Montana - Time to Shake it Up?

[cgasner1]

I don’t suppose you lab aged him? I got to be honest, I don’t have the age data on the region 7 pronghorn that I do on the mule deer. My brother shot a mid 80s goat in region 7 maybe around 2015 that lab aged at 3.5 years old. Most massive antelope I have ever seen.

Did not kinda wish I had now

 

[antlerradar]

You realize that the habitat requirements for elk and mule deer/antelope are different right?

Elk prefer habitats that are later on in plant succession, mule deer prefer primary plant succession. Elk can be very successful as grazers, mule deer/antelope are primarily browsers....etc etc.

I know this, I also know that 2/3 of the Custer has burned, much of it multiple times since 2000. There has been an explosion in all of the plants that deer love to eat with those fires, yet the deer population and number of quality bucks is a fraction of what it was in the 80's when very little of the forest had burned for better than 50 years. Habitat is not the issue in eastern Montana and if it is we can no longer justify hunting mule deer the same way we did forty years when the habitat was great for deer in the 80's.

 

[antlerradar]

None of this is to say that we shouldn't be making some changes from the management side. I am fine with some level of change on that side. But concentrating on the management is an unbelievable mistake where there are bigger issues out there. I would rather see the vitriol be focused on USFS, BLM and the State of MT to do some actual habitat work on these lands.

We concentrate on management, because this is where we can actually make a difference. Most habitat issues are only going to be fixed with an act of God. Praying for rain, I have done that, very limited success. More controlled fires, takes lots and lots of money and man power. Even then it is hard to accomplish more than a small amount of improvement with the limits placed on controlled burns. Increasing grazing by cattle knock grasses back and give fobes and srubs an atvantage, not going to happen.
If you want to make a difference you work on the part of the problem where you have a little bit of say, not where you have close to none.

 

[huntin24/7]

With the huge increase in the interest in western hunting, I don’t think public land mule deer hunting and herd numbers could be very good anymore with even the best habitat without first coming up with a good plan to manage hunters and hunting pressure on the resource.

 

[BuzzH]

We concentrate on management, because this is where we can actually make a difference. Most habitat issues are only going to be fixed with an act of God. Praying for rain, I have done that, very limited success. More controlled fires, takes lots and lots of money and man power. Even then it is hard to accomplish more than a small amount of improvement with the limits placed on controlled burns. Increasing grazing by cattle knock grasses back and give fobes and srubs an atvantage, not going to happen.
If you want to make a difference you work on the part of the problem where you have a little bit of say, not where you have close to none.

All true, but I wouldn't give up on influencing habitat, protecting habitat, migration corridors, etc. etc. etc.

Lots of good work being done on all of those and needs more attention/support.

 

[Ben Lamb]

We concentrate on management, because this is where we can actually make a difference. Most habitat issues are only going to be fixed with an act of God. Praying for rain, I have done that, very limited success. More controlled fires, takes lots and lots of money and man power. Even then it is hard to accomplish more than a small amount of improvement with the limits placed on controlled burns. Increasing grazing by cattle knock grasses back and give fobes and srubs an atvantage, not going to happen.
If you want to make a difference you work on the part of the problem where you have a little bit of say, not where you have close to none.

All true, but I wouldn't give up on influencing habitat, protecting habitat, migration corridors, etc. etc. etc.

Lots of good work being done on all of those and needs more attention/support.

110% with Buzz here. With the Deer management plan coming up for redrafting this year, there are ways to engage on the habitat issue in a significant fashion. Also, if SB 442 gets it's veto overridden, that's a huge pot of money to fund restoration and stewardship.

All of this works together, and keeping that high level view is mission critical.

 

[sclancy27]

We concentrate on management, because this is where we can actually make a difference. Most habitat issues are only going to be fixed with an act of God. Praying for rain, I have done that, very limited success. More controlled fires, takes lots and lots of money and man power. Even then it is hard to accomplish more than a small amount of improvement with the limits placed on controlled burns. Increasing grazing by cattle knock grasses back and give fobes and srubs an atvantage, not going to happen.
If you want to make a difference you work on the part of the problem where you have a little bit of say, not where you have close to none.

