Fighting for Big Mule Deer with Darby Finley

[robby denning]

Fighting for Big Mule Deer with Darby Finley

Robby hosts Darby Finley, Wildlife Biologist for Colorado Parks & Wildlife. Darby has fought Chronic Wasting Disease for over 20 years, and lays out some hard truths.

www.rokslide.com

One of the more important episodes we've done. I learned a bit more about CWD related to how it affects population numbers.

Darby also sent this pic of a big buck that later tested positive for CWD. I can't tell by looking at him...

 

[AHayes111]

Man is this timely. Just went round and round with CWD at the MT Mule Deer CAC

Will give it a listen when I get time.

 

[COelk89]

Good episode. Thank you for continuing to promote the science. I shot a cwd positive buck in one of the high prevalence white river units a few years ago. I believe it was 2nd season, healthy looking probably 2 or 3 yr old 4 pt. Was actually my first mule deer. He was with 2 does.

They changed the season structures for a reason and I feel I did my part that year to take a buck out. Hopefully these herds can get back to legendary status someday if we can figure it out because the can produce. I made an educated decision to eat the buck.

It is frustrating to hear people say things like it has always been here etc. That could be the case but the fact is in areas they have demonstrated that at certain prevalence and higher there become population level impacts from the disease. Like Darby pointed out, these deer are not just dying on a hiking trail or next to the road. Like any other disease in wildlife this needs to be managed and difficult decisions need to be made. I understand the landowners plight and economic dependence, but they are not the only ones with a vested interest in having sustainable deer and elk herds. Like a chicken farmer with bird flu outbreak, difficult decisions must be made.

I wonder regarding the coyotes if the hard winter kill last year boosted the populations. Coyotes can rapidly respond with huge litters of 10-12 when conditions are favorable. Hundreds if not thousands of deer and elk carcasses through winter would seem to be favorable for yotes.

The data we are getting from GPS collars these days feels like one of the few bright spots for the future of wildlife management. It is consistent.

 

[robby denning]

Good episode. Thank you for continuing to promote the science. I shot a cwd positive buck in one of the high prevalence white river units a few years ago. I believe it was 2nd season, healthy looking probably 2 or 3 yr old 4 pt. Was actually my first mule deer. He was with 2 does.

They changed the season structures for a reason and I feel I did my part that year to take a buck out. Hopefully these herds can get back to legendary status someday if we can figure it out because the can produce. I made an educated decision to eat the buck.

It is frustrating to hear people say things like it has always been here etc. That could be the case but the fact is in areas they have demonstrated that at certain prevalence and higher there become population level impacts from the disease. Like Darby pointed out, these deer are not just dying on a hiking trail or next to the road. Like any other disease in wildlife this needs to be managed and difficult decisions need to be made. I understand the landowners plight and economic dependence, but they are not the only ones with a vested interest in having sustainable deer and elk herds. Like a chicken farmer with bird flu outbreak, difficult decisions must be made.

I wonder regarding the coyotes if the hard winter kill last year boosted the populations. Coyotes can rapidly respond with huge litters of 10-12 when conditions are favorable. Hundreds if not thousands of deer and elk carcasses through winter would seem to be favorable for yotes.

The data we are getting from GPS collars these days feels like one of the few bright spots for the future of wildlife management. It is consistent.
View attachment 724615

Hey! Thanks for chiming in with some first-hand experience. Much appreciated.

On your CWD buck, what cooking guidelines did you follow? Anything different than normal?

 

[COelk89]

Hey! Thanks for chiming in with some first-hand experience. Much appreciated.

On your CWD buck, what cooking guidelines did you follow? Anything different than normal?

I did not follow any guidelines because I don't know there are any. Most of the agencies, including CPW, recommend disposing and CPW will actually refund the cost of processing (or something like that) if you have a positive buck animal I believe. I believe this recomendation could be more based on the potential for a lawsuit if somehow the disease did jump and the agency had recommended to eat it. They just don't know. I say it was an educated because I do have a biology degree with some familiarity of the disease and I believe the disease is real and not a boogeyman!

The only "guideline" I followed was my own moral one of not to feed it to anyone else without informing them first, so I ate pretty much the whole thing myself. Yum...LOL.

