Whitetail buck spotted in Utah

slamdunk

slamdunk

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I have pics of a whitetail buck my buddy sent me that were taken from a trail camera in his friends yard in Midway Utah, near Heber City. Here they come boy's & girls!!
I'll fwd them to an email if someone can post for me.

SLAMDUNK
 
Here he is:

whitetail002.jpg

whitetail003.jpg

whitetail005.jpg

whitetail006.jpg



-DallanC
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-03-07 AT 02:40PM (MST)[p]That little guy's a long way from home (I hope). A few years ago there was a few in Cache County, now Wasatch, makes you wonder where the next one will show up? Thanks for the post.

So just where in Wyoming do Whitetail live in large numbers? Are they on Utah's doorstep or are these just vagabonds from afar?

500px-Wyoming_counties_map.png


utah_counties2.jpg
 
This is the 4th sighting i know of personally and have heard of a few others. I picked up a set of sheds on some private ground in Utah very close to the Evanston Wyo border three years ago and have seen another buck on Deseret land & Livestock which is not too far from there. I saw pics on another site of an archer who took one in Cache County. Not sure what any impacts will be having them here, but they seem to do ok together in other states that have both. I guess time will tell!!
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-03-07 AT 02:58PM (MST)[p]IVE SEEN 2 IN THE LAST 8 YRS. 1 IN ROCK CREEK BY TAWANNA FLATS. THE OTHER IN SNOWVILLE. MAKES ME WONDER WHY THEY ARE ALL SMALL BUCKS SHOWING AND NO DOE,S?
 
Bring'em on!

As previously mentioned, they co-exist with muleys in alot of other states, I dont see why it cant happen here. One positive if they do come in in numbers is that the average meat hunter can have something else to tag leaving less pressure on mule deer.


-DallanC
 
Whitetail deer prefer lowland areas and river bottoms rather than mountainous terrain. I would prefer not to have whitetaill deer in Utah due to the fact that they are not native to Utah. Whitetail deer tend to live in the mule deers winter range year round. Making the competition for winter feeding worse for mule deer herds.
 
A few years back Doug Miller showed video of a whitetail doe living with muleys between Brigham City and Logan (Cache County). I think the majority of the pioneers will be bucks though, seeking new territory.

If you saw one in Snowville (Box Elder County), he probably came from Idaho?
 
It is interesting that you usually only hear about bucks being spotted. Must get pushed out and start wandering during the rut. I found a pretty cool hybrid skull with antlers while hunting this year.
 
I guess you are disappointed that Pheasants, Hungarian Partridge, Chuckar etc etc all thrive in parts of the state?


-DallanC
 
DallanC, pheasants and other upland birds do not compete on winter range with other birds that are struggling to recover from devastating winters. Whitetails WILL compete with muleys for winter range feed. The last thing muleys in Utah need is MORE hurdles to climb over. There is limited habitat that is disappearing daily, no need to intentionally take more of it away from muleys to the more aggressive whitetail. Pheasants and chuckars affect no other species negatively that I know of.
 
>DallanC, pheasants and other upland birds
>do not compete on winter
>range with other birds that
>are struggling to recover from
>devastating winters. Whitetails WILL compete
>with muleys for winter range
>feed. The last thing muleys
>in Utah need is MORE
>hurdles to climb over. There
>is limited habitat that is
>disappearing daily, no need to
>intentionally take more of it
>away from muleys to the
>more aggressive whitetail. Pheasants and
>chuckars affect no other species
>negatively that I know of.
>



Thats exactly why I don't want them here. They should put them on the non game list and let us shoot em on site.

:( Somebody didn't like bouncing betty :(
 
any truth to the theory that whitetails will dominate mule deer and will run muleys out, aside from the feed factor??
i've heard that, not sure if theres any truth to it.
 
>Thats exactly why I don't want
>them here. They should put
>them on the non game
>list and let us shoot
>em on site.

There is a tremendous amount of acreage in utah outside of the Wasatch front with alot of winter range that could hold them. Let'em come... heck import them into specific areas to monitor them and see if they have any impact. They could make them shoot on sight outside of those areas and if it were ever proven there is an effect (something I doubt due to all of the other states with healthy herds of both species), shoot on sight could be extended state wide.

