BigGameHunt.net Hunting Forums

[Hiker]

Alamosa, Thankfully, Whitetails haven't moved all the way across Colorado yet. They have been west of Fort Collins for a while now and followed the Arkansas river west but other then that they're pretty rare in the mountains. In Montana and Wyoming they have really moved in. It seems that muleys and whitetails can stay in they same general area and do OK for a while but over time the whitetails seem to take over. That is one of the reasons that CO, WY & MT are having special whitetail seasons. Most of the areas in MT & WY will let you shoot either sex WT but only Muley bucks, if any Muleys at all.

[bitmasher]

Alamosa wrote: I have never heard whether or not there is sound biology to support this theory.

I thought I had read some studies that showed whitetails will breed out mule deer, because the mule deer bucks are not as agressive as the whitetail during the rut.

[Hiker]

Bitmasher, I had a game warden tell me something like that. She did a study on WT & Muley cross breeding and almost every case, it was the WT buck that stayed on the Muley doe until she finally gave in.

[hardhunter]

if the no. is down then why is Co. leting out so many tags?
i am hunting unit 4 2cd season elk and the last i check there
was still over 1000 doe & 500 buck leftover tags.
guys i have talked to say the deer are thick in this area.

[swollen tongue]

because that area is basically a migration route for the deer. sometimes they are there and sometimes not, and are on private property. so they issue a good quanity of licenses to thin them out if you are there at the right time.

[AustinCo]

GMU 4 also has some CWD issues. I hunt quite a bit in GMU 15 and for the last 3 years since CWD was found in the area the DOW has been very liberal with tags. This year infact you could get two additional tags in that unit including one buck and one doe. Seems like the DOW is trying to stay ahead of CWD by thinning out the deer herd around areas that have it bad? In areas like GMU 54 they gave out more tags this year but total for the three last seasons were about 700. In some areas like just south of GMU 54 in 67 they are only giving out 90 deer tags for all the seasons.

I spend about 200 days a year in the field working and I think the declining population problem is predator driven. I have seen more single fawns this summer then ever before. I was working a private piece of ground this summer and saw three yotes working one doe and two fawns. One yote would work the doe while the other two would go after the fawns. By the time it was all said and done neither of the fawns survived. The owner of the property was anti hunting so there was little I could do to intervein whichh really bummed me out.

yotes are not the only problem. Bears are getting their share also and ever since the bleeding heart voters of CO banned the use of baits and banned spring bear hunting their numbers have increased. GRRR I hate when wildlife management is left to folks that don't know about or don't understand whats best for our critters (AKA voters that get all their information from a campain ad on TV while watching "Reality Show's". :](*,)

[Don Fischer]

I read recently where the decline of elk in Oregons Blue Mts. is being blamed on the mountain lions and bears. Then talking to a local rancher last week, he blames the loss of deer on lions and coyotes. I'm sure preditors take a share of them but am still inclined to believe that the problems are inbreeding and loss of habitate. Loss of habitat in there are to many and they are eating themselves out of house and home. Here anyway. Just 7 or 8 yrs ago it was nothing to go out and see several hundred deer and antelope anytime you wanted. That doesn't happen anymore in fact I haven't seen but a few antelope all year here.

There are no more lions being taken out now and no less than back then and lions have a very large home range anyway, they are not supposed to be good neighbors even to each other. And we've always had a lot of coyotes here. They simply can't eat that many deer! So I really think that inbreeding and overgrazing on their part due to overpopulation is whats happening. Inbred deer with low food supplies.

We should probally be shooting more does, or should have in years past. Instead, the deer have been managed as a resourse to create revenue for the state. What isn't controlled is the breeding and the food. That would be hard to do but we could control the gender. In the meantime, the coyotes and lions will continue to cull out the weak and injured. What percentage of the fawn crop dies from scours? I don't think we know. Those dead fawns get ate by preditors. Thats a pretty sure thing because we see them chewing on dead animals. Then we give them the credit for killing them; sometimes they probally do.

In those years with high deer numbers we probally should have been killing many more deer than we did rather than trying to preserve most of the does for breeding.

[FNDH]

bitmasher wrote: I'm disturbed at the decline in the muley population. I have read several articles in the rocky mountain section that suggest the muley herd is falling across the western states.

Anybody read why this is? Predation? Most of what I have read suggests that they don't really know why the herd is decreasing in size.

Listen to this online radio show with Jerry Claborn of the Nevada State Assembly as a guest. The radio show host and Claborn discuss Nevada's mule deer decline.

http://www.nevadadeerherd.com
The link for the radio show stream is at the bottom of the page.

[RidgeRunner_07]

I havent really seen any decline in the pouplation here in Washington...but I have seen a serious growth....in 2000 I hunted non-stop for a muley and seen only 10 does and a spike....I ended up taking a White-tail doe....2001 was a short season with me taking a white-tail in the first 3o mins as well as 2002 another white-tail in the first 45 mins....then in 03 a 2x4 muley on the second day of season...then back to whitel-tails since then...but in 2003 we had over 250 head of mule in a winter wheat feild just gourgeing themselves. Out of those deer there was only 13 bucks....mine was the only legal one in the heard (3 point minimum). ....the rest being spikes and forked horns....we used to had a ton of deer that year then the following summer we had a fire that forced the deer into one drainage....then the next summer that drainage burnt out in another fire....now we have very few deer....white-tails and mulies alike are slim on the totem pole....... :cry:

[FNDH]

RidgeRunner_07 wrote: I havent really seen any decline in the pouplation here in Washington...but I have seen a serious growth....in 2000 I hunted non-stop for a muley and seen only 10 does and a spike....I ended up taking a White-tail doe....2001 was a short season with me taking a white-tail in the first 3o mins as well as 2002 another white-tail in the first 45 mins....then in 03 a 2x4 muley on the second day of season...then back to whitel-tails since then...but in 2003 we had over 250 head of mule in a winter wheat feild just gourgeing themselves. Out of those deer there was only 13 bucks....mine was the only legal one in the heard (3 point minimum). ....the rest being spikes and forked horns....we used to had a ton of deer that year then the following summer we had a fire that forced the deer into one drainage....then the next summer that drainage burnt out in another fire....now we have very few deer....white-tails and mulies alike are slim on the totem pole....... :cry:

What part of Washington is Chewelah located. The fires seem like thet did a number on the herd. Once it grows back it should be good habitat.