Nebraska Mule Deer

jpauli

New member
Joined
Dec 25, 2013
Messages
22
Location
Carroll Ia,
Looking for some advice for a DIY mule deer hunt. Was planning to hunt the NE Nat'l Forest, or the Oglala Grasslands area. Is one better than the other for mule deer? How is the hunting pressure? Any general, thoughts as have not hunted the NE panhandle?
 
Deer numbers are down after a die off 2 summers ago. They are slowly rebounding but with the liberal tags and folks who love to shoot yearlings the public land is tough going. Best bet is Montana, they have lots of tags leftover every year so they obviously have plenty of deer and elk to hunt on public land. Well worth the extra $.
 
JMO, I would look at the western part of the state. There are maps that show where the Die offs occurred which will help you out some. Just remember that when those deer come back that there will be some Bruisers walking around, I have seen that happen. BTW, Welcome to the site! John
 
Thanks for the thoughts on Montana. Looking at the 2014 data the success seems better in Montana than Nebraska, at this time . Maybe a better use of my time, though a 3 hour longer drive. Looking at units in South East Montana. Does this sound reasonable for a solo, public land hunt, camping out? Have hunted antelope in Wyoming, similarly,
 
Use success rates carefully, alot of times they can be skewed because of private land. I would also pay attention to how many deer are taken vs other units. MT's Region 7 has alot of deer, and a decent amount of public and block management. I have stayed away from Montana in the past because of the $600 tag fee for NR deer. WY is about $360 for the tag? I think. Colorado is $364 with stamps. Both WY and CO draws are still open if you want to hunt this year. I'm not sure about WY, but I can put you in good mule deer units that a NR has a 30% chance of drawing with no points, and has plenty of public land and mule deer. PM if you are interested.
 
A big group of guys went to NE this year for deer and they all tagged out on big deer 50/50 muleys to whitetail.They hunted western NE on walk in land.They walked away from the other hunters and got into good deer.NE has a lot of walk in land available to hunt.I think youd have a very good deer hunt there if you did a lot of research
 
Thanks for the replies to the posts. Still wanting to focus on Nebraska public lands. I see this 3 main areas of focus. 1.) Oglala Grasslands, heard that some deer may migrate out by rifle season, though fore see lower hunter density. 2. Ft Robinson area (Crawford) or 3.) Nebraska Nat'l Forest (Chadron). Trade offs for each. Any feedback or thoughts on the areas, experiences?
 
GOHUNT Insider

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
110,805
Messages
1,935,062
Members
34,883
Latest member
clamwc
Back
Top