UT, for one, is doing TONS of conifer (primarily juniper) removal on State owned wildlife management areas in the name of mule deer. NRCS is doing fairly large-scale thinning and conifer removal treatments across the west, albeit on private lands. Any logging project is also a habitat improvement project for mule deer.

The number one habitat issue in Montana is conifer encroachment. We can absolutely do a ton of work in this area but we need to push our Federal agencies to make it a priority, BLM, NRCS, USFS, etc. We can also push our state to manage their WMA lands while pushing for common sense hunting season changes. Saying we have no hope of changing habitat quality is bullshit.

 

[antlerradar]

UT, for one, is doing TONS of conifer (primarily juniper) removal on State owned wildlife management areas in the name of mule deer. NRCS is doing fairly large-scale thinning and conifer removal treatments across the west, albeit on private lands. Any logging project is also a habitat improvement project for mule deer.

The number one habitat issue in Montana is conifer encroachment. We can absolutely do a ton of work in this area but we need to push our Federal agencies to make it a priority, BLM, NRCS, USFS, etc. We can also push our state to manage their WMA lands while pushing for common sense hunting season changes. Saying we have no hope of changing habitat quality is bullshit.

That may be true in western Mt, for the most part habitat has not changed in eastern Montana since the 80's,except for the better and mostly those changes have been the product of an act of God.

 

[MTTW]

A few years ago, like 4ish years ago, FWP was claiming record or near record numbers of mule deer in the north east.

What does that say about habitat?

 

[sclancy27]

That may be true in western Mt, for the most part habitat has not changed in eastern Montana since the 80's,except for the better and mostly those changes have been the product of an act of God.

You need to look through the aerial photographs from the early 20th century and compare them to recent satellite imagery. Local NRCS offices should have flights from the 1930's. When I worked there we digitized those photos to compare to current satellite data, the contrast was pretty shocking.

 

[rogerthat]

You need to look through the aerial photographs from the early 20th century and compare them to recent satellite imagery. Local NRCS offices should have flights from the 1930's. When I worked there we digitized those photos to compare to current satellite data, the contrast was pretty shocking.

Are you saying the 1930s looked better than now? That was the Great Depression also known as the dirty 30s because the drought was so bad and the homesteaders who were trying to plow their homesteads were losing all their topsoil to the wind. My grandpa said those were the hardest years of his life. They shot every mule deer they saw to eat

 

[Ben Lamb]

That may be true in western Mt, for the most part habitat has not changed in eastern Montana since the 80's,except for the better and mostly those changes have been the product of an act of God.

Loss of habitat to crop conversion is the biggest issue in eastern MT. Millions more acres plowed up now than before.

Couple that with a downward trend in precip for the last 40 years, increase in hopper infestation, add in chest grass & a host of other issues and it may not look like ghetto deer neighborhoods, but they're eating Mikey D's instead of at the Brown Derby.

 

[sclancy27]

A few years ago, like 4ish years ago, FWP was claiming record or near record numbers of mule deer in the north east.

What does that say about habitat?

It was 2016-17, SE MT, 4 years post ~300,000 acres burning on the Custer Nat'l forest. Lower deer numbers post 2010-2011 winter and a huge turnover in habitat in 2012 with those fires caused an incredibly rapid increase in MD populations (I know no one here believes FWP data, but anyone familiar with those areas noticed how many deer suddenly appeared on the landscape).

Then you get drought, habitat senescence post fire and the effects of over-browsing during droughts and winter and there is less carrying capacity on the landscape. Those burns are not nearly as productive for mule deer as they were in 2013-2018 or 2019.

That population "explosion" was a blip in an otherwise downward population trend.

Are you saying the 1930s looked better than now? That was the Great Depression also known as the dirty 30s because the drought was so bad and the homesteaders who were trying to plow their homesteads were losing all their topsoil to the wind. My grandpa said those were the hardest years of his life. They shot every mule deer they saw to eat

I'm saying compare aerial photos for conifers (junipers) from the 30's to present day. You could even pick the 50's. Conifer encroachment is, generally, bad for mule deer and good for elk, from a habitat perspective.

