Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting In case you thought there were no deer in Nevada

Just got the pics of that giant buck tonight, I'll post em up for you guys in a bit

Pics posted in the General Hunting section

Here is a link

http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/4131839#Post4131839

Drum

Spreading a couple of hundred deer around on a small, concentrated area of winter range doesn't paint an accurate picture of the state wide herd. Spread those couple of hundred deer over thousands of acres in the summer months and then try to find them.

I have been out on mule deer counts in the winter with the DWR. The way they do their counts is often times a joke. We would find 50 deer in one small canyon and the officer would multiply that by the number of other canyons in the area, plus 25% for good measure and call it an accurate count. The other nearby canyons didn't have a deer in them (I looked and glassed for hours). So the counts were ALWAYS way off, but they don't care. 99% of the time, the game counters won't get out of the truck to look around. If they can't count them from the road, they simply make up numbers. I was not impressed with the counting methods or the people involved from the state. This was in Utah, but I have seen it in other states as well. Flinch

Like NV, southern Idaho is largely high desert. There are lots of deer out there, but it's a very large area. This video was obviously taken in the winter when the deer were on their wintering grounds. You will find that most areas in winter will have no deer at all. I've seen many herds of 100+ in the winter in places where they're very scarce during hunting season

No one said it was easy, but they are there.

A couple of things the biologists I've counted with have mentioned.
They know perfectly well you can't count them all. They also are aware that deer will concentrate in certain areas.
What they do is come back year after year and watch trends. That includes counting bucks before and after the hunting seasons, and, especially fawns, before and after the winter season. That's what gives them the information they need to manage them properly. It's not that particular count, but how it fits in comparison to the other years on record. E

You are hunting the desert, find a year round spring you have to walk to(harder than you think). Then start checking washes in that area for tracks and fresh deer poop. If you find these things your odds go up. I know this is basic stuff but most guys i know who hunt mulies in the desert and do well tell me this is where to start. Has worked for me in the past.

If nothing else, I sure wish Oregon F & W would spend $400 to $500K on predator eradication, instead of glorifying the cougar and wolves...

In my opinion, with our leftie governor....his only priority is to continually raise taxes on the citizens of Oregon... this year he managed to get license hunting fees raised by 40% ( like he has everything else) and the "lottery" system for most of the state is just to raise more money for the Democrats to blow on some more worthless expenditures...

in the past, hunting fees were supposedly put right back in to F & W.... NOW Kulongowski has hunting fees rolled into the state's general fund... so Salem/Portland democrats can spend it on more welfare programs..

So cheers to Nevada for making game a priority... Oregon's deer herds are about 15 to 20% of what they were when I moved here in 1995...