Before You Wet yourself hawky for Me Not Answering The Question:
According To Your Lion Numbers:
156,000 approx
How Many Deer Do Coyotes Kill in a Year?
How Many Deer Get Killed In Road-Kills?
How Many Deer A Year Get Killed In Fences?
How Many Deer Are Poached Every Year?
How Many Deer Are Harvested By DRATS Every Year?
I Will Expect An Answer On This One From You Or The KING Since Mandatory Harvests Never Happen!
There's Many More reasons of Death On Deer Than What I Just Posted!
How Many Deer Were Taken By Winter-Kill this Year?
Add Em Up Boys!
EDIT:I Better Mention Bears!
I Don't Want cantkillathing Mad At Me For Leaving Bears Out Of The Equation!
I will field this one bess.
So 156,000 deer killed by cats that's your numbers.
So coyote's: my guess is not a ton of adult deer but they do hit the fawn crops pretty hard. Even still probably fewer than the cats. Now what has been done about it? Well a lot actually, they have state trappers and aerial hunting in the problem areas, they have implemented a bounty on them that gets used heavily by a lot of people to help incentives people to hunt them. Could it be better yes we could do better, but it is being addressed.
Road kill: way to many deer being killed on the roadways, but they are putting up fencing and over/under passes where it makes sense, and I am assuming that work will continue. So while it's probably never going to be fixed it is being addressed.
Fences: good number of deer killed in fences every year, but still not nearly the numbers killed by lions. That said the dwr are working with ranchers, conservation orgs, and other state agencies to put up deer safe fencing any where they can. It's not going to cure the problem but hopefully it helps, and is being addressed where it can be.
Poaching: some deer get poached no doubt about it, but it's no where near a problem to the overall heath of the herd and they have programs to help incentivese people for turning people in. Personally I don't feel it's near the issue it probably was 20+ years ago, but still an issue and everyone should help to stop it.
Drat hunters: well since there is around 85,000 tags issued and the harvest % is well below 50% I would say less than 40,000 deer killed by hunters every year. BUT!!!....here is the catch, of that 40,000 probably less than 3% are doe's and since the doe's are the important piece to the herd growth problem then even the mighty DRAT hunters are not having near the effect as the lions that just for safe numbers we will say is killing 60% does. 60% of 156,000 deer is a big number bess. That is 93,000 doe's to cats and that is on the low end, and 12,000 doe's to hunters on the high end. And a majority of those killed by hunters are in areas they have found they need to remove them such as farm land and what not. Cats are doing a number on the deer herd, way more than the DRATS.
Winter kill: some units got hit extremely hard this winter, not much the DWR could do about that but it does suck, but a lot of areas have done really well and this winter is going to help boost those areas deer numbers in the next couple years.
Bears: bears are again killing lots a fawns, but I doubt they are killing a large number of adults. But I say we open up the Bear hunts as well, you are right bess we got way to many of them stinking bears we should be killing a lot more of them.
So how did Ido bess?
Out of the list I see two major problem areas, roads, and predators, we are pretty limited on what we can do with the roads, but coyote's, bears, and lion's? Let's get after them and make a difference, what do you say Bess? And I know there are a number of other things that are contributing hell you might even say 50+ other things right?, but the two major problems are roads and predators. I guess if you really wanted to you could say hunters are probably #3 on the list, but being as that is the main driver of why we want to grow the population is to hunt them more I don't see how we can list it as one of the main issues. If we was killing copious amounts of doe's every year like Colorado I would be right there with ya, but in Utah that is not the case.
