Possible, but no research has teased it out yet.
I think I was referencing data from WY, and I believe that they were using pre-winter ratios. So you would expect the spring ratio to be lower, which is I believe the metric FWP uses? Sorry for the mix-up
Yes, spring would definitely be lower and that’s what FWP uses. Thanks for the clarification! Interesting that WY uses pre-winter; assuming the do post-winter counts too though?
Getting back to “average” would be a good start
You would think, just to get an idea on winter mortality.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Oh right, duh. That makes sense. Similar to MT’s post-season v. spring counts. Still letting the coffee kick in!
Coffee is for the weak....
Most other mule deer states manage for buck-to-doe ratios of 20-45 (with most being 30+). Colorado's statewide average is 30 bucks per 100 doe's. sclancy referenced the Wyoming Range earlier, that ratio is currently 24 to 100 which is one of the lowest on record. Anything above 20 bucks would be more preferential than the bare minimum that we currently have in a lot of MT.
There was a coyote calling contest in Winnet/Grassrange early dec. 36 teams killed 340 coyotes in the two-day event.
Hats off to those that put up those numbers, there are becoming more derbys taking place along the high line as well.
I think we may be illustrating the differences between the way ranchers and biologists think about managing a herds numbers. Ranchers tend to manage on an individual animal by animal basis. Biologists manage based on the herd as a whole. The problem for the rancher approach, it is very hard to manage by the individual in the wild. The problem biologists need to tackle in the future is hunters are no longer harvesting a "gate cut" like they did thirty years ago.Intense selective hunting leads to artificial evolution in horn size - PMC
The potential for selective harvests to induce rapid evolutionary change is an important question for conservation and evolutionary biology, with numerous biological, social and economic implications. We analyze 39 years of phenotypic data on horn ...
It’s been ages since I read this paper but it was about selective and intensive harvest pressure on bighorn rams influencing horn genetics. Sheep populations are generally smaller/more isolated (more easily genetically-manipulated maybe?) and pressure is generally way, way more skewed to the larger individuals in the population than deer/elk hunting is. Deer and elk hunting populations are also much larger in general and probably more genetically diverse? Spitballing there but it makes sense to me so I’m running with it.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that in some cases hunting influences horn/antler genetics, but I have a hard time seeing it have those effects on deer and elk unless every male harvested was the best of the best. Harvest is so much more spread out across the age and size classes in deer/elk than in sheep.
There’s probably a lot more going on too with survival rates, who does the bulk of the breeding, when harvest occurs, etc.) to make it really complicated, really quickly. Interesting to ponder.
I think you nailed it. What’s a gate cut?
A gate cut is a random cut form the herd. For example if you have a 110 cows and need to cut the number down to 100, you take the first 10 through the gate.
Gotcha, thanks! I suppose it’s not put into practice too often in ranching?
That’s why I only did a contest once I’d like to see how they killed 35 probably off some dead beef with a thermal.
They eat deer
