Deer Hunting | What Idaho Mule Deer Hunters Really Want

7 Responses to “What Idaho Mule Deer Hunters Really Want”

1. Clair Semrad on October 20th, 2007 3:36 pm

   I am in unit 73 in idaho. I and many others in the state of Idaho are questioning the intents of idaho and fish and game. When you talk to the hunters of the years from around the 1980′s and back into the past, you will hear of countless stories of the large bucks taken and the population being very high. Why is it not the same? I dont understand how allowing thousands of out of state hunters to come into the state to hunt is going to improve deer quality and population. The only reason for that is money. If it was not about the money and actually about helping the deer population we would see limitations put on out of state tags. Another question comes to mind when thousands of not mature deer are being taken because of this four-point and bigger deer regulation came out. Especially how early the season is, we dont get a chance to see the older bucks that need to be harvested because of health and age that may not be able to make it through the winter. Heres a hint Fish and Game- Move the season back to the 1st week of November where older and more mature deer will be taken which provides better management. Make it a draw hunt and put a limit on out of state tags and you will see the deer population come back along with large bucks which provides better genes.

2. Don on October 21st, 2007 7:26 pm

   Clair, thanks for stopping by and giving us some insight into mule deer hunting in Idaho.

   I don’t live in Idaho, but I’ve seen other state’s increase out-of-state tags just for the reason you stated. Money.

   It does seem odd that the state would not reduce the out-of-state tags if their primary concern was Mule Deer herd management.

   Don

3. Mule Deer Fanatic on May 13th, 2008 11:06 pm

   Clair,

   Idaho used to manage predators for people. Now they manage people for predators. There aren’t enough deer to go around, so now you are attacking out-of-state hunters. The percentage of out-of-state hunters has gone down because the mule deer hunting in Idaho is so pathetic. Yes, out-of-staters generate a lot of revenue which helps keep your cost lower, that is if your agency is the responsible type – and I’m not sure they are. Most agencies will spend whatever they get in some fairly irresponsible ways. The great state of Idaho, doesn’t really want more deer. For one thing, they hate depredation payments. Besides, deer hunters are a pain in the butt. You can cut hunters and limit tags all you want – cut it to zero, and it still will not bring the deer back until the predator problem is dealt with in a severe manner.

   Mule Deer Fanatic
   http://www.muledeerfantic.com

4. Hunting Mule Deer in Idaho | Mule Deer Fanatic on May 14th, 2008 11:05 am

   [...] cannot take credit for discovering this survey on my own. It was brought to my attention by Don of Buckhuntersblog. Here is the link to an Idaho Mule Deer hunter survey –> CLICK HERE. Share and Enjoy: [...]

5. Johnny on May 15th, 2008 3:01 pm

   Cair, I am an out of state hunt and I am from Alabama. I love being able to come and enjoy hunting with my father and father- in-law. I hunt in unit 74 and in the last 2 years I have seen more big bucks than I have seen in the 5 years I have been coming so all I can say is you need to pay more attention to your poachers than your out of state hunters because not all out of state hunters are bad. Three years ago we helped prosecute three night hunters that were just shooting deer and leaving them laying. If you get this mesage please E-mail me at johnnyminor2000@yahoo.com

6. Shayne Saucier on March 24th, 2009 4:18 pm

   I looking for a BOW hunting trip for mule deer this year in Idaho. Does anyone have and recommendations?

7. TJ Elsbury on July 13th, 2010 4:24 pm

   Poor management by the iDAHO fish and game dept.is esponsible for Idaho’s derth of mule deer.
   Read the following accounts — they depict how long Idaho hasbeen selling their mule deer to enrich the states fish and game dept.

