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The Great Mule Deer Dilemma
By Art Isberg
For any rifleman smitten with the west's Number One big-game animal, the mule deer,
the question now, and over the last two decades, has been "what happened to all the deer?"
It's certainly one I've asked, and heard discussed, many times wherever and whenever buck
hunters gather from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada's, and Montana to Mexico.
"Outdoor Reflections of the 1940's"
By Art Isberg
A nostalgia novel about a city kid growing up in the outdoor world of
California's Coast Range mountains through the decade of the 1940's, and the beckoning
world of B.B. guns, fly rods, single shot .22's, and eventually shotguns and deer rifles.
It's a sportsmens book that you are sure to enjoy.
A lifelong story of hunting and fishing and the pursuits that led me to it, and to write
about it. I guess you could also certainly call it a "fireside" book. It's meant to take
readers back to their own early years and fascination with hunting and fishing.
Check it out at Denlinger's Publishers and Bookstore
Online at: http://www.thebookden.com (Sports Section)
or at:
Denlinger's Publishers and Bookstore
P.O. Box 1030
Edgewater, Florida
32132-1030
Only $7.00
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I've had my suspicions and so have many others keenly interested in the survival of
the big deer, but still it took a lot of study, ferreting out reports, fact and figures to
fill in the blanks, and it should be understood at the start, that not all those blanks fit
precisely the same in each state or region. However, there is no escaping several
basic conclusions where mule deer were once seen and hunted clearly in larger numbers than
they are today. Here is what I've found aside from my own personal observations hunting
them across much of the mountain west over the last 35 years.
PUBLIC LAND POLICIES
No big-game animal, regardless of number or vitality, can survive or prosper once its
habitat is threatened and diminished, and the single largest habitat of mule deer resides
on the vast National Forest Lands, in wilderness areas, and Bureau of Land Management
properties across the west. Some substainal holdings are found on private properties where
big-game management has literally become a science and a profitable and successful one for
mule deer, elk, and antelope. But in the main, it is public land that the vast majority of
riflemen rely on to hunt deer.
In this scheme of things, it must be pointed out that while various state fish and
game departments may offer plans or make efforts to improve or repair habitat loss, federal
land agencies that hold and administer them are under no obligation to either cooperate or
go forward jointly. In fact, the opposite is true much of the time. The Forest Service under
the Department of of Agriculture, has never made big-game management on their lands a goal,
and rarely if ever asked for input from state agencies, big-game organizations and most
especially, hunters themselves. What little has been offered from time to time has largely
been ignored.
The main interest of the Forest Service lies in revenues from timber harvest, camping
fees, mining, and with increased frequency, sale of surrounding public lands for second, or
so called mountain homes and vacation properties. Mule deer, or those of us who hunt them,
are not considered a cash crop. If these lands are available for fall hunters to ply their
trade on, then the Forest Service feels it has done all it's going to do, and nothing more.
This becomes increasingly interesting when we see the federal government jump through hoops,
mobilize their lawyers and spend millions of dollars to protect and save various frogs,
guppies, and the spotted owl, but not one red cent to insure the survival of a single mule
deer?
The long and short of this is that the Forest Service is under the "political gun,"
so to speak, and there is neither will nor incentive in the halls of Congress to change
long standing management policies, few of which benefit mule deer.
FIRE SUPPRESSION
The great forest fires that raged across the west during the 1930's, 40's and into
the 50's, cleared off huge tracts of old growth timber allowing sunlight in and
reintroduction of lower brush, shrubs, forbs, and grasses. Plant eating big-game animals
prospered because of it. The 1950's are still remembered as one of the greatest expansion
of mule deer numbers ever recorded, but now those same lands are once again grown back with
overstory timber that has vastly reduced, or totally lost, those valuable food chains. Anyone
who has seen pictures taken of western deer country 30 or 40 years ago, then compared them
with one from the same spot today, quickly understands what has happened. Where once the land
was open with low ground plants, now tall timber blots out the light and few, if any,
herbaceous plants can grow.