 

[robby denning]

I did not follow any guidelines because I don't know there are any. Most of the agencies, including CPW, recommend disposing and CPW will actually refund the cost of processing (or something like that) if you have a positive buck animal I believe. I believe this recomendation could be more based on the potential for a lawsuit if somehow the disease did jump and the agency had recommended to eat it. They just don't know. I say it was an educated because I do have a biology degree with some familiarity of the disease and I believe the disease is real and not a boogeyman!

The only "guideline" I followed was my own moral one of not to feed it to anyone else without informing them first, so I ate pretty much the whole thing myself. Yum...LOL.

All right! Gives me some confidence if I ever tag a cwd buck.

 

[Ucsdryder]

this was a really good podcast. The cwd portion was priceless. Everyone should listen to this podcast or at least the last 15 minutes about cwd and how CPW is attacking it. It’s too early to see if the plan will work but nobody can blame them for not having a very detailed, well laid out plan. I sure hope it works!

 

[Bull_n_heat]

Excellent episode! I really appreciated the experiences from NW CO. Cool to hear that their deer wind up along river corridors when winters get burly. Underscores how important habitat management along those riparian areas can be critical as an "insurance plan" in big winter years.

I appreciated the honesty Darby brought to the CWD discussion and the realistic timeline to understanding/evaluating their actions to (hopefully!) reduce prevalence. Like so much in mule deer management (habitat, cwd, etc.), if we are expecting overnight answers, we'll be severely disappointed.

 

[robby denning]

this was a really good podcast. The cwd portion was priceless. Everyone should listen to this podcast or at least the last 15 minutes about cwd and how CPW is attacking it. It’s too early to see if the plan will work but nobody can blame them for not having a very detailed, well laid out plan. I sure hope it works!

Excellent episode! I really appreciated the experiences from NW CO. Cool to hear that their deer wind up along river corridors when winters get burly. Underscores how important habitat management along those riparian areas can be critical as an "insurance plan" in big winter years.

I appreciated the honesty Darby brought to the CWD discussion and the realistic timeline to understanding/evaluating their actions to (hopefully!) reduce prevalence. Like so much in mule deer management (habitat, cwd, etc.), if we are expecting overnight answers, we'll be severely disappointed.

Hey, thanks guys, the whole CWD thing sometimes feels like a non-issue and then I talk to guys like this and I swing the other way.

I hate to see our bucks get hammered on too late of seasons, but if it proves to work, what can I say?

I just hope they’ll move the needle if it’s working or try something else if it’s not.

Looks like Colorado did slide their dates back on the calendar starting in 2025.

 

[Ucsdryder]

Hey, thanks guys, the whole CWD thing sometimes feels like a non-issue and then I talk to guys like this and I swing the other way.

I hate to see our bucks get hammered on too late of seasons, but if it proves to work, what can I say?

I just hope they’ll move the needle if it’s working or try something else if it’s not.

Looks like Colorado did slide their dates back on the calendar starting in 2025.

Agreed. When he talked about Wyoming being the control state and having 50% cwd and then put numbers to it all, 2 year life span after contracting cwd, it lays it all out. Doing nothing doesn’t seem to be working for Wyoming! If we get to 75+% and those deer live 2 years, we’re screwed!

 

[robby denning]

Agreed. When he talked about Wyoming being the control state and having 50% cwd and then put numbers to it all, 2 year life span after contracting cwd, it lays it all out. Doing nothing doesn’t seem to be working for Wyoming! If we get to 75+% and those deer live 2 years, we’re screwed!

Yep, if Darby is right, they won’t have any mature bucks either. They’re just gonna die to CWD.

 

[Bull_n_heat]

Hey, thanks guys, the whole CWD thing sometimes feels like a non-issue and then I talk to guys like this and I swing the other way.

I hate to see our bucks get hammered on too late of seasons, but if it proves to work, what can I say?

I just hope they’ll move the needle if it’s working or try something else if it’s not.

Looks like Colorado did slide their dates back on the calendar starting in 2025.

I agree. We've been insulated from it here on the Western side of the state thus far, but the creep continues...