   1992/93 Southeast Idaho killer winter: fact or P.D.C.?
   The Idaho Fish & Game Department’s Southeast Region Mule Deer Trend Area Surveys biologist’s listed the combined Elkhorn and Malad Face deer populations at 5,691 in 1993 and 1,492 in ‘94. Wildlife Biologists Paul Wackerhot, of the department of fish & game’s Pocatello office said, “Those herds at that time were only being monitored by infrequent post hunt surveys. Therefore we did not discover the missing deer [that allegedly disappeared during the winter of ‘92/93] until the late fall survey in ‘94.”
   At first look, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) data seemed to support Wackerhot’s contentions: Malad’s temperature from the first of November of ‘92 through March of ‘93 only averaged 24.96 degrees Fahrenheit. January’s 18.5 and February’s 19.1 averages made them that winter’s coldest months. But, a similar five-month average temperature for 1983/84 was 23.68 degrees, with January and February’s averages respectively bottoming out at 15.5 and 15.9 degrees; and the 84/85 winter at 21.74 with its January averaging 13.4 and February 14.6 was significantly colder; and even the 88/89 winter at .06 degrees warmer virtually tied with the 92/93 one. Also, common sense and the DFG’s harvest records dictate that Area: 73 contained far larger deer populations during those winters than it did at the beginning of the 92/93 one, yet the Pocatello F&G biologists did not mention any winterkill associated with them.
   In that regard, the ‘93 harvest was preceded by many years of either-sex hunts, of which at least two of the more recent ones offered multiple doe tags and November closing dates that overlapped parts of the rut.
   The department, by belatedly connecting the state’s southeast’s deer decline to a–by then—well-substantiated 92/93 Wyoming winterkill avoided what could have, at best, been a tacky public relation problem. For example, Riverton and Pinedale Wyoming’s 92/93 similar five-month average temperatures respectively were 17.7 and 14.44 degrees. And, more in cadence with their biologist’s hypothesis, 83/84 averaged 19.8 and 21.5, degrees, 84/85 24.65, and 21.46, 88/89 22.19 and 20.85. Winter precipitation that mostly comes in the form of snow in Wyoming, also strongly supports the 92/93 winter kill hypothesis—something that can not be said for Malad’s: Riverton and Pinedale respectively averaged 31% and 13% less during the three other winters.
   Thus, rather than a similar winter kill in Southeast Idaho in 92/93, plainly the well ran dry after the DFG repeatedly bailed out more water then was flowing into it. More explicitly, hunters harvested 6,212 does from Unit 73 and a total of 26,464 from Southeast Idaho during the five-year period between ‘88 and ‘92. Add in the does that were wounded and not recovered and the ones that weren’t tagged (acknowledged), and even those large numbers would significantly pale. And the two previous five-year periods had a known female harvests of 9,165, and 6,865. That type of a management regime—especially when the Idaho DFG issued double doe tags in ‘89 and ‘90– is strongly indicative of biologists that assumed the well had a much faster recharging rate. Adding substance to the mismanagement theory, Units: 73’s harvest during the hunt that preceded the alleged winter kill fell to 99l males and 385 females from an all time high of 2,914 and 2,627 in 1989. Nevertheless the department opted for additional doe hunt in ‘93 (Idaho DFG).
   Male fawns at times can comprise upwards of 30% of antlerless harvests, and states normally include them in their antlerless data. However the Southeast harvest data indicates that Idaho biologists recorded the fawn take according to sex, which to the average hunter gave the appearance of a more robust deer population. A good example of which is the 1989 southeast male harvest of 12,618, (2,914 in Unit: 73 alone) and female harvest of 7,899 (2,627 in Unit: 73) from a Game management zone that as a rule produced about five thousand antlered bucks. The deer season that year in Unit: 73 ran from Oct. 19th to Nov. 6th giving hunters a chance to match wits with less wary opponents. Also, It snowed extensively in late October in the high country of Southeast Idaho on at least four days that season: Malad City’s low dipped to 24 on 20th, 37 on the 22, 34 on the 26, and 26 on the 28th with measurable precipitation on each of those days.
   Giving stark testimony to the storms severity and potential to trigger an early deer migration throughout Southeast Idaho during this period, Soda Springs Airport received 1.80 inches, Montpelier Ranger Station 1.17 inches, Swan Valley 1.87, and the Tetonia experiment Station 1.91 inches, while lows in the region dipped to seven degrees at Soda Springs Airport, and eight degrees at Swan-Valley.
   As for the area’s continual poor performance since the debacle: once a herd falls below its flash point (the point at which exponential growth can take place because fawn numbers—not ratios–exceed natural attrition), the population can continue to flounder for years. To validate the former, one only has to recall how long it took to reestablish whitetail deer in much of the East, and their reproductive capability far exceeds that of mule deer. Also, they—unlike Idaho’s southeast muleys–did not have mountain Lions, wolves, bears, and coyotes preying on them.
   If Idaho F&G Assistant Director Terry Mansfield, Wildlife Biologists Cory Class and Wackerhot are serious about removing the bottleneck that keeps the area’s deer herds from expanding, they will have to first rein in the department propensity to generate revenue by selling antlerless tags and setting late buck hunts: late seasons create more interest in buck-tags as hunters—to a great part–are aware that sexually active males lose their natural wariness, and are far easier to tag.
   Unfortunately the Idaho DFG’s biologists, seemingly not capable of learning from the past, have adjusted much of the Southeast’s closings dates during 2005, 2006, and 2007–so that its general buck hunts closed on October 31 instead of October 25. In that regard, Mansfield for many yeas had been one of the main architects of late buck and antlerless hunts in California before accepting his position with the Idaho department.

