16 minute read
NORTHWEST DEER PROSPECTS
Disease impacts and wildfire access restrictions may play big roles in some fall rifle deer seasons.
At press time, key areas of Okanogan and Chelan Counties, Oregon’s Cascades and the Blues were still shut down due to summer 2020 and ’21 fires. And bluetongue and epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD, were killing whitetails near Spokane, Colfax, Lewiston, even parts of Central Oregon. In Washington’s whitetail heartland, Colville, there were concerns this year’s outbreak could be as bad as 2015’s.
Before that EHD outbreak, hunting prospects were looking decent for Pend Oreille, Stevens and Ferry Counties, where harvest has been stable to rising slightly in most units, with popular Huckleberry and 49 Degrees North Units seeing more of an uptick than others. Only whitetail bucks can be harvested, but a bid to reimplement antler restrictions was denied. Note that after a fall without any game stations, additional stops will be set up in Colville, Ione and Usk to increase monitoring for chronic wasting disease. It’s not known to occur here, but has been detected in Northwest Montana. Please stop and have your deer sampled.
Where whitetails west and south of Spokane will also likely be impacted by bluetongue, the somewhat overlooked and large mule deer herd in these mostly private parts is reported at near long-term averages.
Fires on the Blues’ northeast side may impact hunting in the national forest, but overall prospects are good, thanks to recent easy winters. “The district saw improvements in both total whitetail and mule deer harvests in 2020, beyond our expectations, and we expect this trend to continue into the 2021 season, especially for whitetail deer bucks that have a shorter lag time to become legal three-points than mule deer,” report biologists Paul Wik and Mark Vekasy. “Depending on the effects of the drought this season, we are still expecting mule deer harvest to improve through the 2022 hunting season.”
In the Columbia Basin’s big Beezley and Ritzville units, good posthunt buck and fawn:doe ratios last year have biologists expecting an average year for muleys.
The Okanogan is home to “improving postseason fawn:doe ratios and higherthan-average estimated fawn recruitment over the last two years,” and that could boost the number of 2½-year-old bucks available, per biologist Scott Fitkin. Heat and drought may keep them well up in the heights until forced down by snow. Of note, while several fires burned in Fitkin’s district – Cedar, Cub, Walker, Muckamuck – he notes collar data from recent studies show just “modest short-term displacement from fire or little displacement at all; fidelity of individual deer to their summer range is high.”
Mild winters and rebounding herds has Chelan and Douglas Counties “2021 mule deer season ... shaping up to be as good or better than that of 2020,” which was also the best back through 2016. Along with pointing out migratory corridors north and south of the Wenatchee River, bios suggest hunting the edges of 2020’s Pearl Hill Fire.
In the Klickitat, rising deer harvests and fawn survival back to average are good signs.
In Southwest Washington, deer hunting “should again be good,” with Coweeman, Lincoln and Winston Units all yielding a regional-best buck a square mile for rifle hunters in recent falls. Harvest has been rising in the Mason Unit and generally steadyish elsewhere, but San Juans deer are suffering from a big disease outbreak, though it may better align islands’ herds with habitat.
In Northwest Oregon, biologists say blacktail densities are “favorable” in Saddle Mountain, while they’re increasing in Wilson and stable to increasing in Stott Mountain, western Alsea and north Siuslaw. Best ops, they say, will typically be in the middle to east sides of the units.
In the Willamette Valley, the general trend has deer numbers maintaining at or higher than buck:doe ratio goals, while biologists say recent research in Southwest Oregon units shows “the local deer population is stable or slightly higher than previously projected.” They say Tioga, Sixes and Powers deer numbers are “fairly high” compared to the start of the millennium.
In the Roseburg area, fawn ratios have been stable or increasing and biologists are forecasting “fair to good” deer hunting in the Cascades and Umpqua watershed this year and, essentially, coming years, thanks to wildfires refreshing forage. Note that there is no longer a break in Cascade blacktail season for elk hunting; it runs continuously October 2 through November 5.
Buck ratios are “well above benchmark” in the Applegate, Chetco, Evans Creek, Rogue and nearby units. These are generally migratory animals that push out of the heights starting in mid-October, and last year some saw a big jump in hunter success, though that might have been related to the rule change allowing spikes to be harvested.
West Biggs and Maupin mule deer ratios are above goal at 22 and 23 bucks per 100 does. Using trail cams, biologists last year estimated the Hood Unit outside its main valley had 1,295 deer and they expect a similar number there this year.
Buck ratios are at or above benchmarks in Central Oregon’s Maury, Ochoco and Grizzly, but fawn survival dipped due to late snows, meaning fewer young bucks this fall. Things are even less rosy around Bend, where buck ratios are decent but fawn recruitment issues, poaching and other factors are keeping the herd below goal.
