there are down in general, but seemed OK. The elk are bulletproof.

I looked Friday and we had a 120% of normal snowpack. Plenty of water for irrigation. I'm just hoping for no flooding because we live on the lower Laramie River and it can really wreak havoc for us when it floods.

Best of luck to all for 2020.
 
According to all the doe/fawn antelope tags that were slashed this year, either there was a bad winter or the eagles and coyotes were extra hungry.

Or is the G&F screaming "doomsday"?:LOL:
 
jm77 said:
According to all the doe/fawn antelope tags that were slashed this year, either there was a bad winter or the eagles and coyotes were extra hungry.

Or is the G&F screaming "doomsday"?:LOL:
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Are permit numbers available?
 

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