   Recent snafu of the department again looking for more revenue by overseling tags

   Deer hunter’s dream in the late nineties; their worse nightmare in 2008

   When asked in September of ‘08 what caused the deer herds in areas 43 and 39 to practically drop off the radar screen over the previous ten years Bradley B. Compton, of the Idaho department of game management, said, “We have had three bad winters, years of drought conditions, and some over shooting.” Then when asked if wolves played any part in the sharp decline he replied, “Wolves haven’t been a problem they’re further north.”
   Antlerless tags beginning with near 1200 a year in the late nineties, to 750 for a half dozen or so years, to 250 in ‘08 in area 43, and from over 2000 to 1200 in area 39; and an increase in the buck season from ending on October 25 to October 31could far better explain the overshooting referred to by Compton. Precipitation at the Boise Airport’s metrology weather station (many of these deer winter in the foothills north and west of Boise) that respectively averaged 10.68 and 11.25 inches during the ten year periods of ‘98/07 and ‘88/97; the mean average winter temperatures of 33.99 and 32.41 degrees, and mean average spring temperatures of 51.98 and 51.34 degrees doesn’t explain the others.
   Further calling into question Compton’s explanation, the average mean temperature of the three coldest winters during the two periods was 26.8 degrees for the earlier one and 33.7 degrees for the later one.
   On January six of ‘09 Compton, when questioned about the apparent increase of whitetails wintering in the Garden Valley area since 2000 verses its perceptible decline of mule deer, said, “The main problem in Garden Valley is the increase in its human population. Mule deer don’t tolerate humans and whitetails do.” To substantiate his remarks he then referenced whitetail deer residing inside Eastern cities while inferring that their big eared cousins as a rule shy away from such behavior.
   As whitetail and mule deer bucks in Garden Valley have identical hunting seasons, it would appear–if Compton’s analogy is correct–whitetails are simply filling a nitch that was voluntarily vacated by mule deer. Whitetail buck’s percentage of the harvest went from an average of 4.5% in 2000 and ’01–to an average of 6% in 02/03–to 9.5% in 04/05–to 14% in 06/07. If it is wrong they moved into a nitch that was provide by the over-harvesting of the mule deer. Facilitating the increase in whitetails is the fact that they (a close cover animal) are far harder to bag than mule deer (a open country species)—especially during their pre-rutting and rutting cycles.
   As a mule deer hunter who for the last fifty years has hunted and hiked a considerable part of North America’s mule deer habitat, and have observed them residing in numerous of its cities and towns, I found his contentions that they do not tolerate humans miss-guided at best. Beginning in the northern part of their range 70 kilometers west of Edmonton at the Highvale coal mine I found numerous semi-tame muleys despite workers continuously coming and going, The provinces’ eastern city of Medicine Hat is also home to many mule deer. They also flourish at the golf course and housing development south and west of Badium Hot Springs in British Columbia. Further south when heading for Washington and my truck broke down late on a Friday afternoon I was forced to spend the weekend waiting on parts in either Kimbereley, Cranbrook, or another nearby town that was situated a short distance to the west of the highway. When complaining about having nothing to do ( I was in Canada backpacking the Rocky Mountains and photographing its wildlife), the congenial mechanic mentioned the hamlet’s large population of mule deer, one of which he said went well over three hundred pounds. It took two days to track him down, but in the process–aside from seeing dozens of other deer–I made the acquaintance of many of the town’s residents. When commenting on the animals lack of fear, they often pointed out the browse lines on their fruit trees saying, that unlike the other deer once he started feeding on them it was nearly impossible to change his mind until he was ready to leave on his own accord..

