Mule deer study in the Okanagan

[Treed]

As a preface to my comment, I’ve worked in forestry and still get my paycheck through industry. We have hammered the hell out of the country, look at the current age class distribution, road density, fragmentation, and increasing pressure due to atvs, side by sides etc. Combine this with the beetle and related salvage logging, there are fewer and fewer places for deer to hide out from predation, human or four legged. There are definitely issues related to increases predation on mulies and pred populations associated with whitetail populations as well as inter breeding of mulie does by whitetail bucks, but I don’t think these are the main issues. I thinks it’s habitat and escape cover that was provided by a land with more older age stands and less roads. If we are talking drybelt fir, the historic stand structure after fire was a lot different than the current post logging structure. We’ve pushed them into smaller and smaller areas and predator and hunting success has probably increased. Stress on the deer would be higher as they get bumped from place to place which takes an incremental toll from a caloric/energy perspective. For critters in the bush the auditor never stops keeping track of what went in and what’s coming out. One good reason to have a second thought about shed hunting. If we keep applying more pressure, we are going to be left with a land of whitetail that can take it and much reduced mulies.

[Bugle M In]

The summer of 2017 was the driest on record. The winter of 2017/18 was long and tough.
We all know that summer moisture plays a key roll in fawn survival. Add the tough winter and I would bet that we lost a significant portion of the fawns....which the male portion of this would be the yearling bucks in the fall of 2018.

I’m guessing that all those hunters that you saw in the late fall were ones that had a hard time finding a yearling 2 pt to shoot.

SSS

It's possible.
I don't hunt there very often in the any buck season at all.
However, when I have gone in, we still saw a fair amount of the young bucks.
I think some of the increased traffic may also due to some thinking that year 2 after the fire was going to bring great results.
Sorry to disappoint, but this fire is going to take quite a few years to be any good.
That and after R5 shutting down for 10 days in November really showed me how we as hunters just get squished closer and closer together with every regulation change. (especially when the change happens on the biggest hunting holiday for MD).

Fires were inevitable considering all the beetle kill/windfall and as long as we have hot summers, plenty more to come.
(Merrit comes to mind)
Great for reviving summer range and even what I call transition zones, especially in those winters that are mild as not all animals migrate to their traditional winter grounds if they don't have to.
But not all fires are going to be like the Kelowna/OK fire that burn in some decent winter range.

And that's what still needs to be addressed is some restoration and protection of true winter range areas from all sorts
of development.
Remember the Kettle Valley and all the MD die off that one winter, over 50% mortality the CO's figured from flying around.
And honestly, doesn't seem like it ever recovered from that afterwards, even to this day.

Fires will definitely help, but I would be lying if I were to say that is all that is needed.

[Bugle M In]

As a preface to my comment, I’ve worked in forestry and still get my paycheck through industry. We have hammered the hell out of the country, look at the current age class distribution, road density, fragmentation, and increasing pressure due to atvs, side by sides etc. Combine this with the beetle and related salvage logging, there are fewer and fewer places for deer to hide out from predation, human or four legged. There are definitely issues related to increases predation on mulies and pred populations associated with whitetail populations as well as inter breeding of mulie does by whitetail bucks, but I don’t think these are the main issues. I thinks it’s habitat and escape cover that was provided by a land with more older age stands and less roads. If we are talking drybelt fir, the historic stand structure after fire was a lot different than the current post logging structure. We’ve pushed them into smaller and smaller areas and predator and hunting success has probably increased. Stress on the deer would be higher as they get bumped from place to place which takes an incremental toll from a caloric/energy perspective. For critters in the bush the auditor never stops keeping track of what went in and what’s coming out. One good reason to have a second thought about shed hunting. If we keep applying more pressure, we are going to be left with a land of whitetail that can take it and much reduced mulies.

Just want to say I sure feel for you guys.
Cant be easy to see whats happening while working but at the same time need the paycheck.
And yes, I agree with what is happening due to it as you say.
Escape Cover gone missing was a big change where I hunt MD in R3, and the last remaining stuff is now slated to be logged!
At that point, I have a bad feeling that area is done for the next 30 years as well.
Didn't help that with all the logging in that area for the last 30 years, that area also just lost all it's transplants due to the big fire!!
So now it all starts from "scratch" again!!, but now longer cause some spots did burn hot, but luckily not all.

It will be beautiful country to hunt in 35-50 years though

[HarryToolips]

As a preface to my comment, I’ve worked in forestry and still get my paycheck through industry. We have hammered the hell out of the country, look at the current age class distribution, road density, fragmentation, and increasing pressure due to atvs, side by sides etc. Combine this with the beetle and related salvage logging, there are fewer and fewer places for deer to hide out from predation, human or four legged. There are definitely issues related to increases predation on mulies and pred populations associated with whitetail populations as well as inter breeding of mulie does by whitetail bucks, but I don’t think these are the main issues. I thinks it’s habitat and escape cover that was provided by a land with more older age stands and less roads. If we are talking drybelt fir, the historic stand structure after fire was a lot different than the current post logging structure. We’ve pushed them into smaller and smaller areas and predator and hunting success has probably increased. Stress on the deer would be higher as they get bumped from place to place which takes an incremental toll from a caloric/energy perspective. For critters in the bush the auditor never stops keeping track of what went in and what’s coming out. One good reason to have a second thought about shed hunting. If we keep applying more pressure, we are going to be left with a land of whitetail that can take it and much reduced mulies.

