I'm wondering what everyone's opinions are about hunting mule deer when cattle are using the same area. My past experience in CA has shown me that the cattle have pretty minimal impact on deer, last year I watched a nice bachelor group of 6-7 bucks feed and bed down within 100 yards of some cattle in a high elevation wilderness area and other encounters over the years have shown them to be not too bothered by the presence of beef cows.
This past week I was hunting SE Idaho in a unit I'd say is 75%+ sagebrush interspersed with aspen and pine stands on the upper north slopes and some still pretty open pinyon/juniper hills in places. I was really looking forward to hunting some open country mule deer as on paper it looked like a good unit to find deer out in the open. What I encountered on the ground however was intense over-grazing with cows everywhere. After a few days of not seeing many deer I started hunting the pine areas and started getting into a lot of deer and killed a 3x3 on the last day. I'd say 90% of the deer I saw were within 20 yards of a pine tree, and not pinyons, which was surprising. This was no way what I was expecting but what little I've been able to research since then about the affect of cows on deer is that heavy grazing will drive the deer into thicker cover than usual, which I've never heard before.
The buck I killed had bloody horns and some velvet still so I was very surprised to find him in the thicker cover as well.
I talked to other hunters who also hunt it during the rifle season and they say during rifle season they are way more likely to see bucks out in the sage, which I find very odd but again could attribute that to cattle. The buck I killed was in a drainage where they'd just pulled the cattle out a few days before and from what I understand that will really get the deer back out and using the country once the cattle are gone. From what I heard most of the cattle in that part of the state get taken off the range in September.
I do think it's great that our public lands are available to ranchers to graze their cattle on, of course it can be an inconvenience at times but next to hunting wild animals I do feel that grazing cattle on wild lands can be a good, sustainable source of meat. But what I saw up there was pretty troubling by how over-grazed the area was. Not to mention my wife and kids came with me and every square foot of semi-flat ground in the whole range was covered in cow patties which made camping not as enjoyable for them.
Interested to hear what other's experience has been.
This past week I was hunting SE Idaho in a unit I'd say is 75%+ sagebrush interspersed with aspen and pine stands on the upper north slopes and some still pretty open pinyon/juniper hills in places. I was really looking forward to hunting some open country mule deer as on paper it looked like a good unit to find deer out in the open. What I encountered on the ground however was intense over-grazing with cows everywhere. After a few days of not seeing many deer I started hunting the pine areas and started getting into a lot of deer and killed a 3x3 on the last day. I'd say 90% of the deer I saw were within 20 yards of a pine tree, and not pinyons, which was surprising. This was no way what I was expecting but what little I've been able to research since then about the affect of cows on deer is that heavy grazing will drive the deer into thicker cover than usual, which I've never heard before.
The buck I killed had bloody horns and some velvet still so I was very surprised to find him in the thicker cover as well.
I talked to other hunters who also hunt it during the rifle season and they say during rifle season they are way more likely to see bucks out in the sage, which I find very odd but again could attribute that to cattle. The buck I killed was in a drainage where they'd just pulled the cattle out a few days before and from what I understand that will really get the deer back out and using the country once the cattle are gone. From what I heard most of the cattle in that part of the state get taken off the range in September.
I do think it's great that our public lands are available to ranchers to graze their cattle on, of course it can be an inconvenience at times but next to hunting wild animals I do feel that grazing cattle on wild lands can be a good, sustainable source of meat. But what I saw up there was pretty troubling by how over-grazed the area was. Not to mention my wife and kids came with me and every square foot of semi-flat ground in the whole range was covered in cow patties which made camping not as enjoyable for them.
Interested to hear what other's experience has been.