   Possibly one of the most photographed British Columbia bucks of all time.
   Next because these cities should be well known to Compton, there is the Northern Washington’s town of Rebublic–when after reading of its large population of trophy bucks in the Lewiston paper I specifically went there to photograph them. Again the big eared deer were everywhere and displayed no fear. Further south and east there are numerous mule deer in Lewiston itself. Also there is a golf course surrounded by houses in McCall that boasts a large population of them. Bucks there have been known to sport antlers of such dimensions that they keep the local game wardens busy matching wits with disgusted public land hunters who can’t resist the urge to shoot them. I’ve even seen mule deer strolling through Mt. Home during the summer: a town that is located in the desert far from any mountain habitat and a little over a half hour’s drive from his office.
   Further east in Montana I have seen them in almost every neighborhood of Bozeman and Helena. In Colorado I found them numerous–especially in the western suburbs of Bolder, Denver, and Colorado Springs and nearly in all of Buena Vista. On my trips to the latter city while training in the nearby Cotton Wood Pass area for the Pikes Peak Marathon in 2006, I saw more deer than I saw in the mountains. One day while looking for books to buy in the city’s library–to while away my down time when not training–I glanced out a window and saw four of the species intent on browsing the shrubbery in the narrow strip of land between the library and the busy street. The library is located almost dead center of the town. One day I did a doe fawn count within a few blocks of the library and tabulated 11 fawns and 13 does a far greater ratio of fawns to does than I saw in any area of Colorado’s wild country that summer.
   California has so many communities and heavily used recreation sites that contain mule deer, partly on account of the state’s over-population of mountain lions, that it would take a page to list just the ones I know of: a few of which are Weaverville, Paradise, Auburn, the world famous Pebble Beach golf course, and Lake Shasta: there in-place of ants inviting themselves, picnickers on its remote shorelines are more likely to see mule deer looking for a handout. Carl Rounds a resident of a gated community on the outskirts of Auburn informed me that the does there are so un-fearful of humans they birth on the lawns of its homes.
   Beyond that, when camped in wilderness settings I have had mule deer walk into my camp sites and make pests out of themselves. One evening in Utah’s Bear Valley about an hour before dark a full grown doe walked to within five or six feet of my campfire. It soon become apparent she was begging for a handout as she would lightly tap me with her front leg as I was eating. I made a mistake and fed her several slices of bread. After retiring into my tent she repeatedly wandered back during the night to kick on its sides for more food.
   On a July bighorn sheep and deer scouting trip to the Southern California San Gorgornio wilderness a small three pointer walked right into a wilderness campground were three other hikers and I were setting up our tents to spend the night. He would not let us touch him but inspected (sniffed) nearly everything we had brought before casually walking to the North-fork of Whitewater to drink
   The black-tails of the Trinity Alps were beyond a doubt the friendliest wild deer I ever encountered. Obviously they had been fed by innumerous hikers. I camped at a partially frozen 8,000 feet lake for three days and around a dozen of them were my constant companion. Every time I went fishing I had to stow all my food and camping gear in a nearby tree to keep them from pawing through it.
   The above are the hard facts, what follows is a personal account which are always dismissed by deer biologists as pure conjecture by untrained neophytes: an argument that has lost some of its punch as I now possess a degree in wildlife biology. In the summer of 2000 I scouted dozens of Southern Idaho mule deer zones looking for an area to hunt in the fall. I had very little luck until stumbling on area-43 after scouting area 39 that according to numerous deer sightings and sign held the most promise up until that time. Nevertheless, I was put off on planning to hunt it because of its numerous forestry roads and old campsites.
