Are you really saying these early and late rifle hunts have high success % because of rifle tech?
Seems these hunts have always had high success just by the nature of the timing. Why do you think migration hunts, rut hunts, etc have always been sought after tags….since, well, forever.
How about we cut all early season and rut hunts when the deer are most vulnerable? Have all mule deer hunts happen Oct. 1 - 14th? I don’t see a problem with that.
I'm slowly reading through this. I live in Iowa, so no mule deer problems. We have whitetails, which are arguably as adaptable as anything except coyotes. We have whitetail problems like EHD, shit tons of pressure from the division of larger farms into 40 acre and smaller hunting acreages, farmers that hate deer more than rats and want them all dead, loss of habitat due to people wanting to live "in the country" but really they want to bring their city living arrangements to the country. They build 10-20 houses 7 ft apart, but they don't have to look at houses for miles, they get to see "nature" out their back window. Every greedy landowner wants to get a piece of the pie. This fractioning of habitat has definitely effected the quality of the herd. Also, farm implements have become so good at getting everything that there is very little winter food available. 20 years ago, deer fed on grain missed by combines through the winter all the way up until spring. Now, the older bucks are starving during the coldest winter spells.
If all of this is having a very noticeable effect on whitetails, I can only imagine the effect it has had on mule deer that are not very adaptive to different habitat and food sources. One thing Iowa has always been pretty good at, their weapons restrictions and season dates. The only weapons we can hunt with during the rut are vertical bows. The only people that get to hunt during the early season are youth and disabled hunters. Muzzleloaders are limited to 7500 tags for residents during October. Gun seasons are short. Only the population control doe hunts are allowed to use long range rifles ( there are some loopholes in the regs like smokeless muzzleloaders). Non-resident tags are limited, and we have mandatory harvest reporting.
Doe kill has a dramatic effect on population. I have been asked to kill as many does as possible in a couple spots. Some fields would have 200+ deer in them on winter afternoons. Now 5-10 deer in them. If you pay attention, you can keep deer at a decent level by shooting a few does every few years if the intent is to keep them low (farmers and auto insurance). If the intent is to keep the habitat at carrying capacity, you need to shoot just the right amount (and it is a lot here), if you want to grow numbers, don't shoot does. The problem in Iowa is that deer numbers are managed by county and the state is mostly private land. Guys that think they are building big buck meccas won't shoot does and they tend to get over populated. Farmers want zero deer, so they invite people to kill them and the only ones that get invited back are the ones that kill a lot of does and treat everything very respectfully.
As has been said, reducing doe harvest will put more deer on the landscape. Making deer harder to kill by limiting hunting when they are most vulnerable will result in more mature bucks. None of this addresses water, wild horses, cheat grass, habitat loss, or developments popping up in migration and wintering areas. I don't have great ideas for solutions for a lot of those problems that are politically palatable, but I think a lot of the big gains are there.