I still think though a population of whitetails would remove hunting pressure from mule deer due to people who dont give a rats @$$ about antlers having something else to shoot and take home. Every deer tag filled by a whitetail is more mule deer allowed to live another year.

I've yet to see any proof whitetails will impact mule deer negatively.


-DallanC
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-03-07 AT 05:49PM (MST)[p]Utah Folks,
I live in SW Montana, a place that has traditionally been home to some wonderful muley hunting. I know of a place where a large herd of muleys used to winter around 20 years ago. A resident herd of whitetail does now live there year round, and you guessed it, no muleys. whitetails will inhabit range once inhabited by muleys. So, If you love mule deer hunting and want to maintain the muley hunting utah is known for, do not support the establishment of whitetails in Utah, natural or transplanted. Whitetails are much more adaptible than muleys.
ismith
EDIT: And the myth about them staying in the river bottoms is crap, I see as many whitetails at 9000 ft while elk hunting as I do muleys.
 
hell yes they are moore agressive. its like elk and red staggs on farms they dont keep them in seprate pens for no reason or cross breeding reasons. its because the smaller red stagg will kill a giant bull elk quick. i have a freind that his family own heart land in missori a 3800 acre hunting ranch. he told me about a fight that killed a 30,000 dallor bull 519 gross none tip in less than 1 min the stagg had gored the bull to death. he even shared some photos of the dead elk and the red stagg standing over it.
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-03-07 AT 06:14PM (MST)[p]LAST EDITED ON Jan-03-07 AT 06:11?PM (MST)

There are plenty of articles that will tell you and even show you the impact of introducing a different animal and plant species to an area where it has never been before. Maybe you should use your computer to look up some of these articles and read them to see how introducing a new species to an area can ruin the ecology of that area. There are many articles with pictures showing how a non native plants and animals can ruin an area. try using Yahoo or Google.

I said whitetail deer PREFER river bottoms and lowland areas!Not that they only live in these areas!
 
the ute indian tribe is considering intoducing whitetails in their reservation. they have alot of riverbottom land that is patchy to other landowners and state land where mule deer are doing good.hunting in nebraska where they do run together people over there say a whitetail buck will breed a muley doe but a muley buck wont breed a whitetail doe. maybe because a whitetail buck is more aggressive or maybe its just not interested.

i agree the whitetail might take hunting pressure off the mule deer but what about out of state hunters. that love to hunt whitetail and utah is a state closer that would flood our mountains with out of state hunters and make tags harder to get and indefinately decrease the amount of purebred muleys that have such impressive antlers.

and the hill creek unit for the indians shares alot of ground on the bookcliffs that is a premium unit for deer hunting. do you think that would be a good thing?? i dont
 
>I said whitetail deer PREFER
>river bottoms and lowland areas!Not
>that they only live in
>these areas!


arch3614elk,
I wasnt implying YOU were full of crap or stating a myth, your comment simply reminded me of what several people Ive known have said.
ismith
 
White Tail prefer living where life is good regardless of elevation. I have seen them living and moving into high country and nothing in the valleys. People need to forget about traditional areas about whiteys. They will invade and dominate mule deer space during the rut. I say keep them seperate as much as possible. Not to mention the cross breading mess that happens and will happen. I hunt any big deer so I am not biased against the White Tail.
 
Ismith,
I am sure there are a whitetails now where the muleys used to be but I think it would be hard to say the the whitetail were the cause of the decline in mule deer. Mule deer herds have declined in lots of areas, maybe the whitetail are just expanding to fill the void.

I personally have seen areas in Idaho and WY that have good populations of both species and they seem to coexist without problems. I would like to see whitetail in some parts of UT. I think it would provide a different opportunity and take some pressure off the muleys. I don't think they will have the negative impact on muleys that some do. However, I think there would have to be some major thought and research put into it before introducing them to the state. If we do ever decide to introduce them let's get our breeding stock from Canada.