Indeed, generally speaking, mule deer are below goals for much of the rest of Eastern Oregon, but a bright spot is the whitetail bounce-back in Umatilla County from 2019’s huge bluetongue outbreak, while flagtail buck hunting is expected to be “fair” in northern Wallowa County units.
In Idaho, biologists say hunters will see “the usual healthy herds of whitetails” in the northern Panhandle, thanks to good fawn recruitment and winter survival. But EHD turned up there late, and given the situation near Lewiston, where several hundred deer died, Clearwater Region prospects were on hold. They were also encouraging hunters with either-sex tags to exercise that option for productive Unit 39 east of Boise, where deer numbers are increasing and overwinter survival is typically high, but fawn production and body size is decreasing, pointing to looming carrying capacity issues. –NWS
much of much. Should have brought the book I was reading at the time, Duck Season, which, it turns out, is more about the food of southwest France than hunting quackers (one chapter does describe the unusual machinations chasseurs use to bring in wood pigeons).
Instead I sat there in the woods and texted my wife Amy; watched as two does and a fawn all but galloped off the mountain; took some fruity nature pics; texted a long morning update to a good friend who used to be part of our Deer Camp; checked EPL soccer scores; watched geese honk their way past, high overhead; moved several hundred feet; watched a doe and two fawns glide past above me right to left; had some snacks; took a piss; drank some coffee to stay awake; watched another doe go the other way; ate my lunch; took more fruity nature pics; drank the rest of the coffee to stay awake; considered going for a midday walk to glass a basin; decided against it; drank a full water bottle so none would slosh around and scare the deer, I guess, while I sat on my butt; clipped the limbs of a downed tree to make a better shooting rest; thought again about going for that walk; and wondered if I had totally and utterly blown my opener on two sits, wasting the best day of the season.
What the hell sort of deer hunter had I become?!?!
Apparently a couch potato of one.
I’ll admit I’d probably see and bag more deer if I wasn’t so busy snapping fruity nature pics and soaking up the season, but that’s a huge part of why I get out there. Snow falls a couple Octobers ago in a place I like to
sit. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
Muleys are the deer of the West’s wide-open spaces, but I’ve taken to hunting them in relatively much tighter quarters. The limited visibility puts a premium on my senses for detecting them, especially
No wonder I hadn’t tagged any bucks since 2015’s.
After getting a nice four-point that year I thought I’d turned the corner. I’d seen a ridiculous number of bucks, at least for me, and killed what I believe to be the same one I’d taken a shot at seven days earlier on opening weekend (it has a distinctive “crab pincer” on one antler beam). I was a Big Hunter now, three in seven years, putting me above average for general season Washington riflemen.
Then I whiffed four years in a row and sunk back to where I was before.
A below-average Washington deer hunter.
And somehow sitting on my bum
A friend and I drag a buck out of the woods during a past season. This deer served as the initial reminder to me that afternoon can be a good time to hunt instead of hang out around the campfire
with the guys. (MIKE ARMSTRONG)
all of opening day was supposed to change my luck?!?
AHEM, I’M MY own harshest critic, which ensures that my head never gets too bloated. My 2020 buck also represents the culmination of all those I’ve now taken on that mountain, lessons learned over that time and a refining of my hunting tactics that, essentially, led me to the very rational decision that my best bet was to just sit tight on that particular slope.
Despite the care I take to hunt as scent-free as possible and watching where I walk in the woods so I don’t set off too many noise-making “land mines,” I have figured out that I’m really bad at reading the wind and only so-so at sneaking around, not a good combination, so I’ve given up on still hunting, which isn’t as still as it sounds, and I never really got into spotting and stalking muleys either.
My model of .308 is known for its accuracy, but I also have less than zero interest in taking long-range shots and possibly losing an animal or just failing to find it, so instead I’ve learned to wait for bucks to come to me, and the closer the better. All my shots have been within 80 if not just 60 yards.
This will come as no surprise to fellow hunters, but I’ve found deer typically and predictably move several times a day. It may vary where you hunt, but where I do it’s right before shooting hours begin; around 9 a.m.; sometimes around 11 or 12; again near 3 p.m.; and at the end of shooting light.
I have had far, far more deer encounters by getting to a good spot before those movement times, sitting down, shutting up and letting the woods settle down again than I have bumbling around.
One of my aforementioned bucks on the mountain was a 9 a.m. deer, and the one I believe I had two runins with in 2015 was both a 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. muley. A third also moved in midafternoon, as did a fourth.
So it went with this latest buck.
A SHEER JOY of deer hunting for me is immersing myself in Mother Nature at the peak of her glory. Fall really is the best season of all. I love it.
Yet even as I take in the beauty of clouds passing over peaks and valleys, relax to the sighing of the conifers and the clattering of willow leaves as summer yields to winter, and all the smells trigger memories of hunts past, I’m also listening for clues of what else might be in the woods. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard deer well before I’ve seen them. For how I hunt, I actually think my ears are more important than my eyes.
