Northeast Washington Winter Kill

[bearpaw]

I actually just about had a coyote hunt with prizes organized last year, but someone in the Colville Chamber of Commerce pretty much killed it.

This year I do not plan on even trying to work with the Chamber, that will keep it much simpler to organize.

I am busy with hunters until the end of January, then I will try to get it organized in late winter. That's an excellent time to hunt them.

[Special T]

Why would they want to kill it? Are the  moving to colville now?

[NWBREW]

Well I just got back from 111. I was over there for 7 days for elk and then 8 days for deer. I saw a good number of deer and elk and didn't see many winterkill bones. Did hear yotes almost every day. As for the hunters in my camp we had one miss on a 4x4, one miss on a spike, one pass on a spike, one missfire on a spike, one miss on a 3 pt., and I killed the first buck I shot at....small 3 pt.   Bucks seen with no shot opportunities were one 3 pt. chasing a doe at 100 mph. (or so). one 5x5 and one 4x4 (off the county road), and 2 spikes (on my driveway).
 Did see lots of road hunters driving back and forth on the PAVED COUNTY ROAD in front of my place    as well as two rigs driving in my gate...past the sign...and down my driveway thinking it looked like a good place to hunt.    To bad the winterkill doesn't have an affect on the road hunters as it does on deer.

I also have a nieghbor over there who says he saw 2 wolves cut through his field back in oct. Do I beileve him...sure he knows what he's looking at. Is it true.. I don't know if the wolves have penetrated up in there yet. Extreme northern stevens county.

[croix]

Maybe our group (8 people) was just lucky, but the numbers we saw were better than last year. We hunted public land in the Aladdin unit and we saw almost twice as many deer as last year. We saw 5 bucks in 4 days, killed 2 of them and couldn't get clean shots on the others. We even saw deer as we were dragging on out. Guy in the camp next to us missed three bucks in two days before he decided his scope had been knocked out of whack (he was so disgusted he packed up camp and went home). We also saw plenty of does including one with a late drop fawn (still had 5 white spots on its back).

The coyotes were singing every night, but that's not unusual. I did see more coyote tracks than usual but didn't see any dogs like I normally do.

The possibility exists that we saw more deer this year simply because of timing and weather. Last year the deer seemed more nocturnal. This year they were nocturnal right up until the snow hit and cloud cover hung on through the night. It coincided with the rut hitting its stride and WHAM - deer everywhere.

We still aren't seeing the numbers that we saw 4-5 years ago, but we did see deer. I was only there 9 days and the group in general was there for just the late modern season, so we really only got a snapshot of the actual population up there. I would absolutely defer to the guys that spend more time there (esp. bearpaw), but wanted to share our "less than  bleak" experience.

[bearpaw]

There are still deer out there, just fewer, if we can have 2 or 3 mild winters the NE whitetail factory will be back in business with tons of deer as whitetails numbers recover fast.

If we could reduce coyote numbers that would help and if we don't get too many wolves that will help. There are wolves here, not high numbers, but there are a few here in most GMU's. Adults with pups have been seen this summer by several different people in 105, WDFW has confirmed the pack in 113, wolves have also been seen by many different people in 121 and 117, and 111. As of yet wolves are not a serious problem here, but I am afraid over time we will end up like the Methow, or worse yet, like Idaho.

[Palmer]

The possibility exists that we saw more deer this year simply because of timing and weather. Last year the deer seemed more nocturnal. This year they were nocturnal right up until the snow hit and cloud cover hung on through the night. It coincided with the rut hitting its stride and WHAM - deer everywhere.

I'm agreeing with you, We saw sess then 10 deer until the snow hit on the 12th.  Then whamo!, the deer were out everyday.

[chukarchaser]

I just got back from Kelly Hill also. From the 13th thru the 19th two of us hunted hard and saw very few deer.  We also came across three sets of what I figure to be wolf tracks and spots where they laid down  to watch the hillside.  All three sets of tracks where wider and longer than my 7Wby case and over a mile from the nearest house in that drainage.  We did see two bucks shot by road hunters, one right out from under us as we where working that way.