ND Mule deer population decline! Why?

 Its a good thing that dead horses dont get sore.

Well............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................good question. 

Three bad winters is a row.  That's why.

How about a unlimited non resident hunting season that goes from sept 1 - dec

Bad winters is most likely the biggest problem so far.  Don't forget about disease too.
Time to close the season for a year or two but i don't think that would ever happen.  We need to close it in some of our whitetail units also but, it is big money and that won't ever happen.  Yes we got spoiled by the big herds and the big racks but the population is way down in our unit by about 80% or more.  Thank the Lord for this mild winter, not only for the deer but for the birds also!

I wonder why wolves and mt. lions were almost extinct in this area 80 years ago.

Shorthairs, that is not true

I'd like to see a population curve for the North Unit of the park, if something like that exists.  That would give us an idea if how human activity (hunting and developement) impacts the population, as I'm sure the North unit has its share of big cats.

Shorthairs said:  "How about a unlimited non resident hunting season that goes from sept 1 - dec"
How many non residents can we shoot now?????

 

 I think this topic has been brought up ten other times, and we have all the answers already.

Bad winters is probably the biggest factor in lack of fawn recruitment. The delemma with the cats I believe is they don't get to finish their meal because the coyotes finish it for them. Which in turn means they have to kill more often than normal. This has been documented in other states and in a couple of years we will have better documentation here. I do not want to even fathom how many deer will be gone during the study period. This winters' weather has been a nice repreve for all wildlife.

I imagine they all left on their own free will so they wouldn't have to listen to all the whining and complaining from ND hunters anymore...

Meelosh Said:
I imagine they all left on their own free will so they wouldn't have to listen to all the whining and complaining from ND hunters anymore...

Coincidently, that is also what happened to all the whitetails in unit 3a1.

One reason... and one reason only... Sasquatch.  The problem will persist until an experimental season is declared on these creatures. 

-Justin

You'll find studies aren't taken that serious.  Not even the one in Canada with collared cats of which provided a very thorough study.

We don't live in Colorado, Alberta, Arizona, Wyoming or Montana where our thousands of cat habitat is a pin hole in what the aforementioned states have.  We have an onslaught of cats from the Black Hills.  They are breeding heavily.  They are not doing typical home ranges.  They are not being as territorial (or so it seems with how many males hang out within one another).  We DO NOT have even a comparable population of mule deer to the states mentioned.  Point being, when you don't have a mule deer population that is big in the first place you have a situation where more than just winter kills deer.  There should hardly be a winter kill this year but we have many cats out there killing as I type.  This was never a problem in the past.

We've had bad strings of winters before in this state people.  More than once at that.  Yes, winter is a leading cause but we've also never had a predator like that of the 2000's cat infestation.  Ignoring the statistical and common statistical data on cats is just ignorance in my opinion.

The Canadian study makes all the sense in the world to me.  Some will say "oh it isn't North Dakota so we have to throw it out."  Fine, but remember you are throwing out a study that supports MOST of the previous hundred studies done.  Can't we take some pretty common sense studied information to the bank?

Cats primarily feed on deer.  In the Badlands, most of their prey is mule deer because that is the habitat the cats are said to need to live.  Whitetails are there too and no doubt are being taken out as well but most of the cats won't be chasing down a whitetail in the flat river bottoms.  They will remain up in habitat that best suits their abilities to kill.

We are going to find out shortly with the mule deer count this year (doe to fawn).  I expect nothing but exceptional reproduction.  The question is, how many of those reproduced fawns will make it to see one year old?  When you have several litters of females and kittens which prefer to prey on young of the year deer it obviously means our deer that are needed to rebound the population aren't going to get that chance.  NDGF needs to focus counts on fawn to doe ratios toward the one year period.  I think they already do that but to do a doe to fawn count early and consider it good isn't giving time for the predators to do noticeable damage.

So far, 22 cats were killed this year with two additional cats that were contained and collared.  Do the math.

Those studies show cats kill a lot of deer, but the badland mulie numbers of 4 or 5 years ago coincide well with the statewide high deer population, just as the the current decline in badland mulie numbers coincide well with the current statewide decline in the deer herd. But in the east, the side of the state that always has hard winters(this year being the only exception I remember in a long time), the deer population is extremely low there also. To say the cats don't matter to the deer herd would be pretty foolish I think, but I think the tags are the biggest problem. 

SHORTHAIRSRUS Said:
How about a unlimited non resident hunting season that goes from sept 1 - dec

yeah i know the feeling. I quit bear hunting in NW minnesota a few years ago because of all the Ndak hunters that infest my area the 1st of sept each year. Ooops i forgot, Ndaks arent considered non-res hunters when they go to Montana for elk or MN. for their bears!!

It must be hard for you to get home from work every night when you leave on a one-way street every morning!

I sometimes wonder why we even bother having a quota on the cats anymore.  It's obvious that there are PLENTY of them.  Go ahead and have a limit of one per hunter per year if you want (as a management tool).  But why not have an unlimited quota overall in Zone 1? 

I don't believe they would even become extinct in the state if this were done.  The badlands is still a vast area, and the cats have shown the ability to adapt and to live in places that we do not consider "lion habitat".  There's so many nooks and crannies out there, you'd have to have quite a number of hunters with dogs to eliminate all of them.  And I just don't see that happening.  I could be wrong.

On a side issue... I don't think it makes sense either for money to be put into bighorn sheep if the cats are just going to eat them too.

Anybody want to start an initiated measure to have an unlimited quota on cats in the state of North Dakota?  LOL!

-Justin

Maybe the same appoch should be take that was taken with the goats. Close season for several years.   Hunters kill more deer than the cats right?