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Quote from: baldopepper on November 06, 2023, 01:45:06 PMAnother little fact the wdfw could make more public. They estimate there are 3600 mountain lions in the state. Using the most accepted figure, each lion will kill.48 deer per year. That works out to approximately 173,000 deer per year. They also estimate a deer population in the state of about 240000 animals. Hunters harvested roughly 60,000. Math doesn't look good for the deer herds.That math obviously is wrong. Doesn't account for the 10s of thousands of deer being killed by other predators, Wolves, bears, and coyotes. Then there are the thousands killed by cars. and last but not least, the 10s of thousands killed by hunters. If your numbers were true, every deer in the State would be dead before the year was up and we wouldn't have to worry about them. Your numbers are way off, wherever you got them.
Another little fact the wdfw could make more public. They estimate there are 3600 mountain lions in the state. Using the most accepted figure, each lion will kill.48 deer per year. That works out to approximately 173,000 deer per year. They also estimate a deer population in the state of about 240000 animals. Hunters harvested roughly 60,000. Math doesn't look good for the deer herds.
Quote from: Sitka_Blacktail on November 06, 2023, 09:20:45 PMQuote from: baldopepper on November 06, 2023, 01:45:06 PMAnother little fact the wdfw could make more public. They estimate there are 3600 mountain lions in the state. Using the most accepted figure, each lion will kill.48 deer per year. That works out to approximately 173,000 deer per year. They also estimate a deer population in the state of about 240000 animals. Hunters harvested roughly 60,000. Math doesn't look good for the deer herds.That math obviously is wrong. Doesn't account for the 10s of thousands of deer being killed by other predators, Wolves, bears, and coyotes. Then there are the thousands killed by cars. and last but not least, the 10s of thousands killed by hunters. If your numbers were true, every deer in the State would be dead before the year was up and we wouldn't have to worry about them. Your numbers are way off, wherever you got them.Go online and check them out. These are the numbers as released by wdfw. I tend to agree they dont seem possible, but its their numbers. Not mine. I simply took their estimated number on mt lion numbers and did the math based on several references as to kill per year per lion. Total deer population numbers are also theirs. Granted, if you take their numbers and combine them with other predator, hunter kills and auto kills there shouldn't be a deer left in the state.
I don't think we can simply just regulate ourselves back to healthy populations. Most of us think that way and throw out ideas. The first thing i would do is force bio's to stop managing from their desks and get out and do some counts and interact with the user groups. Then I would figure out who the wolves in sheep clothing are working in management. We have many. I would weed them out and start with non-biased management perspectives. Why do we have an ungulate bio with predator tattoos married to a wolf bio? (Just an observation) NE WA wildlife managers have been in turmoil over the last 5 years (or more). WDFW had to send the regional director to plant himself at the district office. As far as the managing the decline in NE WA, lets start there....
Quote from: HUNTIN4SIX on November 07, 2023, 07:28:22 AMI don't think we can simply just regulate ourselves back to healthy populations. Most of us think that way and throw out ideas. The first thing i would do is force bio's to stop managing from their desks and get out and do some counts and interact with the user groups. Then I would figure out who the wolves in sheep clothing are working in management. We have many. I would weed them out and start with non-biased management perspectives. Why do we have an ungulate bio with predator tattoos married to a wolf bio? (Just an observation) NE WA wildlife managers have been in turmoil over the last 5 years (or more). WDFW had to send the regional director to plant himself at the district office. As far as the managing the decline in NE WA, lets start there....Alot of our counts are done mid-summer is what I was told.Never understood that ,cause you have surplus animals that time of year.If they did counts I'm December or January,on public ground .They could count them on there fingers .Our biologist,the only good thing I've seen is no antlerless harvest.After that she won't support any APR for WT,Mule deer in the NE are slowly declining to extinction. It should be permit only for mule deer in NE WA or 4pt min across the board for WT and MD.
Another count I wonder about. Estimate on line says WA has between 25-30000 bears Several studies on line estimate a bear will kill between 10-20 deer (predominantly fawns) per year. Assuming our bears are terrible hunters and only take 2 per year, the low number estimate would be 50 000 deer killed per year. When you start researching numbers things certainly don't add up very well. By their numbers, there are certainly more deer killed combined than they estimate we have. Kinda makes me wonder how we can make proper management decisions when we have numbers that suggest we have no deer left to manage.
Quote from: baldopepper on November 07, 2023, 08:07:57 AMAnother count I wonder about. Estimate on line says WA has between 25-30000 bears Several studies on line estimate a bear will kill between 10-20 deer (predominantly fawns) per year. Assuming our bears are terrible hunters and only take 2 per year, the low number estimate would be 50 000 deer killed per year. When you start researching numbers things certainly don't add up very well. By their numbers, there are certainly more deer killed combined than they estimate we have. Kinda makes me wonder how we can make proper management decisions when we have numbers that suggest we have no deer left to manage. Right. Cut legal hunting in half and save 10,000 deer. Hardly makes a dent into the deaths from predators.
Quote from: HUNTIN4SIX on November 07, 2023, 07:28:22 AMI don't think we can simply just regulate ourselves back to healthy populations. Most of us think that way and throw out ideas. The first thing i would do is force bio's to stop managing from their desks and get out and do some counts and interact with the user groups. Then I would figure out who the wolves in sheep clothing are working in management. We have many. I would weed them out and start with non-biased management perspectives. Why do we have an ungulate bio with predator tattoos married to a wolf bio? (Just an observation) NE WA wildlife managers have been in turmoil over the last 5 years (or more). WDFW had to send the regional director to plant himself at the district office. As far as the managing the decline in NE WA, lets start there....Alot of our counts are done mid-summer is what I was told.Never understood that ,cause you have surplus animals that time of year.If they did counts I'm December or January,on public ground .They could count them on there fingers .Our biologist,the only good thing I've seen is no antlerless harvest.After that she won't support any APR for WT,Mule deer in the NE are slowly declining to extinction. It should be permit only for mule deer in NE WA or 4pt min across the board for WT and MD.If you look back in 2014 , When we had 4pt min for WT.You can look at three point harvest and estimate mule deer harvest.Basically each GMU has less than a hundred mule deer harvested each year. Maybe 101 might have an ok harvest rate for mule deer.They know MD harvest is almost nothing.They know it's declining.Yet here we are still buying a tag for it.When they did the predator/prey study ,they didn't collar MD in our area cause they couldn't find 100 mule deer to collar.When you have an antlered harvest less than 100 animals.We shouldn't be hunting mule deer in 117/121/113.MD population is so low in these units,they should be an endangered species.We need better management based on individual GMU needs across the whole state.