As a visual of what high CWD prevalence looks like... I have a WGFD colleague on the eastern side of the state that has saved all of his brass from deer he has had to put down that had CWD. It's a 5 gallon bucket in just a couple years. I think if people really could see how bad that is, they would be doing what they could to stop it.

 

[AHayes111]

Thanks for doing the interview.
Not sure if I am sold on the we need to shoot them to avid an even bigger die off. I can see why a steady population would make hunters happy, and no one wants to see deer starve, but I am not so sure that a big die off is not a good thing in the long run. Some of the best years for big deer I have ever seen were 7 to 8 years after big drops in deer numbers. The years 86 and 87 and the winter of 78/79, the years 95 and 96 and the drought of 88 and the year 2004 and the winter of 96/97 come to mind. I don't think is quiescence that the big bucks I saw hitting their prime in those years were hitting the ground as fawns in the few years after the big die off when the habitat would have been in great shape dew to low deer numbers. We may have to endure the low numbers to get the great years seven or eight years in the future.

 

[realunlucky]

Thanks for doing the interview.
Not sure if I am sold on the we need to shoot them to avid an even bigger die off. I can see why a steady population would make hunters happy, and no one wants to see deer starve, but I am not so sure that a big die off is not a good thing in the long run. Some of the best years for big deer I have ever seen were 7 to 8 years after big drops in deer numbers. The years 86 and 87 and the winter of 78/79, the years 95 and 96 and the drought of 88 and the year 2004 and the winter of 96/97 come to mind. I don't think is quiescence that the big bucks I saw hitting their prime in those years were hitting the ground as fawns in the few years after the big die off when the habitat would have been in great shape dew to low deer numbers. We may have to endure the low numbers to get the great years seven or eight years in the future.

Solid management is more than just trying to grow big bucks.

Sent from my SM-S926U using Tapatalk

 

[AHayes111]

Solid management is more than just trying to grow big bucks.

Sent from my SM-S926U using Tapatalk

I agree, it is not the job of game departments to provide big bucks for us to shoot. Game departments need to be managing with the long term interests of the deer and habitat in mind, not what the hunters want.

 

[AHayes111]

Hey, thanks guys, the whole CWD thing sometimes feels like a non-issue and then I talk to guys like this and I swing the other way.

I hate to see our bucks get hammered on too late of seasons, but if it proves to work, what can I say?

I just hope they’ll move the needle if it’s working or try something else if it’s not.

Looks like Colorado did slide their dates back on the calendar starting in 2025.

Montana has a long experienced the effect of the rut hunt on mature bucks. We still have older bucks in The herd. the most recent data I have seen says that 29% of the bucks taken in region 7 were four years old or better and that a whopping 72 % were four point or better. When you consider that a some of those older bucks were likely three points, it looks to me like we kill a lot of two and three year old four points in region 7. This is the reason Montana has difficulty growing many big deer. Not all big deer are old and not all old deer are big. The long season during the rut allows us as hunters to be more selective and what we select for antlers size, not age. In Montana we kill nearly all the bucks with the best potential before they reach the age of four and most the bucks that do get older are the ones that have little chance of getting big no matter how old they get. This is especially true on private land, but even on public we have some poor potential bucks reaching old age. I found a deadhead of one of these bucks this spring. Big old two point, I saw him at least five years and he was always a big two or two by three, never better than 130 inches in the years I saw him, He spent a good amount of time on hard hunted public land. I bet he was passed by hunters looking for a better buck many times,
It would be interesting to know if CO has seen a shift in harvest towards younger bucks with good antler potential and away from older bucks with small antlers. It could be that the short seasons in CO. force hunters to be less selective, but if there is a shift any gains on CWD may be short lived because I doubt CWD cares about antler size.

 

[robby denning]

Montana has a long experienced the effect of the rut hunt on mature bucks. We still have older bucks in The herd. the most recent data I have seen says that 29% of the bucks taken in region 7 were four years old or better and that a whopping 72 % were four point or better. …

Yet we both know more than a few hunters who would never believe that…

Appreciate all the experience you’ve been sharing with us.

 

[AHayes111]

This I believe is check station data and extrapolated region wide. Unfortunately it doesn't differentiate between public and private land. Likely a big difference between the two. It would also be interesting to find out what percentage of older bucks were less than 4 by 4s.