The general non-hunting public does not want to see burning forests and blackened
stumps in its aftermath, though fire is as old and necessary to the land and animals in it
as mountains themselves. Only one thing has changed the natural scheme of evolution and
rebirth, man. Man now manages these lands to suit his own desires and in a most unnatural
way by fire suppression.
Today, the instant a smoke plume curls up, aerial tankers loaded with chemical fire
retardant, helicopters slung with giant water buckets, roar in to put it out, and where
they cannot be effective, smoke jumpers float down on parachutes to battle the enemy hand to
hand. We wage all out war to keep the trees, but not to keep the deer. Witness the public
battles over letting the Yellowstone fires burn some years back.
As a national management tool, wilderness fires that do not threaten communities,
business's or homes should be allowed to burn and do their vital work clearing the land of
overstory timber, then be put out when they've achieved that goal. Prescribed controlled
burns, where feasible, should also be vigorously applied in those areas where they are most
needed, and if the public has to be reeducated on what fire really does and why it's needed
to enhance wild animal populations, then let federal and state governments launch a media
campaign in magazines, on radio and in newspapers, and television to explain its role. I
have never heard a single report on fire mention that big-game will benefit from it, so why
should the general public be expected to think or know any better? But what almost every
western big-game department will tell you is that the artificial suppression of wildland
fires is the single greatest detriment to big-game and especially mule deer, and accounts
for the steady decline in population numbers over the last 20 years.
MULE DEER VERSES ELK
It seems nearly inconceivable that the grand return of one big-game animal could so
adversely impact another, but that is exactly what has happened over many areas in the west
where elk have made a strong comeback. The reasons for this have been known and understood
for some time now, and once again we find the answer in habitat and food choices both
animals make.
Although deer and elk do have some overlapping in their diets, elk eat a far greater
variety of grasses and some forbs, while mule deer mainly rely on shrubs and some forbs
making them more selective in what they require. Stomach and body size also require that
deer eat a higher quality of food, while elk can fare better when these choices are severally
limited and winter snows cover the land. Compressed on winter range, elk are more
aggressive than deer, can browse higher out of reach of deer, and in general come through
winter with females in better shape carrying their unborn young for spring.
Bitter winter temperatures, high winds and deep snows always have a more pronounced
effect on deer than elk, and this is constantly proven in the falling number of mule deer
after prolonged severe winters. Elk also survive in greater numbers because where plant
succession expressed in regrowth of taller timber and heavy cover has taken over blocking
out sunlight for lower plant production deer need, they can shift their diets easier to
lower quality foods and still survive.
ROAD INTRUSION
Mule deer need time to mature, sufficient food chains, and equally important, places
of quiet retirement where they are not run from pillar to post. Yet the mania to drive more
and more roads into traditional mule deer range has continued unabated, literally for decades,
and clearly with negative results. I can think of no better example than the frantic search
for energy sources on the western front of the Rocky mountains during the 1970's and early
80's, though it went on in many other places.
That great stronghold of the deer, the rimrock, table top lands lined in limestone
plateaus was a favorite of my three son's and myself, and a place where we and friends took
many very large bucks until it was suddenly assaulted by D-9 Caterpillar tractors driving
graded roads up every mesa and ridgeline, followed by the boom of probing dynamite
explosions.
In four years, the big bucks were shot off by those who could drive passenger cars far back
into remote canyons we used to hike hours to reach on foot, and that scenario was played out
in dozens, if not hundreds of other places. We do not hunt there anymore, but I have my
notions about what should be done anyplace big-game range is going to be violated like that.
No new road construction should be allowed until an environmental impact statement
and ALL its effects on big-game animals has been thoroughly studied and evaluated. The
federal government does exactly this through the Environmental Protection Administration
(EPA) on everything from mice, butterflies, and rodents, so why not an animal as important
as mule deer? It only makes common sense to do so, but first there must be the will!
WINTER RANGE
I've briefly mentioned recreational properties being sold cheaply for summer homes
or winter ski chalets, and their most serious effect on deer is their location. The great
majority of these are at lower elevations on the fringes of national forest lands where
timber thins or ends, and where sagebrush, bitterbrush, wild grasses and forbs grow because
of exposure to sunlight. In other words, much of this land removes the mule deers vital
winter range with roads, homes, people and vehicles, appearing to have little value to many.
