Okay Scott, let me wade into this........Geez, you and I need to get a life. Wish there was Sunday Football year round. And these fricking winter night............too damn long!
"as far as Im concerned you and your family are a-ok!"
Back at you, you are a family man, first. If every father in this country could take a page out of your book, we'd all be better off. In the most important things in life, deer hunting takes a back seat to family, you got that concept knocked-out!
The doe transplants were not intended to add deer to the pavant because the herd is crashing. The only reason those deer were choose to go there is they had no where else to put them at the time. It was an experiment sfw wanted to do. If it adds additional fawns or growth "bonus".
"Did you know that even with low buck to doe ratios on the general units all the data taken with captured does suggest the does are all getting pregnant. So if it takes two to tango the does are getting tangoed. Should mean growing herd."
Getting all the does breed is only part of the survival equations. The date they are breed is actually more critical than if a does get breed. A doe breed in December or January has almost zero chance of birthing a fawn that will survival the winter. Is a doe that raises a fawn that has no chance to survive an asset or liability, in the big picture? She and her fawn take forage and space on the unit and give back nothing. At least, she's a liability until she raises a fawn that survives. An encouraging thing the data seems to demonstrate, on these higher buck doe ratios is that the does get breed in November so we're fawning in June, which absolutely critical to winter survival. Late birth is almost a guarantee mortality in any winter in Utah. (low body fat in fawns equal spring die off)
We're meeting with the USU biologists that are doing the fawn survival study on the Monroe tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m. Hope to get some good new fawn survival findings out of that meeting. Wish you could come down and share the discussion.
"Now im no fool,I know for a fact if the deer numbers are under objective of what "nature" sets on a unit and if you let the bucks live the herd will look larger because it will have more bucks in it but that doesnt mean that herd is more productive."
Your certainly are no fool.
If you check my wording you'll see I said there would be more does in the herd that was not hunted. I figured we could assume there would be more bucks if we didn't kill any by hunting them. While bucks are necessary, we need more fawns to be born and then survive if we're to grow the herd. If we assume a "standard % of fawn and doe mortality, that is we estimate that a % of the does and fawns will die from old age, highways, predation, disease, etc. we can quite accurately calculate how made fawns need to survive every year, year after year, to grow more deer than we loose to what I call non-hunting mortality. If you run those math calculation using the "what if" tables, you'll see that we need a fawn survival of between 75-80 fawn per hundred down for the size of the herd to increase. If you look back at the data from the 1960, 1970 and early 1980's, most units in Utah were over 70 fawn per 100 does. As you said, the last 10 years or so the herd size has remained about the same, at 300,000 State Wide, give or take 15,000, probably weather related fluctuations. Why has the herd stabilized at that number? If you pull the fawn/doe data you will find, on average, the ratio is under 65 fawns per hundred does on most units. At 60/100 you are flat, you hold stable but you can't grow. You might inch up or down if you get an ideal weather pattern for a year or two together but the minute you get a negative weather pattern, boom, you loose all you gained. So, we sit at or near 300,000 year after year, wondering why we aren't getting some of the deer numbers back, like we had in the 80/early 90's.
We've got to do what ever it takes to push fawn survival over 70/100, preferable as close to 80 as we can get. That is a 10 to 20 percent increase over what we've been averaging for the last 10/15 years. If you compound a 15% percent increase in fawn survival, see how fast your money (I mean deer numbers) grows. If we have 300,000 does now, and can push the fawn survival up from 60/100 to 75 per hundred, we grow to 430,000 in five years. If we can hold that rate for ten years we jump to 618,000. Compare the hunting/harvest opportunity if we can get the herd size from 300,000 to 600,000. It's too late for me, but you and your girls are going to enjoy it.
"However if nature is setting the objective having more bucks could impact the fawns by taking the food out of their mouths. Right now im not so sure nature hasn't already set the objective because the herds have been stable for nearly 10 years. "The 10-12 year drought were in could have something to do with that objective imho." I would bet if we were in a wet cycle at the correct times of year the herd would grow! Besides what good is a unit you can look at and not hunt. We both know you will see more bucks and have an easier and funner hunt if the tags are cut. But is is worth the added wait?"
