My friend, a wildlife biologist not with FWP, and myself were at the symposium and here are our thoughts:
Mule Deer Management Symposium: “Managing Landscapes and Improving Quality”.
More accurately described as: “Methods to Maximize Profits from the Public’s Mule Deer” or “Ranching for Wildlife”
If you attended the Mule Deer Symposium last Saturday, Dec. 12th in Bozeman sponsored by Montana Outfitters and Guides Association (MOGA), the Boone and Crocket Club, the Mule Deer Foundation, and the FWP Foundation expecting to learn more about what was going on with Mule Deer populations that was not generally the case.
Most of the discussion centered on how best to privatize and commercialize wildlife and manage it like livestock. Curiously I seldom (once, maybe twice) heard the term Ranching for Wildlife. They may have chosen “Integrated Management” or possibly “Integrated Ranching” to distance themselves from the bad reputation RFW has earned.
You were sorely mistaken if you thought you might hear from experts about mule deer health, factors driving populations, winter range conditions, disease or even predation. Wolves barely even got a mention, it was all about profit.
Discussions about “culling” management bucks,” running wildlife” as in a rancher running cattle, maximizing profit by managing for a particular B&C score, saving “breeder” bucks”, selling bucks by the inch, and incentivizing landowners dominated the Symposium.
The first 3 presentations were informative. Miles Moretti, President/CEO of the Mule Deer Foundation gave a “Status Report on Mule Deer in the American West” heavy on Utah as that is where he is from. Miles did a good job of defining the causes of mule deer declines over the past 30 years. He also offered his thoughts on what needed to be done to bring mule deer populations back to higher levels. His primary focus was in habitat restoration to replace some of the less desirable habitat with more traditional mule deer habitat. While he said that loss of habitat was the biggest factor causing mule deer declines, it seemed that the audience firmly believe predation is the primary cause.
Quentin Kujala reported on the results of the 2011 FWP Mule Deer Hunter Preference Survey comparing resident and non-resident responses showing strong support by both residents and non-residents for the current system of managing mule deer in Montana emphasizing opportunity. Both residents and non-residents ranked trophy hunting at or near the bottom of a list of 10 reasons to hunt.
Link to News release on resident portion of study. You may have to cut and paste.
http://fwp.mt.gov/news/newsReleases/headlines/nr_3987.html
Quentin filled in for Paul Lukacs a prof at U of M describing “The effects of Mule Deer Buck Regulations on Mule Deer Populations and Harvest” which described the effects of the Montana’s 3 restrictive mule deer season types; limited permits, unlimited licenses restricted to one unit and shortened seasons. His presentation included a slide comparing factors affecting mule deer populations. Habitat quality was by far the most important. During Q&A he pointed out in some situations predation can have an impact.
Once the first 3 presentations were done however the main focus shifted to maximizing profit from wildlife especially mule deer. Rick Danvir from Deseret Ranches in Utah discussed “Landowners Role in Managing Wildlife with an Integrated Ranching and Farming business” He did show a slide emphasizing that wildlife belonged to the public and gave a good description of a holistic approach to land management indentifying factors contributing to productivity of the land. He is a big advocate of rest rotation grazing for cattle which is good for wildlife. He also emphasized the need for incentives for landowners in the form of licenses to sell in order to make managing for wildlife worthwhile. This marked the first gradual introduction to Ranching for Wildlife.
The next presenter, Ken Clegg, “The Impact of Mule Deer Harvest Rates on B&C scores” abandoned any pretense of doing anything but selling wildlife literally by the “inch” and how to maximize the profit from selling mule deer bucks. He manages a number of ranches in several Rocky Mountain states totaling a couple million acres including a couple ranches in Montana. He suggested landowners should keep track of the B&C score of every buck shot on their property to gauge how the management of the ranch was doing. He kept these records for many years on all the ranches he manages and this presentation was a result of what he learned from thousands of bucks.
Using a hypothetical population of 1,000 mule deer he showed how many bucks of various scores you could “harvest” to maintain a particular B&C score in your herd. This included a chart showing where in his words the “sweet spot” was in terms of profit. On the left side was the B&C score. Columns included the number of bucks of various scores you could sell to maintain each level of B&C score. On the right was the total profit you would realize by managing for each score. The Sweet Spot” was harvesting 3 % of the bucks to manage for an average score of 180. If you chose to sell 10% of the bucks, your average score would only be 118 and you couldn’t charge nearly as much “per buck” not per hunter or per hunt but per buck in his words.
