What happened to Utah deer around 1994?

[MuleyFever]

I was looking at the big game reports and saw this. What happened to cause the big decline? Its pretty significant and I wouldnt think a bad winter would have such an effect on a state like UT where a lot of the state gets mild winters where the deer winter at.

 

[MallardSX2]

Isn't that when rangefinders and long rang guns became available to the masses? I think so.

 

[CJ19]

Isn't that when rangefinders and long rang guns became available to the masses? I think so.

even if so i cant see something like causing a 1 years change like that. that has to be something with reporting or season changes. thats like systemic change type stuff.

 

[IdahoBeav]

I thought I recall one of the Rokcast episodes where they had a UDWR bio on and he mentioned a severe winter in the Cache and surrounding areas and the herd numbers have not been the same since.

 

[MallardSX2]

even if so i cant see something like causing a 1 years change like that. that has to be something with reporting or season changes. thats like systemic change type stuff.

Ya I was just joking around. lol

 

[robby denning]

The infamous winter of 92/93. Came on the heels of 5 years of drought and pretty much set the course for mule deer across the west since then.

 

[Westhunt]

Probably trail cameras and Instagram hunters seriously, though I wonder how much of the graph is from technology advances in data collection. I can't imagine the 1930s had very accurate estimates. I wonder if the 60-80s were grossly over estimated. They started really using radio collars around the 90s and maybe they got better/more accurate estimates.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

 

[RockAndSage]

The infamous winter of 92/93. Came on the heels of 5 years of drought and pretty much set the course for mule deer across the west since then.

^^ This. There's nothing hunters are doing in one season that will crush deer numbers like that.

Talk with any wildlife biologist, and they'll tell you that far more deer are killed by harsh winters than hunters. Especially in places where traditional wintering habitat - low lying valleys, mainly - has been wiped out by housing. Those deer still often come close, but are in the hills in the snow up above those places, often teetering on the edge of starvation. In late winter especially, all it takes is one off-leash dog chasing a deer in that condition to have it die of exhaustion. Same with early shed hunting. It's a tough reality, but it's a very real thing.

 

[MuleyFever]

The infamous winter of 92/93. Came on the heels of 5 years of drought and pretty much set the course for mule deer across the west since then.

Wow, thats a loss of 100k deer based on that chart. I am surprised it had such a huge impact on this state.

 

[robby denning]

Wow, thats a loss of 100k deer based on that chart. I am surprised it had such a huge impact on this state.

ya, you'll see similar graphs for other states across the West.

 

[Customweld]

The infamous winter of 92/93. Came on the heels of 5 years of drought and pretty much set the course for mule deer across the west since then.

That was a rough one for SW Idaho as well. I was feeding cows for a rancher that winter and the snow was over the 4th strand on the fences where I was feeding.

 

[CorbLand]

ya, you'll see similar graphs for other states across the West.

I was too young to remember the 92/93 winter. Do you think that deer were over carrying capacity going into it?

 

[The Guide]

I was too young to remember the 92/93 winter. Do you think that deer were over carrying capacity going into it?

I would say that mule deer were at or over carrying capacity in Montana during that time. There were more liberal bag limits for antlerless mule deer (extra draw tags for antlerless) in addition to either sex for your general tag in our area of SW Montana. You could road hunt one day and fill your tags with good deer by today's standards. But that time also had a lot more snow so access wasn't as easy as it is today. Lots of places got snowed in by the first week of November and you couldn't access them without a snowmobile or a couple of trucks chained up on all 4 working in tandem to break trail.

Jay

 

[Maverick1]

Um, that was 30 years ago. Who cares? Those deer are all dead by now and not a single one of them is huntable. I'd focus more on the last couple of years.

Unless you have a time machine and can go back to the early 1990's. If so, hunt those deer, and then be like Forrest and buy stock in "some sort of fruit company".....

Just kidding. Always good to have curiosity and wonder what happened in the past. A severe winter makes sense as others have noted. Sometimes the agencies change their counting methods, too.

 

[Random Dude Guy]

Wow, thats a loss of 100k deer based on that chart. I am surprised it had such a huge impact on this state.

It was country wide. All the way to the East Coast. For Utah specifically, I believe I read it was the 2nd or 3rd snowiest winter on record (dating back to the early 1900's). And February of 1993 had more avalanches then ever in history and nothing has been close since. (per various local news so take that how you want)

 

[FAAFO]

The infamous winter of 92/93. Came on the heels of 5 years of drought and pretty much set the course for mule deer across the west since then.

^ This.

Also the high numbers of deer in the 80s could easily be associated with the war on predators in the 70s and 80s. At one point the bounty on coyotes was at $100 which was A LOT of money back in those days.

 

[robby denning]

I was too young to remember the 92/93 winter. Do you think that deer were over carrying capacity going into it?

Yes, and the graph proves it if you look at that little drop that started from the peak around 1990, before the crash, that’s where the biologist were putting out the warning that productivity in the herd was decreasing due to being over carrying capacity.

The good biologists were not surprised at all when the big winter kill came in.

We saw the same thing happen in 2016 just before the big winter kill of 17. Herd production started to decrease because we were over carrying capacity.

 

[Macegl]

I live in Southern Utah and was young at the time, but I remember that winter well because we shoveled snow off my grandfathers roof multiple times because he was worried it was going to cave in. It was really similar to the winter two years ago but the low elevation snow down here stuck around a lot longer because it stayed cold.

I wish I had pictures, it got to the point we could step off the roof onto the snow. This was at 7000 ft elevation for reference.

I’m also guessing the population number on that graph before 1993 was optimistic.

 

[CorbLand]

Yes, and the graph proves it if you look at that little drop that started from the peak around 1990, before the crash, that’s where the biologist were putting out the warning that productivity in the herd was decreasing due to being over carrying capacity.

The good biologists were not surprised at all when the big winter kill came in.

We saw the same thing happen in 2016 just before the big winter kill of 17. Herd production started to decrease because we were over carrying capacity.

What I wouldn’t give to go back to the number and quality of deer I saw in 15 and 16.