So would this be the time to ask what the best units are to apply for over there? I've been building up points. Ill have 4 antelope and 3 deer points. I planned on hunting G because thats where my dad hunted but after their hunt last year I'm not sure thats a tag I want. They never saw a quality buck dead or alive. A game warden explained most guys shoot a 2.5 year old buck and that's what they ended up seeing other hunters with and what my uncle ended up getting. My dad ate the tag. So now I've gotta do some homework and decide if I should change game plans. Antelope I've just been building the points because I've always wanted to hunt them but bo clue where to go.
The deer herds in G and H got crushed in the winter of 2010-11 - mortality figures were like 50-75%. So the fawns in 2011 and 2012 are making up the bulk of the bucks around now. In 2014 they would have been 2 1/2 to 3 1/2. But they've had four easy winters since then, and now those bucks are getting into the 4 1/2 range. This is a big part of the point creep problem - many guys held off applying the last several years and are now cashing in. Next year and the year after (etc.) should continue to get better until they have another bad winter.
I saw the 50-70% mortality figure in 2010 but I thought that was just fawn recruitment but not necessarily all the herd altogether. Last year was my first in Wyoming. We spent our share of time in the field and definitely noticed that there was an older age class of bucks missing at least in the area of the Bighorn Mountains.
Here's a snippet I found from the spring of 2011:
According to a source at Wyoming Game and Fish, “It’s looking like the Wyoming Range mule deer herd will experience substantial overwinter mortality this year on all of the big winter ranges from Evanston to Cokeville in the south and from Kemmerer to LaBarge and Daniel in the north. Deep, persistent snows arrived in November and developed into hard crust, which made foraging and movement very difficult for mule deer. These conditions, coupled with extended periods of below-zero temperatures and poor shrub conditions on winter ranges, resulted in a rapid depletion of mule deer energy reserves by midwinter. Conditions have not relented much, with cooler temperatures and lingering snow slowing the annual green-up of spring grasses and forbs. Similar conditions occurred on winter ranges associated with the Uinta mule deer herd, especially the large winter complex near Leroy. Fawns will typically make up the majority of the winter losses, but in a year like this year, we will see losses to the older age classes of the population as well. These are the type of winters that impact all age classes of deer in the population.”
