Wyoming Unit H and G

wildaggie13

Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
109
I read the other day that Wyoming H and G units fawns have had a 99% death rate and many other statistics show that there will be an age gap in the next 3-4 years coming up. I don't want to get into the nonresident/resident topic of discussion, but from a deer management standpoint. Wyoming is once again looking at cutting 200 nonresident tags from each of these units. Now while that makes sense, on the other hand how does it make any sense what so ever to still allow everyone in Wyoming to hunt these units as a general tag. If I were a resident and knew that in 3-4 years the deer might not be as good quality, then I would make sure I hunted it this year and the next. Now this doesn't help the deer herd recover at all. In my opinion, if the department doesn't want to overhaul their complete system just implement some type of temporary tag allocation for residents as well in just these units until the herd can recover. Maybe just sell a set number of tags or even set a quota like they do on black bears. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I do know that it doesn't make much sense from a management standpoint to cut 200 tags from nonresidents but on the other hand still allow residents to have free reign of the units as they wish. What do ya'll think?
 
Just a few things on this. First, fawn mortality in Western WY will effectively be 100% this year. Second, so far adult doe mortality of marked deer is about 25% so far with most being older does. You can likely expect almost no fawns this spring as well.

Now all that being said, buck harvest will have virtually no impact on the populations ability to rebound. Does drive populations and we can expect a reduced population for quite a while after this with essentially two age classes removed and a quarter of the does gone. But you can't bank deer. So allowing harvest on bucks is OK.

As for limiting residents. It is being dicussed. But there are a large number of issues with it and it's not as simply as just making the areas LQ. Many of their other ideas you discussed aren't as easy as you make them out to be. Don't be surprised to see some changes next year. But you have what you have this year.
 
That all makes sense that the bucks don't have a big impact on populations. But from a buck hunting standpoint, the more mature bucks that are allowed to be harvested in the 3, 4, and 5 age classes then the worse the buck hunting will be over the next few years. Either way it stinks that I will probably have to start sitting on points until the pop. comes back.
 
From what I have done with the Muley Fanatic Foundation and them being a sponsor for me and my brother, I did a lot with this project. They are predicting that 1/6 fawns will be alive and that is out of the ones they have colored. The other thing I have heard from biologists here is that a lot of the mature bucks did not make it through the winter due to the early snow and not being able to rebound from the rut in time.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
110,805
Messages
1,935,106
Members
34,883
Latest member
clamwc
Back
Top