ODF NEWS

FYI

MEDFORD, Ore.?The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission today adopted the 2015 Oregon Big Game Regulations, which includes increasing the statewide cougar quota.

Major changes include several modifications to archery season regulations as a result of the recent Archery Review Public Advisory Committee process, including:
?Adding three controlled archery deer hunts in Walla Walla, Mount Emily and Wenaha units, and removal of the requirement to have a controlled elk archery tag to deer hunt. The tag will also be valid during the general archery season.
?Adding a new November controlled archery white-tailed deer hunt in the Wenaha unit (estimate 30 tags, will be the hunters only archery deer opportunity).
?Severing the link between archery deer and elk tags in Sled Springs, Chesnimnus, Maury, and Warner units, meaning an archery elk tag will no longer be required to hunt deer.
?Adding new Maury and Warner unit controlled archery elk hunts. Tags will also be valid during the general archery season.
?Returning Sled Springs, Chesnimnus, and Steens Mountain units to the general archery deer season.

Other changes include:
?Increasing the statewide cougar quota from 777 to 970 to reflect increasing cougar populations, more damage and public safety issues from cougar in some areas, and deer and elk populations that are below objectives in many areas.
?Adding one week to the Saddle Mountain unit late archery deer hunt and ending a long-standing closure for deer hunting in the unit north of the Burlington Northern tracks. The area was closed years ago to protect Columbian White-Tailed deer. The deer population has expanded, making the closure unnecessary.
?Added the Keating unit and removed the Stott Mountain unit from areas where archery hunters and hunters with a disability permit may take an antlerless elk during bull seasons.

The Commission turned down a staff recommendation to add a new spring bear hunt in Southwest Oregon. The Siskiyou Plus hunt would have added 250 tags to the spring season

Wow. So they refuse to increase harvest on a very healthy predator population of bears in SW OR and make a few extra bucks. Yet they ignore the pleas of hunters to reduce harvest on buck/bull populations that are drastically below MO.
Just when I think they could not disappoint me more, they find a way.

LAST EDITED ON Oct-12-14 AT 10:54PM (MST)[p]So they tell us in advance they intend to do absolutely nothing on the mule deer situation. in fact , if anything those changes make it worse.

This is why I've had nothing to do with OHA since it was hijacked from the man who founded it. a bunch of spineless yes men who brown nose ODFW.

Forgive me if I seem even more bitter about ODFW's destruction of the mule deer species than normal. I just returned from Murderers Creek and it's was so damn pathetic it's going to take me a while to calm down. it's go beyond pathetic to criminal.

There should be NO season on mule deer in any unit that does not meet objective levels hunters and landowners in the unit compromise on. save what deer are left and break a stick off in ODFW at the same time. it's a place to start.
















Stay thirsty my friends

I hear ya 440, We have been hunting the Ukiah Unit since the mid-80's and we would see around 50 deer a day on average. Not always bucks but we were seeing deer. This year I bow hunted the Ukiah unit for 10 days. In the 10 days I saw two bucks which were right at daylight my first day hunting. Didn't get a shot. That was all I seen for deer in 10 days. I didn't even jump any. This is really getting serious and nothing is being done.

I've hunted the same area for 40 years, since I was 12. when I started it was a matter of which 4 point you wanted , then it was down to finding a decent 4 point, then any four point, then a 3 point, now any buck which is where I draw the line.

The hunting sucked where we were as usual, but there were 10 times the normal amount of hunters which I assumed was because of the fire area closure. after talking to a few of them I found it was because word had got out our area was the hot spot. hot spot? I hunted two days before I saw a doe! never did see a buck.

Guys said they had hunted for days down on Deer Creek without seeing a deer. unreal.

The simple question I have is, WTF are we having a deer season at all for? the scum bag road hunters were whacking anything that looked like it had horns , the harder the hunting is the worse people get. excatly the opposite of what a true sportsman is supposed to do. the whole thing is depressing and pathetic.











Stay thirsty my friends

Stories like 440's are exaxtly why I havent rifle hunted for mule deer in easten Oregon since 1997. It sucked then and doesn't sound like it has gotten any better.

I only Muzzy hunt for Eastern Oregon deer, at least I don't see a lot of people when I'm out there. I usually find something to shoot too. With less people in the woods it's easier to find deer.

I don't like what ODFW is doing to the Mule Deer, I've mentioned that to them many times, I'm always told I'm a minority type hunter. I guess the average hunter doesn't care if they see anything when they go deer hunting, as long as they get to go they are happy. I'm not happy if I don't see deer when I go hunting for them.