The woods are incredibly noisy, I’ve learned, and it seems like 99 percent of sounds can be attributed to the busywork of squirrels and chipmunks, the pecking of woodpeckers, flickers and nuthatches, the fussing of grouse.
Grouse are the absolute worst.
As daylight dwindled several falls ago, I was further back than I wanted to be at that hour because a blue had me absolutely frozen for half an hour or more in anticipation that a buck was just about to come up the mountain to me. Eventually I realized the rustling was actually coming from partway up a tree below my position and not ground level, which I’ve discovered deer more commonly inhabit.
So anyway, last October, after about
I hunt for the meat, not for the horns, which are a lot less nutritious for my family come dinnertime, but I also had a Euro mount done with last year’s buck and it has an honored place inside our home. It represents the culmination of lessons I’ve learned over the seasons, but I’m also unhappy with how lazy, per se, my hunting tactics have become. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
five hours in my second spot, I’d heard enough non-bird and non-bushytail sounds – a noise I can only describe as a “brushing,” the occasional loud crack and an odd knock – to convince myself that something big (but also not one of the guys from camp sneaking in to poach in my hunting grounds) might be just below me and screened by trees. ... And it was just as easy to convince myself I’d been a fool to expect a deer to be today where I’d seen them pass in the distant past.
So I gave it a little more time because the time on my phone showed me it was coming into one of those deer movement periods I target.
Soon there came the sound of something slowly moving through dry foliage. My first thought was grouse feeding back upslope, but after what felt like forever I finally saw antlers, then the body of a buck within 70 yards.
It was browsing its way upslope, giving me time to count antler points several times over to make sure it had the requisite three tines on at least one side. The last thing I wanted to do was have to call Sergeant Dan Christensen, the former Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife lead game warden for the district, and self-report a too-small buck. But with forks front and back there was no denying this one had enough points.
The question was, would I get a clear shot? Even as the part of the slope the deer was climbing was open, there were enough branches between us that I needed to wait for the right moment.
When that came, I fired.
The best thing that can be said about my shooting that afternoon was that at least I’d had the foresight several years ago to switch to allcopper Barnes TTSXs. Otherwise, there would have been lead fragments throughout the gut cavity. Ugh.
I’d used lead bullets since I began hunting deer, but my wife Amy asked me to change. When Buzz Ramsey, the noted Northwest angler who spends his falls chasing bucks and
bulls across Oregon, Washington and Idaho, mentioned to me that he used Barnes, it was all the easier.
I’ll admit my 2020 buck wasn’t my biggest bodied one, but I was grateful for the help I got from the boys back at camp who helped me pull it out of the woods. We hung and I skinned the deer, and the next day John showed me how to make heart hors d’oeuvres.
After a quick turn around from Bellevue’s Golden Steer Meats, the family and I enjoyed delicious venison backstrap, tenderloin, summer sausage, Italian sausage and pepperoni, and John also did a kickass Euro mount that is the highlight of our living room.
THINKING BACK ON the hunt and my original quandary – lucky lazy hunter or learned one? – in terms of ground covered I was definitely lazy, and I feel guilty about that on multiple levels. Getting a buck shouldn’t be easy. This is hunting, not cozying up to a vending machine. It was embarrassingly more like sitting in a treestand and waiting for a whitetail to parade on by than the workout that mule deer hunting should be.
I also didn’t get to check on my favorite spots on the mountain – The Pinecone Pile, The Aspen, The Corner, The Saddle, The Bowl, The Slope That Has No @$%@$ Reason To Be So $%@$# Steep, The Old Twins – places I have longterm relationships with. Seeing those each fall is as important to me as the hunt itself.
And by tagging out early I missed out on the coveted final four days of a season that all but knocked on Halloween’s door because Washington’s 2020 rifle deer hunt started as late as it possibly can, October 17, the first Saturday after the 10th of the month. I really, really had been looking forward to that. Salivating, in fact.
True, I didn’t have to shoot, but being a meat hunter I’m not passing up a chance to fill our freezer either. As much as I love fall, the drive, Deer Camp and getting together with the guys, I’ve got a job to do for my family. Peach-fuzz two-by-threes and moss-horned high-country migrators are all the same in my book.
That the wind was in my favor and a buck just happened to walk through my 100-yard-wide shooting window in the forest were both pretty lucky.
But the ground I chose to put myself in for an extended sitting session was where I’d taken bucks in the past, and last year’s made three midafternoon tagouts in a row. I guess that’s the ultimate point I’m trying to make with this story: Think back over seasons gone by; find linkages; consider deer movement timing; put it all together; be there. I may be a slow learner but I think I’m on to something.
I’ll take that and luck any day, but the lazy thing does bother me. We’ll see what I do about it this month. NS
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