Mule deer are, and always have been, wilderness animals. They are not at ease, nor do
they prosper, living on the fringes or sometimes right in suburbia as whitetails and
blacktails often do so successfully. No deer herd can survive or propagate without
sufficient carrying capacity on its winter range, regardless of what support it gets the rest
of the year. Winter stresses deer like no other time of the year, and the greatest losses
are the oldest, often largest bucks first who've come out of the rut already run down, and
yearling animals, small and without the stamina of their mothers. When winter range is lost
either through home construction, "all weather" Interstate Highways that block or divert
animals from traditional migration routes and seasonal patterns, and dam pools that flood
winter valleys, their numbers fall dramatically.
PREDATOR CONTROL
As if the question of federal management policies isn't contentious enough, we come
to the subject of whether or not predator control plays a significant hand in mule deer
numbers. In recent years the trend has been to reduce mans efforts to limit predatory
animals that take big-game such as coyotes and especially mountain lions, but I believe it
can and should play a role in those areas where deer populations have been adversely
effected by mans heavy hand, for it can be an effective tool in limited areas, and over
limited periods of time.
City dwelling Californian's voted to ban the taking of mountain lions even though
they were on a strict quota system originally that never threatened their existence. Yet,
after several years of study, state fish and game biologists came to the conclusion that the
golden state actually had a population of at least 6,000 big cats, and more than any other
state in the continental United States! As their populations swelled, new toms moved out
into new range while people moved into their former domain to experience "country living."
The results were inevitable. Household pets disappeared, two women were actually attacked,
killed and partially eaten, nearly a dozen youngsters mauled by roving lions. Ranching
relatives of my wifes family had a big tom jump one of their horses right behind their
house, and another lion laid up on rocks nearby to watch his wife hang out
clothes until they ran it off. How many mule deer do you think lions along the Sierra Nevada
mountains kill annually with numbers like this? No one knows, but it must be a substantial
figure. Deer hunters in recent years have had the big cats even make determined advances on
them, and one stood his ground and took Polaroid pictures published in the states big-game
magazine, just to show how bold they've become.
Clearly, the cats should be thinned down substantially, but they will not be because of
romantic silliness. So much for big-game management via the ballot box, but that does not
mean it cannot be applied in other states as needed.
SOLUTIONS
Can the many problems highlighted in this story be addressed by those of us
supporting the comeback of the big deer? Of course they can, but it will take work. A number
of prominent organizations now exist dedicated to helping mule deer and they want and need the
support of hunters from coast to coast. Some directly lobby state and federal agencies
during the policy making process, while others support big-game projects with money and even
grants to organizations and public agencies with plans to improve the deers lot. Here are
four outstanding ones and how to contact them.
The Mule Deer Foundation, 1005 Terminal Way, Suite 170, Reno, Nevada, 89502.
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, 1120 Connecticut Avenue, NY, Suite 900, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Safari Club International, 4800 West Gates Pass Road, Tucson, Arizona, 85745.
The Berryman Institute, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 84322.
Further information and details on all these organizations also be found on the Internet
at http://www.muledeer.org/.
As for individual hunters ourselves, there is much we too can do. When state and
federal agencies convene on effecting mule deer, we must make it a point to attend
those public meeting and have our voices and concerns heard. You don't have to be a
big-game biologist or wildlife manager to express your view and relate what you've seen
over the years in the field.
Letters to Forest Service managers and supervisors, either in your local district or those
you plan to hunt, are well worth the time and effort to write. Anyone can also write his or
her senator and congressman asking for policy changes long overdue. Can you imagine someone
in the halls of power suddenly getting a couple of hundred letters about mule deer and why
they've been so badly short changed over the years. It's very likely they've never received
a letter on the subject in their entire political careers.
Finally, what is clear is this. If we just give the big deer of the west the same
attention, study, and funding that's been dolled out to other species of plants, birds, and
even rodents, then we can have them into the future for our children, grandchildren, and
their children's children. To simply let them drift as has been done in the past is no
longer acceptable and nothing short of criminal. It is time those who support the mule deer
stand up and make their voices heard.
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