Dax
 
I think you guys would be making a serious mistake even considering introucing whitetails to Utah, If you do, any pressure they take off of mule deer through hunting will be applied ten fold on mulies in other ways.
ismith
 
I'm with ismith on this one. I also live in MT and can second what he said. Beleive me, you don't want them! Once they invade, they're here to stay. Sure, it does take some hunting pressure of of the muleys, but not much.

DallanC,

Sharptails live in brushy grasslands, while pheasants prefer agriculture and water. At first glance it may seem that pheasants displace sharptails, but what actually happens is grassland is turned into farmland (which displaces sharptails) and the pheasants move in because of the agriculture.
 
>Sharptails live in brushy grasslands, while
>pheasants prefer agriculture and water.
>At first glance it may
>seem that pheasants displace sharptails,
>but what actually happens is
>grassland is turned into farmland
>(which displaces sharptails) and the
>pheasants move in because of
>the agriculture.


I was thinking more of hun's and chukkar competing with sharptails than pheasants. I originally brought up those species due to the comment about "introduced" species being bad.


-DallanC
 
No way are you serious about chuckars being the culprits to the decline in sharpies!? Please tell me you are joking.

Anytime you introduce a non-native species into the eco-system there is negative responses from the native species. That is a fact. You mention pheasants, when were they introduced? How about brown trout, look at the negative impact they have on native trout out west. How about red foxes, that has turned out well for upland game. Sooner or later we learn from playing God, hopefully. If Utah was so conducive to whitetails do you not believe they would have been here pre-white man?

I say keep them out and treat them like wolves should be treated, open season year round.
 
>hell yes they are moore agressive.
>its like elk and red
>staggs on farms they dont
>keep them in seprate pens
>for no reason or cross
>breeding reasons. its because the
>smaller red stagg will kill
>a giant bull elk quick.
>
While that may be true, Ken, the cross breeding IS a concern when it comes to red deer vs. Rocky Mtn. Elk. The Red Deer gene is a dominant gene, the RME gene being recessive. The Red Deer gene could overtake the RME genes and wipe them out completely.
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-04-07 AT 11:52AM (MST)[p]>No way are you serious about
>chuckars being the culprits to
>the decline in sharpies!? Please
>tell me you are joking.

How can I be joking... or even serious ... about something you just made up? Nowhere did I state the cause of the decline of sharpies, do not try to twist what I did write into something I did not write.

You stated "Pheasants and chuckars affect no other species negatively that I know of". I responded with question of "Sharptailed grouse?", this because the sharptails are in decline, and there are ranges where they now exist with huns / chukkar. Do they compete? Do the introduced species affect them in anyway? I only asked a question, I did not make a statement.


>Anytime you introduce a non-native species
>into the eco-system there is
>negative responses from the native
>species. That is a fact.
>You mention pheasants, when were
>they introduced?

The first successful pheasant introduction to North America was a release of about 30 birds in Oregon's Willamette Valley in 1881.


>How about brown
>trout, look at the negative
>impact they have on native
>trout out west. How about
>red foxes, that has turned
>out well for upland game.
>Sooner or later we learn
>from playing God, hopefully. If
>Utah was so conducive to
>whitetails do you not believe
>they would have been here
>pre-white man?

How do you know they were not? Please post links or references that there were no whitetails in Utah 100 years ago.

They are encroaching naturally at the moment, why the uproar over them coming in, naturally? This isnt a species non-native to america, its a native deer that changes its range over time. If whitetails truely could not co-exist with Mule Deer dont you think that something in the past million years they would have done so? Yet we see states with healthy populations of both, co-existing.

I think its very premature to make kneejerk reactions about a handful of whitetail deer displacing our Mule Deer. Mule Deer have much bigger threats to worry about IMO.

>I say keep them out and
>treat them like wolves should
>be treated, open season year
>round.

