Nebo Management Plan

I say no way! the DWR has already outlined the reasoning for the drop in buck/doe ratios and the limiting factors of the deer herd as:

1) Crop depradation
2) Habitat--"Winter range is a limiting factor for deer on this unit. Large portions of critical winter ranges experienced a large die-off in recentyears and are in poor coindition. This has resulted in a reduction of winter range carrying capacity."
3) Predation
4) Highway mortality
5) illegal harvest

Because these are the limting factors, changing hunter harvest will NOT solve the problem but could very possibly only exasperate it. This is possible for two reasons: 1) increased competition for limited forage on winter ranges may lead to bucks outcompeting does for available food which could lead to fewer does and fewer fawns 2) over utilization of winter ranges which could further deplete the available forage and subsequently leave does and fawns in worse condition and a decreased doe/fawn ratio.

Limiting hunter harvest will ONLY help struggling deer herds out when these herds are being limited by hunter harvest. For the Nebo unit to rebound and improve, the above limiting factors must be corrected; these are the problems.

coyoteslayer said:

You even said so yourself that you are seeing more mature bucks on the 5 day hunts so if you are seeing more mature then then more bucks are escaping hunter harvest.

I think the DWR needs to focus on each individual area within the whole region and when some areas fall below objective then they should use other methods of management instead of just giving 12,000 tags out and letting people hunt anywhere because some areas always get hit harder than others.

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1) NO, this isn't true...and this is what I have tried to repeatedly tell you. The SAME amount of bucks are still being shot despite the shortened season. The DWR has good evidence to back this up...I may be seeing more "mature" bucks, but that doesn't mean fewer bucks are being killed. Also, other factors are probably coming into play...we have recently had more moisture than the severe drought years. This alone would contribute to better and/or more bucks. Again, you can't make this a simple cause and effect thing...it is too complicated to look at it that way.

2) Again, I too like the idea of smaller management units...BUT, if hunter harvest isn't the problem, giving out less tags will NOT be the solution! Right now, the numbers of deer killed is not holding/limiting the herd...other factors are. I don't understand why you can't get that!

Also, by limiting the hunt to 5 days, you will displace hunters from one area and increase hunter pressure to other areas...for the Central Region and specifically the Nebo area, this is not a good thing because the region as a whole is below objective.

Come on Wyo2ut, there isnt any reason to call people thickheaded. Why dont you try acting like an adult instead of a little snotty nose kid. When people dont agree with you then you call them thick-headed. This shows your mentality. I know somewhere inside you could have some class. When you call people thick-headed then it shows to don't have good character. I hope you dont use these types of methods with your students. Wyo2ut I just dont agree with you. You dont know the Nebo area that much. I have talked with habitat managers about this very subject. I have talked with biologists about this subject and they all agree that other factors can be involved and when you have snowfall during the rifle hunt then it will increase harvest pure and simple and it becomes a factor which reduces the buck/doe ratios.

The DWR havent listed all the factors involved with the Nebo Unit. Even the DWR biologist agree that moving the rifle hunt will help and that is the main reason they are trying to get control over the date.

coyoteslayer said:

I have talked with habitat managers about this very subject. I have talked with biologists about this subject and they all agree that other factors can be involved and when you have snowfall during the rifle hunt then it will increase harvest pure and simple and it becomes a factor which reduces the buck/doe ratios.

The DWR havent listed all the factors involved with the Nebo Unit. Even the DWR biologist agree that moving the rifle hunt will help and that is the main reason they are trying to get control over the date.

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The DWR Has listed the limiting factors...you see, that is what they do. They first determine the problem, then they determine the cause of the problem, then they try to fix the problem. Unlike yourself, they don't try to fix things that aren't broken.

The bottom line, Coyote, is that you just don't get it! And the more stuff you spout out, the more obvious it is that you have a total lack of understanding. You claim that biologists tell you things and yet the biologists own work contradict exactly what you claim...sorry, but I think you are full of crap!

It doesn't matter whether the snow falling increases harvest...HARVEST IS NOT THE LIMITING FACTOR. The factors limiting the herd have nothing to do with legal harvest."

Coyote, you are not just "disagreeing" with me...you are disagreeing with the very essence of mule deer biology and management...and the core of mule deer biologists in the western US. You are disagreeing with the fact that does are the driving force behind herd health. What you and other hunters want is more bucks...your answer to this problem is an oversimplified approach of simply reducing harvest. The key, though, to having more bucks is by having more deer and subsequently a healthier herd...if you kill fewer bucks, you could be replacing does and losing fawns and having a smaller herd. Your solution is counterproductive.

