First Hand Accounts of 231 or 241-24x?

[Tilzbow]

With the huge reductions in deer tags in these areas this year I’m wondering if anyone has first hand accounts after the archery hunt and if it’s really as bad as the biologist made it sound in the tag proposals.

 

[Homer]

It is...

 

[Malu]

I snagged a 231 tag off the FCFS last year, hunted 11 days and only saw 33 deer that were not on the private land alfalfa. Ran into several hunters and outfitters who couldn’t find much of anything as well and reported non-normal conditions (something I expected with the drought). Everyone seemed to think it was horrible. I came to Nevada with some intel on the unit from a few different people who live near the unit or had hunted it in the recent past—all taking extremely nice bucks. If this year was like last year, then I would expect it to be as bad as what you are hearing. Not to say that you won’t find a quality deer in there, it may just be more difficult in the past years. Coming from CO, it was a much different hunt than I expected and if I had the tag again I would hunt it a lot differently the second go around. Luckily I didn’t have to burn but 2 points for the tag. I definitely would not waste a ton of points on the unit with conditions the way they are. But, had I had an elk tag I could have harvested some ginormous bulls! The elk didn’t seem to be affected as badly as the deer in my opinion.

 

[Tilzbow]

Thanks guys! It seems strange the elk aren’t being impacted as much since part of the reason given for the deer being down are the freaking feral horses and their diet is more similar to elk than deer. That said those big nasty invasive rats will eat just about anything when the conditions are bad.

I‘m a long time resident (since 1977), hunted 231 in 2011 with a bow, it was pretty spectacular and have been saving my points for the last few years until I retired (retired April 2021) so I could put a full season in over there. I didn‘t apply for either set of units this year due to the poor reports and was just wondering what’s happening over there.

I think eastern NV got a lot of monsoonal rains the past few months (although I can’t find data to back this up) so hopefully the conditions improve some this fall, we get a good wet winter and spring and the improvement continues.