Montana Mule Deer Mismanagement

[El Jason]

Scott and I

Heck of a lot of mule deer knowledge between you two.

 

[WanderWoman]

More big deer were taken in the first week than in the last three weeks combined. The vast majority of bucks taken in the first week were by people that had seen the buck earlier and hunted him hard. Bucks taken the last three week more often than not involved a lot of luck.

This is why I don’t think cutting out rut hunting, now, by itself, is going to solve everything, because the ‘race to get him before someone else does’ (aided by technology and information sharing) is more prevalent today. This point also contradicts the idea of rut hunting allowing for so much selectivity. I thought the argument yesterday was that pre-rut hunting is by default, more random, and rut hunting is why there are fewer nice bucks than there should be.

Both things could happen to a varying degree, enough to make everything very nuanced and complex to solve, but neither is the direct cause of everything wrong with mule deer. Perhaps some of this was truer back then as opposed to today, and it’s collectively difficult to adapt to how fast things are changing, now, too.

We are not going to solve the access issue or slow the growth of commercialization if we only stick with biology. Commercialization is and economic issue and will be solved by using economics to our advantage.

100%. But FWP also went through two directors who were adamant that biologists ignore social (to include economic) aspects and only focus on biology. (This is more in context with elk, but what is buck quality if not a social factor, when as long as the b:d ratio stays above a certain threshold, recruitment is not affected by it?)

But even that is an impossible order because human behavior affects animal behavior which affects distribution and thus their… biology. I don’t see that as changed, yet. There are still some folks who tell FWP to stay away from anything related to social factors, that that’s all up to the commission. And we see how well that’s working… (archery antelope is a great example of that.. “we need to do something about all this hunter pressure” as they up the quota…)

 

[Forkyfinder]

@antlerradar What do you say about the commercialization of cow elk? Or elk in general? Wouldnt you agree that its worse than mule deer - see recent attempts to blos up tag qtys, lawsuits, nr lo permits, and on and on.

A cow elk hunt is 3k at a lot of places and requires no hope of drawing, no preference points, and no hope or looking for a big one that probably isnt around. Better to sell than a mule deer hunt if you ask me.

Available Hunts/Now Booking – Birch Creek Guide Service

Adding an additional season for cow elk population "management" - a week of hot hunting pressure on public land before people can shoot elk, and making archery start even earlier seems to excaberate those problems and the problems that exist for real ag operators that arent outfitting or if they are it isnt the primary function of the land.

A 2 week mule deer season (ending before veterans day, i agree @rogerthat - thats hot time) with no additional limited entry seems like it would solve as many problems without creating more if rut harvest is too selective and would functionally result in the same end date as rev 3.