Montana Mule Deer Mismanagement

[rogerthat]

Rather than pollute the MT B&c mule deer thread, I thought I would start a new one.

So at a recent meet and greet held in Miles City mule deer management was brought up. The fwp career staff and biologists made statements that just shut my ability to have an open mind down such as “We are knocking it out of the park in regards to mule deer management”, “we had record counts with great age structure and many mature bucks in the counts in prairie county”, “the big bucks are out there for people that want to put the work in to get them”, “our counts are better than any limited entry unit in the west including utah, better than the Henry Mountains”.

Now from the way the dept is being run under worsech with the fwp local staff input being completely ignored especially regarding elk, I want and have tried to support the local career employees but when they come and make statements like that, that are complete 180 degrees from my 40 years of anecdotal experience as well as many others I know and greatly respect that spend as much or more time than I do watching mule deer, I have to ask:

1) what am I missing or what are they missing, that we can be so polar opposite in regards to the current management and state of the mule deer herd?(elk we are on the same page)
2) if a career employee is so far off(I would strongly suggest they are) why should we the public support them on other issues?

I have got to say this one has always baffled me. It’s like a bio works for fwp and all of a sudden they have drank the koolaid and unwilling to consider the impacts our season structure has on the herd. It would be refreshing if they were just honest about it. Say for example “with our season structure very few bucks make it past age 3. Our counts and buck to die ratio however are still healthy”. Those arguably might be more defenseable statements. Fire away. Someone explain to me where I am erring. Thanks

 

[Eric Albus]

You are correct…winner winner, mule deer fork horn dinner.

 

[DFS]

I’m not sure how it could be defended. Season structure could be changed and the same or similar opportunity could be provided. It’s criminal what we are doing to our mule deer herd.

 

[SAJ-99]

Rather than pollute the MT B&c mule deer thread, I thought I would start a new one.

So at a recent meet and greet held in Miles City mule deer management was brought up. The fwp career staff and biologists made statements that just shut my ability to have an open mind down such as “We are knocking it out of the park in regards to mule deer management”, “we had record counts with great age structure and many mature bucks in the counts in prairie county”, “the big bucks are out there for people that want to put the work in to get them”, “our counts are better than any limited entry unit in the west including utah, better than the Henry Mountains”.

Now from the way the dept is being run under worsech with the fwp local staff input being completely ignored especially regarding elk, I want and have tried to support the local career employees but when they come and make statements like that, that are complete 180 degrees from my 40 years of anecdotal experience as well as many others I know and greatly respect that spend as much or more time than I do watching mule deer, I have to ask:

1) what am I missing or what are they missing, that we can be so polar opposite in regards to the current management and state of the mule deer herd?(elk we are on the same page)
2) if a career employee is so far off(I would strongly suggest they are) why should we the public support them on other issues?

I have got to say this one has always baffled me. It’s like a bio works for fwp and all of a sudden they have drank the koolaid and unwilling to consider the impacts our season structure has on the herd. It would be refreshing if they were just honest about it. Say for example “with our season structure very few bucks make it past age 3. Our counts and buck to die ratio however are still healthy”. Those arguably might be more defenseable statements. Fire away. Someone explain to me where I am erring. Thanks

Ask for the data. You can’t argue data without the data. All you’re going to get here is various anecdotal observations. Even if they are similar observations, it isn’t great data. I don’t know the answer on age structure, but if someone in FWP says it’s good, I would ask for the data. I doubt a mule deer getting to 5.5yrs is maybe 3% odds. But just a guess.

 

[huntin24/7]

Ask for the data. You can’t argue data without the data. All you’re going to get here is various anecdotal observations. Even if they are similar observations, it isn’t great data. I don’t know the answer on age structure, but if someone in FWP says it’s good, I would ask for the data. I doubt a mule deer getting to 5.5yrs is maybe 3% odds. But just a guess.

I would have to see proof in order to believe that 1% of mule deer bucks in eastern MT, excluding large contiguous stretches of private land with limited hunting, are 5.5+ years old. Maybe with some older bucks with terrible genetics mixed in to skew the odds I guess.