What you're saying makes sense...

[Walksalot]

My reasoning for thinking the problem goes far beyond predation is that if the predator numbers are increasing then an increase in pictures of the predators would be showing up on trail cameras. My cameras and the cameras of people I talk to, and they amount to a significant amount of cameras, would reflect an increase. So far, from what I can deduce, this is not the case.

[zippermouth]

Age structure and mature bucks are down. Road densities are at an all time high, most hunters own a quad and can cover a ton more ground than before the quad era. I’d wager to guess a lot of mule deer bucks are getting killed, contributing to the lower than 20 bucks per 100 does. There are a lot of black bears, contributing to the fawn mortality. These faws are not part of the study group as they are killed in their first few months on the landscape.

Want to see bigger bucks? Remove the easy access, provide security for bucks.

Want to to see more deer? Remove predators when faws are most vulnerable. Create better habitat. The logging is disgusting in the okanagan right now. Logging happening in the winter range where deer require big timber. Logging also removes the “security” aspect. Pretty easy to see the trends to our deer numbers crashing.

Once the study has run for a few years it will be pretty easy to determine the mortality rate on the fawns being collared. If it’s low, it is pretty easy to determine that the deer are being killed before they are getting collared. If it is high the reason will be revealed when they retrieve the collar.

What hunters can do short term: get two bear tags this spring and kill two black bears. Kill every coyote you see whenever you see them, regardless of if you are hunting other species. Join a local club and volunteer for habitat restoration work.

[LBM]

I've mentioned this on my Whitetail thread.......
if you can't answer 'who, what, why, where and when you will have a hard time consistently killing better animals.

This project is going to answer a lot of questions replacing educated guesses with quantified data.
Better decision making will result.

Where do these captured MD go after leaving their winter range?
How far do they travel?
What are the travel routes, do they avoid certain roadways etc?
What is causing the high mortality specific to each fatality.
When do most of the fatalities happen?
When exactly do they move the most?

Pretty exciting when you think about it.

Yes this is all good, and will help give answers for what is happening currently but wont really give the answer as to why
or what happened in the past. The decline has been on going for years,what were factors in that and what can be done
to help prevent it in the future, if not all ready to late.
It is interesting to talk to some of the bios and hear what they say and to see what some are saying here now, so much of it was said before
by others and told it was not a issue.

[Walking Buffalo]

Aside from more and more loss of winter range due to development in reg 8, I should also state that I'm hearing of an increase in cougar population - and we know that the cats will make a big dent in mule deer pops...these factors along with lack of burns I believe are the biggest contributing factors to mule deer declines in reg 8..

I'm curious as to how the predation evaluation of this study is being done.

Cats may be influencing populations much more than expected.

A recent cougar study in Alberta.
Cougar Kill Rate and Prey Composition in a Multiprey System

http://sci-northern.ab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/CougarKillRateandPreyComposition.pdf

Knopff is basing his conclusions on data collected from more than 1,500 kill sites while tracking 54 cougars with GPS collars. The collars allowed the University of Alberta researchers, including his wife Aliah, to move in quickly after a kill to identify what was taken and by which lion.

In the journal article Knopff writes that some previous studies “may have failed to identify higher kill rates for large carnivores in summer because methods in those studies did not permit researchers to locate many neonates or because sample size was too small.”

The use of GPS collars enabled Knopff and his colleagues to collect more data. As a result, he found that mountain lions killed more deer, elk and moose during the summer by focusing on juveniles and actually killed fewer animals in winter. The information contradicts previous studies conducted in Idaho.

“The Idaho estimates differed from our summer estimates by as much as 365 percent in terms of frequency of killing and 538 percent in terms of prey biomass,” Knopff wrote. “Because kill rate fundamentally influences the effect predators have on their prey, the discrepancy between studies represents a substantial difference in the capacity for cougars to impact ungulates.”

https://www.africahunting.com/threads/mountain-lion-study.41710/

[Bugle M In]

Really, went you "physically" look at things in BC, and ask yourself "what has changed"??
Look at Google Time lapse, at your favorite hunting areas.
I bet you, that all of you will "physically see" what has changed.
Logging and no mature growth canopy left has got to contribute to "a change" for wildlife.
I can't see how it would not.
The main Plateau's around Kammy used to get a lot of snowfall during winter time.
But the "Tree Canopy" must have limited how much snow was actually on the ground!
Now, with no tress, these areas have several feet of snow (when it falls during a decent winter).

This has been going on for years, and you could get a sense that #'s were dropping.
This was log before Wolves in the area.
But now you throw this in, and the wolves are just going "thank you!!!" for providing us such great hunting grounds.
I suspect cats are doing their share too! (and they are efficient).

I did post a Road Access Thread, due to all the logging.
Restrictions wont help, but ripping up the roads would, imo.

Don't know how we fix the "missing trees" however????
Preds can be dealt with.

[tracker]

I have been hunting cats in that area for quite a few years now. from Peachland down to the us border, its a waste of gas these days . sure there are some cats there ,but not like it use to be 10 years ago goodluck to the project, I do supported it .
.