I had posted this before, but here is a conversation at a RAC meeting this past summer, it addresses the very thing I have been talking about. Read it Coyote...it explains the very thing you don't understand:

Steve Dalton: My question concerns deer. On your graphs you put up there you have one called reproduction comparison. Aren't all of these scenarios that you've presented here based on the fact that you have a maximum population for the herd unit?

Kent Hersey: Yes it is. It's for units that we are at objective and we are keeping it at that objective.

Steve Dalton: So anything that is under objective doesn't fall into this same scenario you presented to us here, for instance the Henry Mountain deer herd that's way below objective still.

Kent Hersey: It's all driven by the number of does in that population. Given the same reproductive rates and the same number of does it doesn't matter how many bucks are in there, you would have the same reproduction. But the fact is on a lot of these units we, if we are very high on does, I mean you have, and if you start getting into habitat damage issues because of too many deer or something like that these bucks are in place of a doe that could be putting out a fawn. And that's what drives your growth, not bucks.

Steve Dalton: Sure I understand that. What my point was, the point I'm trying to make is if you're under objective on the herd unit then the buck to doe ration isn't managing for population or potential it's just managing to reduce the number of bucks in that herd. I guess what bothers me, I live right on Boulder Mountain and they're managing that 15 to 20 does per hundred or bucks per 100 does. Yeah we're way below objective on the herd unit. The population of the herd is way up.

Kent Hersey: Well it doesn't matter if you manage it for 15 to 20, or 30 to 35, I mean your bucks will not affect your growth. You can harvest as many bucks as you want and it will not affect that population's growth. It will come back just as fast if we're at 15 to 20 as it would in another scenario. I mean the doe harvest is the key to whether that things going to grow and if we're way under objective we won't be harvesting does unless we have depredation issues.

This is getting entertaining!

I don't think either one of you is "thick headed", but I'm pretty **** sure that the both of you are Pig headed to some degree. I don't know a **** thing about Nebo, other than it's just past the land of theocrats, heretics and good football. Ok, I lied about knowing nothing, but it didn't fit what I was trying to say.

It would stand to reason that loss of habitat as a whole, is severely more detrimental to herd health than hunter harvest.

If I had an ant farm and I decided to kill 2 a day fr 3 months, but stoppped feeding them after a month, could I expect to have the same amount of ants? If I stopped killing my ants, would that change the fact that they didn't have any food?

If I kept feeding them at a rate that made them outproduce how many I was killing, would they continue to multiply until the ant farm was overflowing? I have this plant in my house, the first 2 years I owned it, it grew from about 4 inches to about 5 1/2 inches. I started talking with the guy at the nursery who had one about the same age that was much bigger. He said to give it a bigger pot, so I did, and it grew.

Solution = More ant food and a bigger ant farm.

coyoteslayer said:

If you asked this question to 20 different wildlife biologists, you would most likely get a different answer from each of them. It amazes me, as a biologist, the response I get from this question; everyone has his or her own opinion and it's hard to get a real good answer

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Even Todd Black asks questions so Steven Dalton and Kent Hersey are just voicing opinions and they are necessary facts.

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Talk about cherrypicking articles...I have read that article numerous times. I should have known that you would fall back on your old reliable Mr. Black. The problem is that Mr. Black is referring to deer populations throughout the west and NOT specific areas. You are trying to say that biologists would contradict one another on why deer populations are in trouble...the problem is that all the biologists don't work in the same areas and each individual area has different limiting factors; therefore, biologists do disagree on what the limiting factors are. Also, the Central Region's objectives, limiting factors, and strategies for achieving objectives are not only agreed upon by the biologists within the region but in the state as well.

If I were to continue quoting the article from MR. Black, it would say: "The truth is mule deer and mule deer populations are complex and narrowing their decline down to one specific problem would be ludicrous." It is absolutely "ludicrous", to quote your favorite biologist, to simply identify hunter harvest as the limiting factor of the buck/doe ratios on Nebo. Yet, this is exactly what you want to do when you continue to support reducing harvest for this unit!

Again, by arguing that by killing fewer bucks we will have more deer/bucks on the Nebo unit, you are arguing the most basic of all mule deer principles and one that is FACT and not argued--does are the driving force behind population increases and recruitment not bucks.