 

[rogerthat]

Ask for the data. You can’t argue data without the data. All you’re going to get here is various anecdotal observations. Even if they are similar observations, it isn’t great data. I don’t know the answer on age structure, but if someone in FWP says it’s good, I would ask for the data. I doubt a mule deer getting to 5.5yrs is maybe 3% odds. But just a guess.

I don’t need to see their data to know they are out to lunch on age class however the counts I may ask for. I just spent 10 days on public lands I have hunted for 20 years. Numbers are abysmal. Where we used to see 50 deer, you see 5 now but you can still smoke a doe. It’s crazy. It’s like watching someone die, meanwhile the doctor tells the patient go home and take an ibuprofen you are ridiculously healthy.

 

[Flatbrimmer]

Pick a new spot? Lol

 

[BuzzH]

Pick a new spot? Lol

That worked 10-15 years ago, not anymore.

 

[The Hedgehog]

Pick a new spot? Lol

Has that worked for you? Lol

 

[antlerradar]

Pick a new spot? Lol

This is the foundation of FWP management. The fancy name is the law of diminishing returns. Learned all about it when I was on the Regon 7 CAC fifteen years ago. I sat there in disbelief during that presentation, but FWP defended it all the way.
This only works when there is good access to almost everywhere. Once access starts to get restricted the law of diminishing returns starts to fail. At first hunters that lose access can move to public or to other private but other landowners will only tolerate increasing hunter numbers so long. The access issue starts to snowball and soon public land gets pounded by hunters and on private land access is controlled by the price. I have to disagree with Buzz on this one. The law of diminishing returns started to quit working in the 80's. FWP is stuck in the 70's on this one. The law of diminishing returns is not the only reason for the commercialization of hunting in eastern Montana, but is a big reason.

 

[antlerradar]

Rather than pollute the MT B&c mule deer thread, I thought I would start a new one.

So at a recent meet and greet held in Miles City mule deer management was brought up. The fwp career staff and biologists made statements that just shut my ability to have an open mind down such as “We are knocking it out of the park in regards to mule deer management”, “we had record counts with great age structure and many mature bucks in the counts in prairie county”, “the big bucks are out there for people that want to put the work in to get them”, “our counts are better than any limited entry unit in the west including utah, better than the Henry Mountains”.

Now from the way the dept is being run under worsech with the fwp local staff input being completely ignored especially regarding elk, I want and have tried to support the local career employees but when they come and make statements like that, that are complete 180 degrees from my 40 years of anecdotal experience as well as many others I know and greatly respect that spend as much or more time than I do watching mule deer, I have to ask:

1) what am I missing or what are they missing, that we can be so polar opposite in regards to the current management and state of the mule deer herd?(elk we are on the same page)
2) if a career employee is so far off(I would strongly suggest they are) why should we the public support them on other issues?

I have got to say this one has always baffled me. It’s like a bio works for fwp and all of a sudden they have drank the koolaid and unwilling to consider the impacts our season structure has on the herd. It would be refreshing if they were just honest about it. Say for example “with our season structure very few bucks make it past age 3. Our counts and buck to die ratio however are still healthy”. Those arguably might be more defenseable statements. Fire away. Someone explain to me where I am erring. Thanks

I have been hearing this song and dance for close to thirty years and hunting on public land has been on a decline just as long.

 

[rogerthat]

This is the foundation of FWP management. The fancy name is the law of diminishing returns. Learned all about it when I was on the Regon 7 CAC fifteen years ago. I sat there in disbelief during that presentation, but FWP defended it all the way.
This only works when there is good access to almost everywhere. Once access starts to get restricted the law of diminishing returns starts to fail. At first hunters that lose access can move to public or to other private but other landowners will only tolerate increasing hunter numbers so long. The access issue starts to snowball and soon public land gets pounded by hunters and on private land access is controlled by the price. I have to disagree with Buzz on this one. The law of diminishing returns started to quit working in the 80's. FWP is stuck in the 70's on this one.