This final comment amuses me due to your previous statement of "Sooner or later we learn from playing God". Isnt your kill-on-sight-wolf/whitetail management basically doing just this? Playing God? LOL


-DallanC
 
So lets allow the wolves to come in and take over as well. If you were willing to allow 'nature' to take its course I would be more tolerant of allowing them to 'move' in on their own, you seem to advacate introducing them into Utah, which I am against. Not introducing 'new' species is what I am for, certainly when the species that will be most affected by such a move is already struggling. We have muleys trying to rebound and you want to knock them down to cure your itch to hunt whitetails, as Don peay said about hunting raghorn elk, if you want to kill one go to Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, etc.. Leave Utah out of the whitetail intro list and leave Utah out for The REintro list for wolves
 
>LAST EDITED ON Jan-03-07
>AT 02:58?PM (MST)
>
>IVE SEEN 2 IN THE LAST
>8 YRS. 1 IN ROCK
>CREEK BY TAWANNA FLATS. THE
>OTHER IN SNOWVILLE. MAKES ME
>WONDER WHY THEY ARE ALL
>SMALL BUCKS SHOWING AND NO
>DOE,S?

That is on or near the Ute Reservation right!
 
I know of two different whiteys spotted in summit county.. One doe, w/ fawn in henefer, and I believe it had a tracking collar on it, but I also believe it was hit by a car on the freeway.. too bad haha.. There was a buck spotted in Coalville, by grass creek last winter. I believe some of my buddies might have filmed the buck to. I'll try to find out.. We should get all whiteys transported out of Utah when they are spotted I think.. They compete too much with muleys!
C4S
 
>the ute indian tribe is considering
>intoducing whitetails in their reservation.
>they have alot of riverbottom
>land that is patchy to
>other landowners and state land
>where mule deer are doing
>good.hunting in nebraska where they
>do run together people over
>there say a whitetail buck
>will breed a muley doe
>but a muley buck wont
>breed a whitetail doe. maybe
>because a whitetail buck is
>more aggressive or maybe its
>just not interested.
>
>i agree the whitetail might take
>hunting pressure off the mule
>deer but what about out
>of state hunters. that love
>to hunt whitetail and utah
>is a state closer that
>would flood our mountains with
>out of state hunters and
>make tags harder to get
>and indefinately decrease the amount
>of purebred muleys that have
>such impressive antlers.
>
>and the hill creek unit for
>the indians shares alot of
>ground on the bookcliffs that
>is a premium unit for
>deer hunting. do you think
>that would be a good
>thing?? i dont

As stated in post#5 Rockcreek and Tawanna flats is on Ute tribal land
 
Chuckars and sharptail don't occupy the same environment, and as for the huns, while they do live in the same environment, they occupy different "niches" in that environment and have little if any effect on eachother. Bird populations are effected by weather, habitat, and preditors.
 
Here's the deal with playing "God":

We played "God" long ago with things and screwed them up

It took a while, but then things stabilized, and we came to accept that (and like it) as reality

We play "God" now and things will change again and we probably won't like it for quite a while. The huge elk herds in Yellowstone were unatural, but we liked them. Now the wolves have messed with them and we don't like it

Sure, none of its natural, and we're playing "God" with all of it, but realize that whiteys won't make things any better than they are
 
Anyone ever see Whitetails hangin' out, feeding, bedding in the sage? I actually can't recall. Seems to be a pretty major demarcation betwixt the two in my neighbourhood--NE Wyo. Where the fields and grass meadows end, the whitetails tend to end.
Do see some co-existence, really close co-existence, in the Black Hills at times, otherwheres it don't seem to be so chummy.

Rump
 
Rump,

No, I don't ever recall the whiteys in the sage, but do you want the sage to be the only stronghold muleys have? Because believe me, that's what it will come down to in time. How do I know? I live in MT where I can show you a whitey buck on top of mountains that muleys used to inhabit.
 
I spent all bow season chasing a very large whitetail buck that bedded on a juniper ridge more suited to mulies. I ended up tagging one of his sidekicks in a sage choked draw he was bedding in. I also jumped a heck of a whitetail buck at the same time I got a nice bull elk to bugle back to me, at pert near 9000 ft elevation!
ismith
 
Old man!
How DID you deduce what I'd want or don't want from my post?!!
You must be really frikkin' smart to know things like that!
For the record, and all others that don't jump to half-baked conclusions, I see the Whitey as a Natural threat to the Muley and it's growing little by little in my neighbourhood.
For anyone who's had a Region C piece of toilet paper of late, they may have noticed the inclusion of a Gen. any Whitetail in 17 for the month of November. I've seen some really special Mule deer down in that river valley and it's feeder creeks while on jobs, but the whitetail are there and probably not going to be petering out any time soon. Have been and personal observation does not indicate negative population growth.
So what does one guy do to help the Muley?
I did my one thing I could do and took a nice Whitey buck a couple of months ago. A noble beast, yes, but this camoed crusader is nothing more than a drop in God's bucket. Har, har!!

