I just had to weigh in on this topic. Grew up hunting the Nebo-- 40 years plus now-- back backed in-- archery rifle muzzleloader--. Been into about every canyon, spring etc east of the peaks of Nebo to Nebo Creek etc. I have seen tons of deer during good years, lots of elk until 7-8 years ago. The number and size of deer I used to find in the Sawmill, Slab, Bear Canyon, Nebo Creek, Salt Creek etc began to disappear 25 years ago, so I began hunting the east basins of Nebo-- did that for over 25 years-- While there are still a few good bucks in that area it is getting worse and worse. I used to see 100 to 200 deer easily in the mornings while hiking through those basins-- and always a few really good bucks to focus in on in the upcoming hunts- its getting so I am lucky to see 20 to 30 deer now. The Nebo is managed for maximum hunter use-- in other words-- as a former DWR biologist said in a meeting -- 'Nebo is a sacrifice area' It is managed for the Wasatch Front resident hunter- good road access and only 30 minutes away. I was hoping with the 30 unit program that Annis would limit the hunters for a few years and see if that helped. When the tag numbers came out, it looks like the same old story. I questioned him why so many tags and he just said we will adjust it up or down if we need to in the coming years. A former member of the RAC, the Forest Service rep. ,ask for the DWR to double the bear tags for the Nebo area. He went on to say that it has the highest concentration of bears in his management area which was the Cache, Wasatch and Uintah National Forest. Bears are a problem for fawns and calf elk-- don't kid yourselve. They take their piece of the pie every year now. Just less for us. Also, don't kid yourself about the cougar and coyote problem, they take a huge number of animals every year. Some cougars will kill more than 1 per week. They are opportunists-- it doesn't matter if they just killed two days ago, if the opportunity is right, they will kill again. They are incredible predators. One of the biggest reasons that the deer herds grew and flourished so much in the 50's and 60's is because of the widespread use of 1080 poison by cattlemen, ranchers, gov't trappers etc.for controlling predators. As soon as it was banned,herd numbers began to decrease and have reached a point now that in some places fawn production and survival doesn't replace the number of animals that die each year from all causes. They are in a negative growth mode.
It is interesting that sometimes I see almost as many bears as I do deer.
I do give the DWR some credit for --finally-- backing off on the slaughter of elk on the unit. No antlerless tags this year and 25% reduction in LE tags. If they keep it this way for 5 years the unit will make a comeback. Sometimes they are just slow to respond to decreasing herd numbers. I flew part of the unit 2 years ago and in 3 hours of flying in a helicopter we counted exactly "0" elk ! It was was unbelievable but true. I guess that one of the comments made by a biologist fit-- ' I guess we might have overdone it on this unit'. I do think that they are doing their best to keep up with things, but its tough to have the time they need to address problems in every area quickly.
I believe Nebo could(and has) produced some great bucks and bulls. I just hope that we can get the DWR to help it get there again by doing what needs to be done. I think that all the predators ( including us) need to be reduced and give the unit a chance to recover.
