Lions and mule deer /Western Hunter magazine

[dogman68]

Randy,

 

I know you hate numbers, but...

 

Let's say we have a deer herd that numbers 2,400 criters POST-hunt with a buck/doe ratio of 2/10 BEFORE 3-4 years of good moisture. Just for the sake of round numbers we'll say 400 bucks to 2,000 does.

 

With fair habitat conditions, those does all have only ONE fawn each and 50% of those fawns will be bucks. That's a total of 2000 fawns with 1000 bucks, but of course some does won't get bred. Just bear with me.

 

Now assume a natural/predation mortality of those fawns at 50%, divided equally. That leaves 1000 fawns that survive with 500 of them bucks. Thus there is a carry-over - remember, this is a POST HUNT population -- to the next fall of 900 bucks and 2,500 does, not taking into consideration any natural mortality or predation of the ADULT deer. So whatever permits were allowed in that unit could remain about the same or be increased a bit yet still maintain that same buck/doe ratio and number of bucks. In the meantime, you now have more does, thus more fawn recruitment for the following year because those same POST-HUNT 4-500 bucks can also breed the increased doe population.

 

Now, imagine what happens to those numbers when many does start dropping twin fawns. The HERD growth then becomes exponential from year to year, and after five years of ideal rainfall, the numbers would probably start taxing the habitat. In fact, in addition to increased buck permits, I would guess a doe hunt would also be in order at some point.

 

But remember this part from the article I posted:

 

“Then the deer numbers shot up again in the early and mid-1980s because we had an anomaly of sorts with rains that produced three 100-year floods over a five-year period. Even the normally dry Salt River was running at 200,000 feet per second and washing out bridges in downtown Phoenix.

 

“The result on our deer herds was quite predictable. For a few years running, all of the does had twins, their twins had twins, and those twins…and so on. So we wound up with more deer than we knew what to do with. Over the next several hunting seasons, we had more permits available than we had hunters to apply for them. In 1986, we set the all-time record with 95,821 permits. That is more than double the permit allocation for 2000.

 

“The one thing hunters shouldn’t do, however, is think we’ll ever get to that point again. The floods were very uncommon occurrences that created the best deer habitat we’ve ever had. So unless those conditions repeat themselves, which isn’t too likely, our traditional optimum deer numbers will be considerably less than what we had in 1986.”

 

-TONY

 

 

I'm with you on all that. I don't follow the statement "we wound up with more deer than we knew what to do with". What does that mean? If we have more deer than we can sell tags for, that is a bad thing? Why do we think we have to do "anything" with all this excess? Why not just think ourselves fortunate, ceretainly they aren't exactly demolishing the range, and shift some of that predation back onto the deer instead of sheep, cattle etc?

I'm still on the drift of balance and the original thread, "lions etc". I do understand your logic in the realm of simply deer vs. tags etc.

[Outdoor Writer]

Why do we think we have to do "anything" with all this excess? Why not just think ourselves fortunate, ceretainly they aren't exactly demolishing the range, and shift some of that predation back onto the deer instead of sheep, cattle etc?

 

Of course, they weren't demolishing the range back then even after those flood years. BUT...given five years of the same type of moisture, they certainly would have been. Right now, however, other than a couple small areas, there isn't enough excess of anything to be concerned about. -TONY