Rumproast
 
WOW!!
All i did was post a couple pix of an "alien" and look what it turned into! I don't have an educated opinion on my own post, so i'm staying out of it. I do love all the replies, even though some opinions have gotten quite heated. I can definately see all sides and concerns with this issue that undoubtedly is here to stay...or so it appears. Like i mentioned before, i have a set of whitey sheds i found just above coalville a few years ago and it sounds like there has been multiple sightings in that area by others. I'm sure nothing will be done by any officials until this turns into a real problem or concern. So for now, it's just going to have to be a topic of discussion by us fellow hunters.
SLAMDUNK
 
I wouldn't be surprised if we have the phenomenon going where people capture a few whitetails and try to introduce them to UT. It worked for Muskies in Pine View and it would work for whitetails in Utah. We are basically the only state that doesn't really have them. Are we the only state that doesn't have them?

What about Coues deer. Do we have many of those down in southern UT?
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-05-07 AT 08:59PM (MST)[p]I saw a dead whitetail on I-15 right in front of the LDS Grain Mills around Layton about a month ago. I passed it twice and know that it was a doe whitetail. Couldn't believe it. I had heard rumors, but first person is always best when talking Utah Whitetails.

CS
 
Rump,

I didn't deduce anything from your post, and if you read mine I was ASKING you if you wanted that, so just calm down a little.

I'm sure there are some nice muleys living in a creek bottom with whiteys, but seeing the two species side by side doesn't mean crap. Obviously, mule deer aren't going to explode or evaporate into thin air at the mere sight of a whitey on their turf, but I would be willing to bet that more muleys inhabited that creek 10 or 20 or how every many years ago it was before the whiteys moved in.
 
Those are some cool pics! Thanks for sharing. As much as I really want to hunt whitetail, I think I'd prefer going out of state to do it. Our mule deer herds are struggling enough, without having to compete with the whitetails for wintering grounds, food, etc.

Does anyone know how much impact introducing coues deer to Southern Utah would have on the mule deer herds? Would it have the same kind of a effect as normal whitetails have on muleys? If there wasn't a negatvie effect, I think it would be great to introduce some coues deer to certain parts of Southern Utah and make it a LE hunt.
 
Old man!
Right on...
And the trend seems to keep creeping in that direction.
I'm just not real thrilled in the least with it, like many of us I'll venture to presume. Not a thing one am I able to do, so once again the ethical bystander.
Sorry for the offense!! It's a touchy subject!

Rumproast
 
IF THEY ARE NATURALLY OCCURING THAN THAT IS WHAT NATURE HAS INTENDED. THIS CRAP ABOUT MULE DEER BEING PUSHED OUT BY WHITEYS IS CRAZY. IF MULE DEER ARE STRUGGLING THAN THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH HUNTING PRESSURE AND OR HABITAT, DISEASE OR SOMETHING . I HAVE MULE DEER AND WHITETAIL ON EITHER SIDE OF MY HOUSE HERE AND THEY SIMPLY IGNORE EACH OTHER . WHITETAIL ARE MOVING INTO NM AS WELL FROM TEXAS AND WHAT I NOTICED THERE WAS WE ONLY SAW WHITETAIL DOES NO BUCKS.
 
Tuff, are you from or live in so.ut? In my mind the only effect coues would have on the herd would be negative,they already compete enough between growth and CONTROLLED BURNS...ha,ha
 
many have been seen in cache valley over the last several years. i seen 1 doe wintering in middlefork above pineview dam 2 winters ago it was hanging with 8 or 9 mulie does but the whitetail buck is more agressive in the rut, my 2 cents i dont want them
 
"IF THEY ARE NATURALLY OCCURING THAN THAT IS WHAT NATURE HAS INTENDED"
Yeah sure, natural just like the subdivisions popping up on winter ranges, funny how you mention several ills facing mule deer populations around the west and then brush off compition with whitetails as nonsense, based on your expert observations of mule deer and whitetails "ignoring" each other. I bet those whitetail buck arnt ignoring those muley does during the rut!

