Question:
The truth is our mule deer herds generally are being mismanaged. Does
anyone dispute this?
Answer:
I think the general perception is that Mule Deer is being mismanaged in
all of the western states. In Colorado they have tried several changes
to the season lenghts and point restrictions to help produce more
mature Bucks but the truth of the matter is they have had mixed
results.
The three point restriction failed on deer for several reasons. The
biggest was that many Bucks with less then three points were shot
anyway and left to rot. The hunters weren't carefull and often took
long shoots at Bucks with significant horn above their ears only to
find a large fork horned buck laying there when they walked up. In the
area I hunt near Gunnison there also seemed to be an increase in the
number of genetically inferior Bucks that grew large fork horned racks
that were as big and had spreads as big as four point Bucks.
They then went to three day buck seasons which seemed to help the Buck
to Doe ratio but still didn't seem to help produce more mature Bucks.
This year they went to five day Buck seasons with very few buck tags
(draw Only) in the third season. It is to early to tell if this will
help but it definitly reduced the number of out of state hunters in the
third season.
I saw more Bucks this year then ever so I think that some of the things
that they are trying are working except that to be ultimately
successful they need to lower the number of Buck licenses period. In
Colorado all of the hunts ( except Eastern plains) occur before the rut
which doesn't help in the natural selection process for breeding where
the best bucks do the mating and pass on the best genes.
The last factor is that it only takes one bad winter here to
drastically reduce the Deer herds and set back whatever programs that
the DOW has put in place to help the Deer statistics.This happened in
our hunting area in 1987 and the Deer herds are just getting back to
respectable.