For the record you couldn't pay me to drive to Chesnimnus unit to archery hunt deer. I spent 16 days there when I was on my sheep hunt and saw 4-5 bucks. Not enough for me to drive 8 hours and hike another 3 to get to where I saw them. There may be places that hold deer there but not where I was!

Most of those proposals are pretty blah to me, not really significant changes and not really going to help anything. However the thing that is ridiculous to me is the increase in the cougar quota. As far as I can tell, Oregon has never killed the quota of cougars in any year since dogs were outlawed. The highest number killed was 537 and only 309 of those were hunter kills. Last year there were still over 200 cougars left in the quota so the quota could have been 1000 or 10,000 or 1,000,000 last year and it would not have changed the cougar harvest. If it was a mandatory quota then I could see it being a more effective tool, so if the harvest was 200 below the quota then ODFW goes out and kills 200 cougars to meet the quota. That's not how it works so I don't see how the increased quota will help.

>Most of those proposals are pretty
>blah to me, not really
>significant changes and not really
>going to help anything. However
>the thing that is ridiculous
>to me is the increase
>in the cougar quota. As
>far as I can tell,
>Oregon has never killed the
>quota of cougars in any
>year since dogs were outlawed.
>The highest number killed was
>537 and only 309 of
>those were hunter kills. Last
>year there were still over
>200 cougars left in the
>quota so the quota could
>have been 1000 or 10,000
>or 1,000,000 last year and
>it would not have changed
>the cougar harvest. If it
>was a mandatory quota then
>I could see it being
>a more effective tool, so
>if the harvest was 200
>below the quota then ODFW
>goes out and kills 200
>cougars to meet the quota.
>That's not how it works
>so I don't see how
>the increased quota will help.
>


I agree, increasing cougar quota doesn't fix anything.

It does for stupid hunters, they see that and think " great, killing more lions should make my hunting better next year "

Lets face it if most hunters weren't stupid ODFW would have had their feet in the fire years ago. just a chance to whack a spike, that's all they ask.

I saw a guy about my age, old enough to know better, loading up a forkie he had just whacked out the window as I walked back to camp at dark. he was grinning ear to ear as if he's just shot the new state record . if you'd ask him I'm sure he'd say ODFW should be giving out raises. you can't fix stupid and you can't fix this mess with 5% of the hunters on board.

We're screwed is my opinion .











Stay thirsty my friends

You can also tell the hunting is bad by the amount of beer cans that are on the side of the road. My hunting partner took a afternoon to pick up cans on the road and he ended up with $9.00 in cans. On his way back there was already fresh cans on the side of the road where he just picked them up. He took them down to Pendleton and gave them to some lady in the can return line. I think at least 50% of the hunters are just going deer hunting to drink and get away. They don't care that mule deer are on the brink. Also this new generation of hunters have no respect for the woods. They just trash the place and go home.

Welcome to the minority club 440! I don't get the "I have to fill my tag" attitude. It's not about just filling a tag to me.

Unfortunately the problem is not one-dimensional. We could kill 970 cougars per year and that would not solve it, we could change the tags to 4 point or better and that wouldn't solve it, or we could have a 2 year moratorium on deer hunting and that wouldn't solve it, if we could eliminate all poaching that wouldn't solve it, we could improve habitat and water and it wouldn't be fixed, if we could prevent all vehicle deaths there would still be a problem, we could reduce coyote and bear populations and that wouldn't fix it either. If the situation is going to get better we have to work for marginal improvements in all of those areas. Obviously if we could have drastic improvement in all those areas we would see recovery happen quicker but the reality is that it will take time to see improvement. So it will mean each of us doing little things. Killing a cougar/bear/coyote, passing on younger bucks, taking only good shots to avoid wounding bucks, watching for and turning in poachers, going to ODFW meetings, improving and maintaining habitat (as in not driving our 4-wheelers across country. Just last week I was hunting a ridge and I watched a guy drive his 4 wheeler through prime winter range of 4 foot high buckbrush, leaving a 5' swath of dead buckbrush for half a mile. Sage can bounce back from being run over, buckbrush cannot.) If can see small improvements in many of these factors, we may be able to see some recovery. I'm hopeful that things can improve but it has to start now, if it does not happen soon, there will come a point when the population is too small for recovery to occur.

I disagree.

I think the major problem is predation. ODFW is not totally at fault for the predation, they could do more but refuse to. but they are 100% at fault for not screaming IT'S PREDATION at the top of their lungs so we could force the issue into the spotlight. most biologist I've talked to do not agree with me, they want to do more studies. duh.

When I was a kid we had deer EVERYWHERE on my ranch, we had TONS of deer in most of eastern OR . what has changed?