"THIS CRAP ABOUT MULE DEER BEING PUSHED OUT BY WHITEYS IS CRAZY"
No, not really. Just ask anyone thats hunted Montana, Wyoming or Idaho for the last 20 years.
ismith
 
NONE,

Just because you see a whitetail and mule deer together doesn't mean that they are existing with out affecting each other. If you want to go by that stupid logic, then you could also say that noxious weeds don't hurt native wildlife because they can be growing in the same field, or that northern pike don't cause trout declines because somewhere there is a northern pike in the same body of water as a rainbow

note: ismith must not be a buddy of the mods because NONE called him an assbite and his post was not erased :)
 
Sound like we are taking them out of the gene pool one at a time. Keep up the good work.



'It's all about the gut pile'
 
Sorry not buying it and calling BS about whitey's pushing out muleys. Could there also be factors of winter kill (circa 1996) drought (circa every year since 1996). Once muley deer are gone whiteys fill the void. I have half a dozen whitetails in my alfalfa all summer. Just after hunting season there have been 24 muleys on it and whiteys are gone. There are thousands of mule deer and whitetail living in this valley. One of the best trophy areas in Montana is here. The hunting should suck if that logic was true. Maybe we should wipe out all the whitetails though just to be sure.
Maybe things are differnet in Utah, But I beleive you wouldn't notice a difference in your mule deer populations from the competetion alone. I think you would find quite a few contributing factors.

I wouldn't worry too much about it though. Your game deartment will see a way to make money off of it and offer over a hundred or so conservation tags to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
 
hntnhrd,
I dont believe that whitetails are pushing out the muleys, rather, as the muley population decreases due to any one of the natural causes (such as preditor/prey cycle), you are absolutely right that the whitetails will fill the void. So instead of rebounding, the muley's old range is now occupied by whitetails. Whitetails also are now inhabiting traditional mule deer winter ranges year round. The whitetail populations are thriving in an enviornment where hunter access to the bottoms is limited. Take a look at the MFWP survey, whitetails have a much better fawn survival rate than muleys.
ismith
 
I beleive that. Whitetails adapt easier than any other big game animal. Someone earlier posted that whiteys push out muleys and that wasn't what I was beleiving. Not knowing what habitat in UTAH is like it may or may not be beneficial to have whitetails move in, absolutely not transplanted.
 
OK, for all of you who don't think that whitetails affect the muley population, I took the time to look it up.

This is from MULE DEER COUNTRY by Val Geist. For those of you who don't know who Geist is, he's a Canadian biologist who is considered the foremost expert on hooved ungulates (sp??), especially Mule deer and Bighorn Sheep. It's a long chapter, so I've pulled out the important parts.

Here it is:

Page 163 "For all its current abundance, the mule deer, so different, so uniquely American, so young and promising, is nevertheless a species marked for extinction. That may be its fate in the long run. Either the white-tailed deer or man may cause that extinction.

...Mule deer show signs of dwindling wherever they meet whitetails, even in the mule deer's stronghold of Wyoming...

...[parasites] can only compete in the destruction of mule deer along with a much more potent factor. That factor is one-way hybridization."

One-way hybridization (in my words): Geist goes on to explain at length one-way hybirdization, so I'll sum it up. Basically, what he is saying is that one-way hybridization occurs when one species can breed another's females, but not the reverse.

Geist says that the mating habits of each deer allow white-tails to breed mule deer does because muley does do not play "catch me if you can" in the way that whitetails do. On the other hand, muley bucks are not fast enough in most habitats to catch whitetail does.

This results in lost fawns for mule deer because in overlapping ranges, white tails can breed muley does while mule deer cannot breed whitetail does. To add some of my own observations, mule deer are more suceptable anyway because they go into rut sooner; the whitetail bucks that are waiting for the rut are eager breed and increase competition to mule deer bucks until the start of the whitetail rut.

The only advatage mule deer have is that Geist notes they usually win against whitetails of the same age class when fighting.