   The following day when driving through Area-43 in the breaking dawn I was impressed by not only the number of deer I observed but by the deer trails that resembled hiking trails–coming off every embankment–as they were worn that deep. Luckily after spotting several deer disappearing down a road that veered off to the left of the one I was traveling on I found its gate was not closed. It led to the base of Deer Mountain that is located on the southern end of a broad expanse of road-less country. Scouting on foot the next morning I saw well over 100 does and fawns and more than a dozen bucks. The deer were in herds of four or five to as many as 23 with a sprinkling of young bucks embedded in them. And before the sun cleared the eastern horizon I spotted three older bucks entering a large patch of timber
   Contrast that with what I saw there when scouting on Labor Day weekend in ‘08: a single doe and fawn in three days. More disturbing the weather was cooler and I covered six to seven times the ground I trod the summer of 2000. Back then on the opening weekend of the season my hunting partner Kaz Kazimir and I saw five bucks and literally scores of does and fawns. We would have seen more except the area was swamped with doe hunters and the sounds of rifles going off endlessly echoed from ridge to ridge driving the majority of the deer, early on the first day, into the thickest refuges they could find. Nevertheless we tagged two bucks in two days. Driving out of the area we observed that nearly all the camps had at least two or three does and an occasional buck hanging from their meat poles.
   My knowledge of what took place in these areas is not solely based on the former. In 2007 I scouted Area-43 the day before the opener, hunted the first two days, and one late in the season seeing a yearling buck and eight antlerless deer . After each hunt when headed home I observed that most of the camp’s meat-poles were empty or at best held a single doe. I also hunted area -39 with Jim Boyce that year seeing zero deer, very few tracks, and seven elk. Going through the check station there were two small bucks being evaluated by its personnel.
   When scouting the winter range that terminates at Boise’s city northern boundary on Dec 26th 2000 I counted 751 antlerless and 23 bucks, in ‘07 46 antlerless and two spikes on the corresponding day, and 84 total (bucks had shed their antlers by then) in February ‘08, which was the highest count for the five surveys I made in the area that winter.
   Several days after a significant snow event on December 17th of ’08 I surveyed the exact area I did in 2000 and did not see a single deer, on December 23rd I saw a doe and a fawn, and on Dec. 26th with a considerably deeper snow cover and surveying more than double the area looked over in 2000 I counted 42 antlerless and one spike. On January 4th of 09 I surveyed the Garden Valley wintering range and tabulated seven mule deer and 15 whitetails—in 2000 on the evening of December the 26th I saw nearly two hundred mule deer and a single whitetail in a little over an hour when making a quick pass through it on the way back to Moscow. In 2000 the area’ snow cover was deeper, but in 2008 the Boise wintering grounds contained more snow than it did in 2000.
   In 2008 I hunted a total of eleven days in areas 39, 43, and North of Loman to within 23 miles of Stanley seeing zero deer, zero dead ones hanging in camps and zero in the back of pickup trucks!
   In summing up what caused the precipitous decline of deer in these areas I will defer to Warren Page who in 1967 when writing about a similar decline of Colorado and Utah mule deer said, ““Western States are forced into a big and growing license sales business because that’s their chief or only source of funds.
   A more blunt way of summing up what Page was saying, is that since well before ‘67 our game managers including Idaho’s have put collecting deer tag revenue ahead of the welfare of the West’s mule deer. The deer herds in theses areas currently are in terrible shape from over-hunting. In my professional opinion all antlerless hunts should be indefinitely suspended and at the very least the buck hunt should be terminated ten-days sooner. For that matter stopping the buck hunts all together for a couple of years would facilitate a faster recovery.
   In 2007 I presented the same argument to the DFG, but they ignored it and Issued over 1400 antlerless tags for Area 39 and 43.