The Habitat is better, believe me. we used to over graze AWFUL.

Poaching was always a problem.

Many more deer were killed by many more hunters.

Lions? much fewer.

Coyotes ? many fewer. the county trappers were always out with traps and 1080 protecting sheep producers.


Elk, I do believe high numbers of elk harm deer numbers, and we have many more elk today. that said, even where good elk numbers existed years ago there were still plenty of deer. just not as many as where elk we fewer.

Winterkill? no. the last deer killer was 92-93 and I saw FAR more deer the season after that than we have today.

So to say it's not predation demands a logical atlternative. I'm all ears.












Stay thirsty my friends

I have been in contact with a biologist working inside the experimental forest the last few years checking in after each deer season to see how the hunters did because I have been thinking about putting in for the tag because there is nothing else to put in for. This year out of the 25 hunters they only killed 3 bucks. One four point and two forked horns. They are starting to do studies geared more towards deer now since they have learned about all they can with the elk. They collared over 20 fawns this year and almost all have died. He said most were from predators and a few from disease. That is pretty bad when you lose most your study group. That should be the end of the study right there, pretty clear what is happening to the deer herds. They need to kill every cougar and bear and yote inside the fence and then see how many fawns live from next years study group.

Haha! 440 you always disagree, even if we are saying the same thing Basic summary of what I'm saying: we need less deer killed and more places for them to live. We agree that predation is the biggest problem. I have seen some coyotes packing up around here and that becomes a problem for deer. Cougars are out of control and bears hammer the fawns in the spring. So I'm seeing that and disease as 80% of the problem. But with deer population so low the entire 100% has to be addressed. So in the 70's and 80's, 300 poachers statewide killing 20 deer per year is bad but not going to impact a population of 300,000 all that much, 1.6% of the population. But when we have a population of 100,000 that's 5% and say 5% killed by vehicles and right there you have 10% of your population dying off every year. In the 80's that same 10,000 deaths would have been much less significant, like 3% of the population. So yes, the other factors are still there like they were in the 80's but they are having a bigger impact on the population because it is so small at this point. Habitat is better than in the past, but more can still be done. Things like juniper cuts, planting buckbrush and mahogany, reducing medusahead and cheatgrass and adding water holes and troughs will continue give the deer extra help. If the deer have more places they can go, it will allow them to spread out and avoid the predators more easily. If you have one water hole out in the desert and that's the only thing for 10-20 miles, all the deer have to come to that and that means all the predators will be there too, disease can spread more easily, etc. If there are 5 water holes in that same area, the deer can spread out and avoid danger, not really necessary 30 years ago because of less predators and no Chronic Wasting Disease but it could be very important now. The same would hold true with feeding and wintering areas, the more areas there are the more they can spread out and avoid predators.
Ideally, ODFW reduces the predator populations by half, realistically, that will not happen so I think we have to try to help the deer in every other way possible (the "every little bit helps" mentality) and focus hard on (legally) taking out predators as individuals while advocating for more ODFW action.

LAST EDITED ON Oct-16-14 AT 03:21PM (MST)[p]

Every lion killed is great, but without dogs the population cannot be controlled.

Coyotes are a major problem, hunters could have a bigger impact on them but most guys who are interested are already at it.

Habitat is a feel good issue. there is 10 times the habitat the deer need already. deer can live from above timberline to your back yard without any problems.

It's good for hunters to take control of what they can I'm not arguing that, but we pay ODFW to work in our interest and they aren't. we need to fix that.

This is the kind of chit I'm talking about. we need to study this? they're self serving parasites and we're just watching like clowns.

http://dfw.state.or.us/Wolves/research.asp

















Stay thirsty my friends

I don't have a problem with the research. What bothers me is not doing anything with the data/reasearch results. We pay for herd composition assessments every year, yet do we see changes in tag numbers to the level needed to meet M.O.'s, no.

I begged the Commission to reduce buck harvest in the Minam as it has not met buck ratios for 11 years. No changes planned. Why waste the money on paying for a biologist if that is how we are going to do things? Very frustrating.

But why spend money on a wolf study? if you want to see what happens look at ID and WY were the wolves are. there isn't anything different in OR except we're starting off with lower game numbers so do the math.

Who gives a FF how lion and wolves interact? as if it hasn't been studied already anyway. I will bet anyone any amount they'd like to bet wolves won't have a positive effect on the game herds no matter what the kitty thinks of them.

I guess my point is ODFW isn't doing anything but studying the obvious so they can justify their existence. I would rather they use the obvious for the benefit of the game rather than job security.













Stay thirsty my friends