He notes that this alone is not the problem entirely. Humans play a part in the creation of hybrids, beleive it or not.

Geist talks about how mule deer are easier to kill than whitetails of the same age until they are both about 4 1/2. During this time, hunters kill a good number of the bucks that should be breeding does, and mature bucks are not in enough surplus to service all does that go into heat. That leaves the small bucks to breed the does, which is fine except for the fact that then whitetail bucks are then able to win fights for mule deer does and breed them.

So you may ask, "What about the hybird fawns, if they are bred by mule deer for the next several generations, then what is the big deal?" Geist says that hybrid fawns rarely survive once they leave their mother because they don't fully use white-tail defense mechanisms or don't fully use mule deer mechanisms. They soon fall to preditors.

His last line of the chapter states, "In the meantime, however, we can assuredly expect mule deer will continue to lose ground to the whitetail."

I don't think it gets any clearer than that.


So there it is, for all of you doubters. I understand if you didn't believe me, but if you don't believe Geist, then I can't debate with you any more because you're too ignorant to comprehend both sides of the issue.

Do you still want whitetails in mule deer country?????



---------------------------------------
This is my post

I've just pissed in my pants.......and nobody can do anything about it.
 
Bravo!!!!

"...and now it's time for me to go, the autumn moon lights my way..." -Led Zeppelin
 
Yeah but what does Geist know? I mean, hes only a deer biologist, and I see whitetail and mule deer frolicking around my house all the time. Plus, Im always right! That means everyone that disagrees with me is wrong! :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
ismith
 
A white tail buck was spotted in the Elkhorn mountains just north of Malad Id last week. They are surrounding you boys. Be on the lookout.
 
Thanks for the post old_man, I read Giest's book too, there's a lot of neat stuff in there . . . that's really interesting how the hybrid fawns are essentially throw-aways because of their confused survival instincts (stot vs run). Each time that happens that's one or two potential mule deer down the drain, while in the mean time the whitey does are busy raising their fawns.

It also just came to mind that the hybrid problem may be bigger that we realize; since the "evidence" (the hybrid fawn) is often destroyed early in the game, they probably go undetected more often than not. The only hybrids that get noticed are the ones that just happen to live to maturity. . . . dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
 
a couple of years ago my dad and i saw a whitetail buck during the archery hunt in cove up in cache valley. he probably came from idaho since the border was only a mile away


BadAzzArcher

Take your kids hunting so you don't have to hunt for you kids.
 
The bottom line is a Whitetail Buck will out bred a Muley buck, they rut and chase the does harder then a muleybuck will. they are flatout more aggressive then Muleys.
 
In many areas the whitetails are spotted and thats it . You really dont see an increase in numbers in many areas . The occasional sighting while in other areas they seem to get a foot hold. Those areas have a habitat issue . You think it could be due to so many homes and other develpment on winter or summer range ? How many here live in a subdivision on winter range and get on the web and complain about deer or elk populations dwindling in there area?
 
A guy my brother in law knows found a Whitetail shed in southern utah this year. a fresh one. Very ODD! BUt there are some out there!
 
>the ute indian tribe is considering
>intoducing whitetails in their reservation.
>they have alot of riverbottom
>land that is patchy to
>other landowners and state land
>where mule deer are doing
>good.hunting in nebraska where they
>do run together people over
>there say a whitetail buck
>will breed a muley doe
>but a muley buck wont
>breed a whitetail doe. maybe
>because a whitetail buck is
>more aggressive or maybe its
>just not interested.
>
>i agree the whitetail might take
>hunting pressure off the mule
>deer but what about out
>of state hunters. that love
>to hunt whitetail and utah
>is a state closer that
>would flood our mountains with
>out of state hunters and
>make tags harder to get
>and indefinately decrease the amount
>of purebred muleys that have
>such impressive antlers.
>
>and the hill creek unit for
>the indians shares alot of
>ground on the bookcliffs that
>is a premium unit for
>deer hunting. do you think
>that would be a good
>thing?? i dont

i think you need to stop listening to hearsay the Ute Tribe isnt interested in any way of introducing whitetails to the Rez those deer are there by thier own choice dont blame the tribe for u seein whitetails
 

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