Montana Mule Deer Mismanagement

[brockel]

That’s why I only did a contest once I’d like to see how they killed 35 probably off some dead beef with a thermal.

Drive around with thermal on top of vehicle and shoot them once they see them.

 

[brockel]

They eat deer

Lots of fawns. Wonder why recruitment is so bad?

 

[Treeshark]

They eat deer

Yeah I know, but how can they even sustain that? That’s just an insane number of mouths to feed.

 

[cgasner1]

Drive around with thermal on top of vehicle and shoot them once they see them.

Not quite that simple allegedly

 

[DFS]

Yeah I know, but how can they even sustain that? That’s just an insane number of mouths to feed.

I don’t believe we are sustaining it.

 

[DFS]

When every species we want to hunt is gone rest assured there will still be coyotes.

 

[brockel]

Not quite that simple allegedly

I promise you it is

 

[huntin24/7]

You think there are a lot of coyotes until you talk to the guys shooting them out of the planes. It’ll blow your mind. I know of a ranch(not a huge ranch) with a feed lot that they flew last winter and killed around 150 in a day just on and right near that ranch.

 

[huntin24/7]

yotes are pretty impressive as survivors and killers. There’s a small fishing dam near us on the edge of a small town. They’ve learned to push the mule deer out onto the ice when there’s little to no snow and slippery. They can’t move any good on that slick ice. I’ve witnessed several times going fishing there and seeing 2-3 fresh eaten carcasses from the night before with blood everywhere. Pretty gruesome.

 

[DFS]

yotes are pretty impressive as survivors and killers. There’s a small fishing dam near us on the edge of a small town. They’ve learned to push the mule deer out onto the ice when there’s little to no snow and slippery. They can’t move any good on that slick ice. I’ve witnessed several times going fishing there and seeing 2-3 fresh eaten carcasses from the night before with blood everywhere. Pretty gruesome.

There was a long time I didn’t believe that coyotes killed many deer. My views have changed. Especially when there is deep snow

 

[huntin24/7]

There was a long time I didn’t believe that coyotes killed many deer. My views have changed. Especially when there is deep snow

I was the same way. They will kill them in numbers pretty efficiently on ice or deep snow like you mentioned.

 

[peterk1234]

I was the same way. They will kill them in numbers pretty efficiently on ice or deep snow like you mentioned.

We took a hike yesterday in some rolling hill country not far from Big Timber. The number of coyote tracks were incredible. We are thinking of bringing the caller and a couple rifles there next week.

 

[cgasner1]

Any time is a great time to kill a coyote. The best time is the week or two before the fawns drop if that’s the goal to help deer

 

[cgasner1]

We should do a ht miss management derby for that

 

[brockel]

There was a long time I didn’t believe that coyotes killed many deer. My views have changed. Especially when there is deep snow

When you find dens you’d be shocked at the amount of legs. Just below our house is a fox den that gets used every year. Quite a few fawn legs outside the den there too

 

[Forkyfinder]

We should do a ht miss management derby for that

That would be awesome.

 

[cgasner1]

Could do like a 5 dollar entry just to cover the cost of sending a sticker out. Mail all the stickers out on a Monday and whenever they show up you can hunt. Hunt would end on a Sunday at 5. Only rule is the sticker much be on the dead dog. No money so I doubt anyone would cheat

 

[sclancy27]

I think we may be illustrating the differences between the way ranchers and biologists think about managing a herds numbers. Ranchers tend to manage on an individual animal by animal basis. Biologists manage based on the herd as a whole. The problem for the rancher approach, it is very hard to manage by the individual in the wild. The problem biologists need to tackle in the future is hunters are no longer harvesting a "gate cut" like they did thirty years ago.

Yea, you need to manage them differently. With cattle, I imagine you manage the genetics very specifically, if you can, to express the traits you desire. You can generally control mortality from natural causes (weathers, feed, etc) pretty well, so any negative traits caused by the limited genetic pool are minimized.

Conversely, the most healthy herd of deer would have the most genetic variance. That way in times of difficult environmental conditions you still have deer that survive. With a very limited genetic pool you could lose so many (in a bad enough event) as to essentially lose that population. The remaining few would not have enough genetic differences to carry the population forward.

 

[DFS]

Yea, you need to manage them differently. With cattle, I imagine you manage the genetics very specifically, if you can, to express the traits you desire. You can generally control mortality from natural causes (weathers, feed, etc) pretty well, so any negative traits caused by the limited genetic pool are minimized.

Conversely, the most healthy herd of deer would have the most genetic variance. That way in times of difficult environmental conditions you still have deer that survive. With a very limited genetic pool you could lose so many (in a bad enough event) as to essentially lose that population. The remaining few would not have enough genetic differences to carry the population forward.

How did that 170 that you were hunting turn out? Did it turn into a 150 once it got blasted?

 

[sclancy27]

How did that 170 that you were hunting turn out? Did it turn into a 150 once it got blasted?

160". His fronts were quite a bit shorter than I thought. Other than that, basically what I thought. I'm sending in his teeth, you can guess age by pics and teeth.