Nature is setting the objective but we can alter nature. We do it all the time. A domestic sheep wouldn't survive a month without man altering nature. Humans have been doing it for 12,000 years. +/-
A surplus buck will only eat the food out of a fawn or a does mouth, if the area is at or over carrying capacity. Whereas, parts of the Wasatch Front and a smaller part of the Wasatch Back, from Logan to Spanish Fork and about 20 miles wide. Then a few hundred acres in the desert around St. George. The rest of State is nearly identical so far as habitat as it was 50 yeras ago, with exception to the thousand of acres that have been improved through habitat restoration projects. So, with few expectations, there aren't many fawms missing a meal because there are too many bucks. Even on the Henrys and Pauns units, which are desert, desert, desert units, we have room to grow deer herd numbers, granted, those acreages can't carry as many deer as the Nebo, Manti, Fish Lake, Beaver, etc. but even with the high buck/doe ratios, there safely room for more.
"DC do you and your family have life time licenses? May the hunting gods and karma hit you with poor hunting for generations to come if you lie or mislead me on this question lol."
I told the truth, so now what may the gods do............I've got 7 general season deer points. No....not LE points, general season. I'm the old guy who farted, then left seven young bucks for your kids and my grandkids to shoot. Or .........for one of those old lifer's that wants one more before they strap him to a cot in a care center!
"I honestly believe if the whole state got rid of all the general units and life time licenses and made all the general units LE units with a preference point system. Then made you choose elk or deer as a species to hunt you could be hunting bookcliff buck to doe ratios every other year BUT I would want to see the Henry mountains and other Premium unit brought down to the same bookcliff age class and buck to doe ratios. Same for elk! I get so tired of seeing units with oil waiting periods and only seeing the rich get to hunt these units every year while I waste years of my life waiting for my chance!"
Well Bubba........they are going to mine the hard rock one of these days. I guarandamnteeya things are going to change. I can truthful say, "I can't even imagine what this is going to look like in a couple of years, accept to say, there will be a lot of grunt because there some really big canyons to cross and deep river to ford". The landscape is different now than it's ever been, which creates new opportunities as well as new snares in places we haven't even considered yet.
Guys like you, that think deep and wide at the same time, need to keep throwing out ideas and fleshing out possibilities like you just did regarding the general season/LE business. In my opinion, there are a lot of different ways to get a bunk of shingles on the roof and we need the folks to consider as many as they can. Don't get pissed off, just keep thinking of solutions and letting the folks hear from you. I hope the long term outcome will be more deer in the field, more tags for more people, shorter waiting periods for everyone, for deer hunts.
Here's another guarandamnteeya, "no matter what they do, flip the world on it's ear, go back to any deer, any where, over the counter deer tags, or leave it same as it is (God forbid.). As the MM'ers with a firm grip on reality always say, "someone will think its stacked against them, regardless of the outcome". And.....I guess, that's normal too.
I wouldn't get my hopes up on the rich folk buying a ticket to set in first class, it is, and always has been they way of the world. I guess, if getting to fly first class wasn't available, no one would want to put out the extra effort to "get ahead". If we'd just started using the phrase, "work hard so you can GET AHEAD", they'd be talking about deer and elk tags.
"DC good luck in the draws this year! It may be my year as ive been in the top pool for three years now for my deer. Sad thing is is I still have the same odds as the rest of the years because of point bailing rifle guys. If I flip a coin enough with a 50 50 chance ill eventually get a heads unless its rigged right lol."
Scotty, you don't need to draw a LE deer tag, you can kill as big or bigger buck on the Front, every year. Leave those LE tags for slackers like me and Muley73, we need the advantage to stay even with guys like you!!
Come on down tomorrow night, I want to put you in a head lock for a while, for want'en ta see me bawl!
DC