 

[sclancy27]

Loss of habitat to crop conversion is the biggest issue in eastern MT. Millions more acres plowed up now than before.

Couple that with a downward trend in precip for the last 40 years, increase in hopper infestation, add in chest grass & a host of other issues and it may not look like ghetto deer neighborhoods, but they're eating Mikey D's instead of at the Brown Derby.

Another big thing you can easily see in aerial imagery is crop conversion.

 

[antlerradar]

A few years ago, like 4ish years ago, FWP was claiming record or near record numbers of mule deer in the north east.

What does that say about habitat?

I have been looking into what happened on the Kaibab 100 years ago. In the 1920's hunting was ended and aggressive predator control implemented. Predictably mule deer numbers went sky high. By all accounts habitat was severely degraded and the deer population crashed in the thirties and forties. Now I have always been told that once you severely degrade habitat it takes years even, decades for it to recover. Yet open up the record bucks and there are over 20 top end non typicals form the Kaibab during the forties and early fifty's.

 

[rogerthat]

Holy crap you guys have lost your minds. What percentage of region 7 has conifers? Im not sure what we arguing about at this point. Everyone agrees habitat is very important. In most places it’s the most important but specifically in eastern Montana with Mule Deer bucks you have lead poisoning issues that have to be dealt with first before habitat matters at all. I can say with 100% confidence we are not habitat limited in eastern Montana whatsoever when it comes to trophy mule deer bucks. Back to being off this thread for me. I should have stayed off in the first place.

 

[antlerradar]

It was 2016-17, SE MT, 4 years post ~300,000 acres burning on the Custer Nat'l forest. Lower deer numbers post 2010-2011 winter and a huge turnover in habitat in 2012 with those fires caused an incredibly rapid increase in MD populations (I know no one here believes FWP data, but anyone familiar with those areas noticed how many deer suddenly appeared on the landscape).

Then you get drought, habitat senescence post fire and the effects of over-browsing during droughts and winter and there is less carrying capacity on the landscape. Those burns are not nearly as productive for mule deer as they were in 2013-2018 or 2019.

That population "explosion" was a blip in an otherwise downward population trend.

I'm saying compare aerial photos for conifers (junipers) from the 30's to present day. You could even pick the 50's. Conifer encroachment is, generally, bad for mule deer and good for elk, from a habitat perspective.

Even during the best years of the last 20 years the hunting on the Custer is a shadow of what it was during the 80's and 90's when the forest had been covered with pine trees.

 

[sclancy27]

I know this, I also know that 2/3 of the Custer has burned, much of it multiple times since 2000. There has been an explosion in all of the plants that deer love to eat with those fires, yet the deer population and number of quality bucks is a fraction of what it was in the 80's when very little of the forest had burned for better than 50 years. Habitat is not the issue in eastern Montana and if it is we can no longer justify hunting mule deer the same way we did forty years when the habitat was great for deer in the 80's.

I think that is exactly the situation we are in Eastern MT and I would go as far to say all, or most, of MT when it comes to mule deer. I just don't think, without seriously addressing habitat, we will ever see anything close to the "glory days" of mule deer just by cutting back on success rates (seasons, more primitive weapons, whatever method).

 

[antlerradar]

You need to look through the aerial photographs from the early 20th century and compare them to recent satellite imagery. Local NRCS offices should have flights from the 1930's. When I worked there we digitized those photos to compare to current satellite data, the contrast was pretty shocking.

I have looked at those pictures, and I have similar ones on my wall. Conifer encroachment does not explain why the hunting on the forest was much better during the 80s and 90's before all the fires.

 

[MTTW]

Holy crap you guys have lost your minds. What percentage of region 7 has conifers? Im not sure what we arguing about at this point. Everyone agrees habitat is very important. In most places it’s the most important but specifically in eastern Montana with Mule Deer bucks you have lead poisoning issues that have to be dealt with first before habitat matters at all. I can say with 100% confidence we are not habitat limited in eastern Montana whatsoever when it comes to trophy mule deer bucks. Back to being off this thread for me. I should have stayed off in the first place.

You were warned in post #192 in this thread.