Another chart showed what bucks with various scores are worth. He also encouraged “culling” management bucks and recommended letting some of the largest “breeder” bucks live. He described how they sell bucks by the inch in Texas and used terms like “market the biggest” and harvest smaller bucks. One comment sounded like you should shoot a few monsters for advertising and only let most clients shoot smaller though nice bucks. There was absolutely no mention of quality hunting experience, ethics, hunter recruitment or retention, etc. Everything in his presentation was based on maximizing profit. He repeated the argument that landowners needed the “profit incentive” in order to manage for wildlife.
The closing presentation was supposed to be about a “Cooperative System of Integrated Management and the North American Model of Wildlife Management” by Paul Krausman, the Boone and Crockett Professor of Wildlife Conservation but he had to cancel. Representatives from the FWP Foundation and Boone and Crockett club replaced him for the symposium wrap up. The FWP foundation member discussed how his home state of Washington has gone to more limited entry type hunts and bragged about the size of the bull elk killed on his family’s ranch now even though his name may never be drawn. His message was the need to “balance opportunity” among landowners and outfitters. He seemed to catch himself and added public hunters. It may not have been intentional but it was certainly obvious.
He then introduced the Director of Marketing for Boone & Crockett who explained a version of the North American Model (NAM) that seems to justify selling wildlife by the inch, not by the pound. He explained the NAM resulted from resentment of the European model where wildlife belonged to as he put it, “nobility and the wealthy”. He referred to Robin Hood and the kings deer and how there was no incentive for the public to protect the “king’s deer”. Most in the room missed or ignored the irony of reserving the public’s wildlife for the wealthy through schemes like Ranching for Wildlife.
Regarding the prohibition of selling wildlife he stated “some misguided people claim” what we are talking about is selling wildlife but they (we) are wrong; “the prohibition only applies to selling meat”. Not sure 20 million hideless buffalo or tens of thousands of elk shot so their teeth could grace watch fobs would believe this ingenuous effort to justify selling public wildlife by the inch. Most people in the room, mainly outfitters and the guy in the SFW shirt were nodding up and down while the few sportsmen and FWP employees either looked shocked or were shaking their heads sideways.
Conspicuous by its absence was any attempt to address the Mule Deer satisfaction survey and the wishes of a large majority of both resident and non-resident hunters to manage mule deer for opportunity and how this related to the Ranching for Wildlife model so heavily promoted.
I did learn a whole new appreciation for the Ranching for Wildlife advocates. They are slick. All this time I thought it meant giving ranchers licenses to sell in return for a minimal bit public access. Now I realize it is a smokescreen for privatizing and commercializing public wildlife for profit. They really are managing wildlife just like livestock. I was just waiting to hear what color ear tags they preferred.
A few of the Q&A for all presenters afterwards.
Another justification for providing tags for landowners was that many ranches are raising wildlife which leave the ranch and are available to the public on nearby public land.
Someone mentioned the Utah CWMU or Cooperative Wildlife Management Units where landowners are given buck and bull tags to sell while leaving a smaller percentage (10% to 40%) of mostly cow and doe tags for the public. 110 ranches covering 2 million acres participate. Apparently signing up can give participating ranches control of significant chunks of public land thus evicting long time public land hunters.
An online search shows that initially, the public got the majority of the CWMU tags but not so surprisingly after a few years, the landowners “needed more incentives” and ended up with 60% to 90% of the tags. Oh yeah, they bragged about how 10 to 15 % of the public’s tags were for bulls and bucks. I think a 1 in 75 chance of drawing was mentioned rather proudly like the public should be grateful. This was not mentioned at the Symposium. Montana sportsmen would do well to heed this example of how Ranching for Wildlife and Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife operate in Utah.
There was a question about whether increasing elk populations were outcompeting mule deer.
The best question of the day came from a sportsman who wondered why this sounded more like animal husbandry than wildlife management. Give them credit; there were a few “sheepish” attempts to address his question.
I don't blame the landowner nor do I blame the outfitter(other than him trying to start SH!T with us). Just sucks!!
Hoping someone can give a report on the symposium this weekend. thanks much....
This has been a theme for way too long with the department. Why can't they be biologists and make decisions based on biology. This whole pandering to the public and the legislature is non sense and is killing many of the recovery efforts. I realize the legislature strong arms thems without much they can do about it.
