Blue Tongue

[gallion_t]

With several of the GMUs getting hit hard with Blue Tongue this past year I figured it could be a good discussion on what WDFW should do to help the population or if they will do anything at all.

My personal opinion is that for the effected GMUs they should eliminate or at least reduce the number of second deer, antler-less tags for a year or two. I know where I hunt (139) in places we would regularly see 20-30 deer in morning or evening sitting and watching a hillside we were seeing maybe 2-5. I feel something needs to be done to help the heard rebound a bit and by reducing pressure and harvest rates on the females and allowing more of them to breed the heard can grow.

I realize there is no quick fix and that it will take a few breeding cycles to increase the numbers and for the bucks to mature into legal animals, but I also dont feel the right thing to do is keep hammering a heard that is already greatly reduced.

What are everyone elses thoughts?

[jasnt]

I think more aggressive predator control should be step one. 

[Jonathan_S]

Fawn recruitment can be helped during those first few vulnerable months by making life hard for coyotes.

Whitetail are pretty darn prolific, they'll rebound and take back over as long as there is habitat.

[Oh Mah]

Is there any link that shows the damage from Blue tongue last year?

+1 preditor control

[jasnt]

That and cougar durning the winter months. I've see a huge increase in cougar in my area over the last 10 years

[Jonathan_S]

I really doubt they've got completed (or accurate) surveys even if it were a top priority.  Whitetail are a pretty difficult animal to survey compared to elk or mule deer.

In my neck of the woods, I've seen small pockets decimated...where there were 20-25 bucks and does, I only saw a handful in late September.  Found several of them dead.  Other areas seem mostly unaffected that are only a few miles away.

That and cougar durning the winter months. I've see a huge increase in cougar in my area over the last 10 years

  one saving grace is (totally a guess here) that the places I've noticed the worst damage are Palouse-ish areas that don't hold consistent cats.

[WAPatriot]

That and cougar durning the winter months. I've see a huge increase in cougar in my area over the last 10 years

Next time when cougars are stalking you give um some hot lead

When a predator is in pistol range it is self defense

When a cougar is 20 feet away from you they can kill you in less than 1 second one jump stride and then your neck

[Oh Mah]

I really doubt they've got completed (or accurate) surveys even if it were a top priority.  Whitetail are a pretty difficult animal to survey compared to elk or mule deer.

In my neck of the woods, I've seen small pockets decimated...where there were 20-25 bucks and does, I only saw a handful in late September.  Found several of them dead.  Other areas seem mostly unaffected that are only a few miles away.

That and cougar durning the winter months. I've see a huge increase in cougar in my area over the last 10 years

  one saving grace is (totally a guess here) that the places I've noticed the worst damage are Palouse-ish areas that don't hold consistent cats.

Your probably right  Blue tongue plus the probability of larger winter kill this year,Preditor like big cat rebounds and the always coyote kill numbers.GET OUT AND KILL SOME COUGARS AND COYOTES EVERYBODY  WOLF's to.

[jjhunter]

They don't need to do anything in the Palouse.   Those whitetail recover very quickly.   Always have, always will.   Lot's of feed, cover, private dirt, easy winters, and minimal predation.

[elkboy]

I tend to agree with jjhunter.  The food base is tremendously consistent, even in dry years, due to the winter wheat, garbanzo, and lentil farming.  The whitetail herd rebounded quickly after the bluetongue outbreak in 2003, and after the hard winters of 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.  We had at least 50% twinning rates in the herd we hunt for years after those winters.  We have a lot of coyotes, and have never hunted them.  It does not seem to make much of a difference between our area and adjacent areas with a lot of coyote culling.   

[LDennis24]

  In our area the feed is always there with all the crops and hay fields and the number's are still decent after this summer. I found 4 dead whitetails in our field and 6 more down the road in a mile stretch. Since December we have a new group of bucks and does running around that weren't here this fall so even as the groups get thinned out from blue tongue or hunting, the yearlings and whatever other deer from adjacent areas move in quickly and take over new territory. Some area's around the Palouse river didn't have hardly any deaths and some area's had TON's.

[elkboy]

 
Some of the smaller creeks that lost most of their active channel definitely had higher mortality, with groups of 5-15 deer found dead here and there.  On the 200 acre property we hunt, we found 7 dead deer, with probably more that we never found.  Five of these occurred in a four-day period.  In contrast, I take long runs along the south fork Palouse River, and there are as many deer there as ever, it seems.