Totally agree but still baffled why a professionally schooled bio or professional game manager wouldn’t just tell it like it is. The koolaid part of this is where I get confused. That’s where a loss of trust comes in. They are making ridiculous statements about the greatness of the resource meanwhile I am spending 50-100 days on various public and private in there region and I’m not seeing it. It gives me zero confidence any of them know what they are doing. And nothing will ever change unless it’s political and that’s where I feel we are between a rock and a hard place in montana. I support the science not political change but for deer Fwp’s science doesn’t add up. It’s very depressing as a sportsman.

 

[Nameless Range]

Ask for the data. You can’t argue data without the data. All you’re going to get here is various anecdotal observations. Even if they are similar observations, it isn’t great data. I don’t know the answer on age structure, but if someone in FWP says it’s good, I would ask for the data. I doubt a mule deer getting to 5.5yrs is maybe 3% odds. But just a guess.

Most of the areas I grew up hunting have no data. As in, they do not do aerial surveys for mule deer, the districts are not associated with any game check stations, and so all they can count on is the phone calls they make to folks in March to discern a rough correlation between success and the herd. I know that’s not the case everywhere.

But even so, the district south of where I hunt had an aerial survey performed on mile deer in 2021 and these are the results. Just think, these results were good enough for them to proceed with mule deer buck hunting on one’s general tag.

WPT = waypoint. It’s not the hunting districts. These are the counts for the entire district.

 

[brockel]

Has that worked for you? Lol

30” tall bro

 

[JMG]

Totally agree but still baffled why a professionally schooled bio or professional game manager wouldn’t just tell it like it is. The koolaid part of this is where I get confused. That’s where a loss of trust comes in. They are making ridiculous statements about the greatness of the resource meanwhile I am spending 50-100 days on various public and private in there region and I’m not seeing it. It gives me zero confidence any of them know what they are doing. And nothing will ever change unless it’s political and that’s where I feel we are between a rock and a hard place in montana. I support the science not political change but for deer Fwp’s science doesn’t add up. It’s very depressing as a sportsman.

"but still baffled why a professionally schooled bio or professional game manager wouldn’t just tell it like it is." ... if you like your job ... you sing the company song or your fired. Especially, with Worsech in attendance. Tell them and say what he wants to hear. Worsech probably thinks if we tell these people these things enough, they will start to believe it (or that its true).

 

[brockel]

According to ours they pick an area to fly and then do an average for region 7. So if private land up by Jordan Montana is knocking it out of the park so is the Custer southeast of Ekalaka

 

[brockel]

Imagine the data fwp and the public would have if there was mandatory harvest reporting. Maybe they don’t actually want that data

 

[rogerthat]

"but still baffled why a professionally schooled bio or professional game manager wouldn’t just tell it like it is." ... if you like your job ... you sing the company song or your fired. Especially, with Worsech in attendance. Tell them and say what he wants to hear. Worsech probably thinks if we tell these people these things enough, they will start to believe it (or that its true).

Not what I saw with the elk discussions but maybe our mule deer management is so entrenched that you are right on that one. To me it’s unconscionable to do that as a professional. Your job is to tell the bosses and the public the cold hard truth. Don’t piss on them and tell them it’s raining.

Maybe it comes back to data and they just don’t have much that shows anything. It’s pretty dismal thinking back 20 years. Very starkly different and very concerning and I definitely don’t think lead poisoning is completely to blame. Something very bad is happening with mule deer but MT fwp is business as usual. Unfortunately that makes my resolve to get politics out of game management less so. The staff needs to look in the mirror for the current state of things and not just at Hank.

 

[antlerradar]

According to ours they pick an area to fly and then do an average for region 7. So if private land up by Jordan Montana is knocking it out of the park so is the Custer southeast of Ekalaka

This, You can even get good looking numbers for 704 if you combine Coffiee's , Diamond Cross and the historic OW with the Custer.

 

[rogerthat]

This, You can even get good looking numbers for 704 if you combine Coffiee's , Diamond Cross and the historic OW with the Custer.

This. I have always said it must come back to methodology of how they are arriving at their conclusions. That’s the only thing that makes sense.