Things ya know that just aint so

El Guapo,

I appreciate everything you said, but it's hard to think that I won't get to hunt some of those areas in my hunting lifetime.

We have had an amazing amount of prime wintering ground in SW Idaho burn and while we have had mild winters, I think the first good winter will have a larger than normal die off. F&G has been increasing antlerless tags to the outcry of many, but I think we may need to keep our herd in check at a time they could otherwise be growing which will be very difficult in the face of criticism that is sure to come.

Well, those deer are going other places, need to Chukar hunt less this year and scout more.
 
Mule deer don't just "go to other places" when their habitat changes drastically, they die off.

Throw in some major changes to migration corridors, elk, increased predation, invasive plant species, etc. etc. in various combinations is why mule deer aren't doing well.
 
"Just how long would one to expect the sage dominated flats to take to grow back? I'm guessing a LONG time(20years+)."

In the grand scope of things, 20 years is a fraction of a blink of an eye. In much of the high desert and mountain foothill country of the intermountain west, 20 years doesn't tell you much about recovery. Re-growth and recolonization of sagebrush is very dependent on sub-species, soil type and depth, precipitation, etc. In general, mountain big sage is thought to be able to reach pre-disturbance levels in as little as 30-50 years, Wyoming big sage has a much longer "recovery" period, in the neighborhood of 75 - 100+. Sagebrush and mountain shrub habitats are not only resilient to disturbance (fire as a natural disturbance, mowing, chaining, thinning as a man-made disturbance), they are very much dependent on it. Put it this way, all of the sagebrush and mountain shrub systems burned at one time or another, ALL of it. It burned in the past, it will burn again, it is pretty much inevitable, despite our use of technology to suppress natural cycles. Without disturbance, the brush will mature, over-mature, turn towards decadence, and die off. Fire suppression in the west has allowed for most of our mountain shrub communities to evolve into the over-mature to decadent states, with resulting low nutrition, digestibility, production, and regeneration. If we want to get these vegetation types back to a more healthy state, we've got two choices, either let natural disturbance run its course (very impractical in much of our more urbanized, developed west), or introduce it ourselves in a controlled manner.

Although I'm not a fan of solid blocks of large acreage treated to create a monoculture, I have a hard time believing that any mowing project could result in the amount forage lost to the point of eradicating a population of mule deer. Will they move to different habitat? Probably, but despite what we might see resulting from a single treatment, the vast, vast majority of the surrounding habitat may remain untouched. We need to move beyond looking at habitat in such a short term, and realize that several thousand acres treated today will be the favored habitat in 30-50 years when the untreated habitat surrounding it crashes due to the lack of disturbance.

The habitat treatments occurring now will benefit our children and grandchildren. The waste of our money happens when we attempt to suppress every natural disturbance and allow sagebrush, bitterbrush, mountain mahogany, and aspen to reach decadence and slowly die off. It's a hell of a lot more complicated than observing some mowing treatments,seeing wildlife seasonal habits change for a few years, and deciding that all treatments suck.
Wow, another sagebrush aficionado! Agree with a whole lot of what you wrote. I might argue some of the time frames you put on the fire return intervals, but we would be arguing slight differences (I'd say a bit shorter for Wyoming ARTR).

One thing to remember about sagebrush recolonization after a fire, is that it doesn't resprout. It has to occur by seed and IIRC the rate into the burned area is measured in feet/year. Sagebrush seedlings are easily outcompeted by grass, but given time can and will recolonize an area. So, to the OP, odds are the flats that burned will not look like they used to in your lifetime. That said, they can often be great habitat for mule deer within a few years. Lots depends on the seed bank prior to fire and the type of, if any, stabilization and rehabilitation efforts that occurred after the fire.

Though these pics aren't taken from the exactly the same spot, I can assure you the vegetation types and quality were VERY similar. An area like this:


Can look like this one year after a fire.


An look like this 2 years after a brush crunching treatment:
 
...If you browse the internet you can find studies easy enough. It makes you wonder what you would find if you grazed the internet.
Good one ;)

Deer are in the concentrate selector spectrum, which is different than a grazer or browser. Their guts are set up for it, so that's what they do. We know that elk are more able to adapt diets seasonally and regionally based on forage availability. I actually think that elk out-competing deer on transitional and winter ranges is a factor in deer decline for some herd units, though likely not as great as the habitat destruction, migration disruptions, etc. that Buzz mentioned.

One problem with what biologists tell you is that very few of them (our intrepid oak and miller excepted) know much about plant community ecology. Habitat is made of vegetation and topography, so it's kind of important.

Pointer and guapo speak truth.
 
Leupold BX-4 Rangefinding Binoculars

Forum statistics

Threads
110,814
Messages
1,935,402
Members
34,888
Latest member
Jack the bear
Back
Top