   Recent Idaho, Colorado and New Mexico collaboration study (Looking for a scrape-goat to blame the decline on to get themselves off the hook thetreedepartments come up with the following)

   According to researchers for the Idaho F&G, the Colorado game department, and Santa Fe Trail Mule Deer adaptive Management (STAMPS) habitat degradation is now identified with stagnated or declining herds and what previously was referred to as the mysterious decline of the sixties. Predation, competition from elk, or even the here to for rarely mentioned option of poor management–were not listed as being significant factors. Misguided as it may be, their isolating of a single cause compared to the recently in vogue shotgun approach is nevertheless a step in the right direction. But while selecting the correct end affect (late born fawns ); they completely missed the target with their theory on causation.
   STAMP’s Dr Lou Bender’s quote, “that we are never going to get back to the populations levels people remember from the ‘50s,” is reminiscent of one Wisconsin biologists made in 1956 in Technical Wildlife Bulletin Number 14 and a book titled The Whitetail Deer in Wisconsin. The essence of which because of the also then theory of habitat degradation went, “Never again will Wisconsin hunters harvest as many whitetail deer as they did in the late thirties and forties.”
   In the three years of 1945/46/47 Wisconsin’s hunters harvested roughly 150,000 antlered bucks. Thereafter doomsday biologists including Leopold where predicting the destruction of the states deer habitat if doe hunts where not immediately instituted (Deer irruptions). Hence in the three years following 1949/50/51, when hunters killed a minimum of 200,000 antlerless deer an average of only 24,008 bucks were harvested. Leopold was the Chair of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Game Management in the forties; thus, I venture his influences on the decision to hold three consecutive years of antlerless hunts was second to none.
   Despite a steadily maturing forest and an ever expanding human population in the last 56 years, Wisconsin’s deer have found enough nutrition to support harvests of over 116,000 in 1966, 169,000 in 1978, 213,000 in 1982, 300,000 in 1988, 450,000 in 1995, and in recent years 500,000 and 640,000.
   So why do mule deer biologists continue to flog Leopold’s long dead horse? For starters rationalize what these professionals are asking us to believe. If the problem was primarily habitat related that would mean that in all the areas were muley numbers have been sharply reduced, a likewise percentage of habitat degradation also had to occur. For example, many ecosystems throughout the West have had their muley populations reduced by far more than half. On that broad of a scale I for one don’t see anywhere near that kind of change in the West’s mule deer habitat, and I began hunting them in Wyoming in 1956 and in Colorado and California in 1957.
   Or for that matter what proof is there that the West’s muleys had reached their maximum ceiling any more than Leopold’s Wisconsin whitetails had at that time? I saw no signs of depleted habitat in Wyoming in ‘56, nor Colorado and California in ‘57, and the five bucks and one doe I bagged on those three hunts were all prime–as were those I saw hanging in nearly every camp.
   Why don’t western biologists ever consider the possibility that the decline was not activated by overpopulation, but from an altogether different bottleneck? Their secondary culprit, late born fawns—that they attribute to poor production of nutrients–certainly speaks of it.
   Also, what does nutrition have to do with a doe not conceiving until their second or third estrus cycle? Are these biologists implying that muley’ does at the end of December have more fat than they do at the end of November? If so, that’s a stretch that not only reputes their poor nutrition theory, but also defies logic considering that by then hunters and frisky bucks have been running them ragged for weeks.
   Any wildlife biologist–including this one—worth their salt know that the first estrus cycle in mule deer is directly related to when fawns in individual ecosystems have the best chance of survival, and not to the amount of fat on individual females when copulating. These biologists, by their poorly thought out hypothesis, are—in fact–implying that irreversible (changing the timing of fawning) evolution is occurring. And not from the continuation of genetic lines that have found a more favorable niche, but from ones that they themselves admit can not be sustained (except under artificial conditions) because said fawns are doomed to die in greater numbers than early born ones.
   On top of that, many reliable studies have shown that excessive hunting pressure and/or shortages of herd-sires has the potential to manipulate the timing of conception–whereas does often don’t get pregnant till the second or even third estrus cycle. And more to the point, its re-occurrence in following years is not grounded in evolution.

   Sumitted by TJ Elsbury

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