Deer Management News This Week

Deer harvest in NY on par with last year, DEC estimates April 2, 2020 New York, recordonline.com
... In keeping with recent trends, hunters continued to pass up young bucks in favor of mature deer. Only 37% of the adult buck harvest were 1.5-year olds. DEC noted that for the first time, the 2.5-year-old buck harvest exceeded that of the 1.5-year olds... no Chronic Wasting Disease — CWD — detections in the 2,658 deer tested ...

St. Lawrence County deer harvest went up in 2019-20 March 31, 2020 New York,  North Country Now
... The proportion of bucks – defined as males at least a year and a half old – was more than half of the deer taken. Of the 5,806 deer taken in the county in 2019, 4,465 were bucks...

... The proposed changes [see video below] come as Utah Division of Wildlife Resources biologists have reported a dip in buck-to-doe ratios over the past four years ... That drop was preceded by buck populations rising to beyond the agency’s statewide objective; for bucks that’s defined as 15-20 bucks per 100 does... 

DWR Recommendations


... this time of year is critical for mule deer and migrating waterfowl. In Utah, mule deer are weakened by the winter and it’s difficult for them to find food...

... A total of 57,949 North Dakota deer hunters took approximately 37,250 deer during the 2019 deer gun hunting season ... Game and Fish made available 65,500 deer gun licenses last year. Overall hunter success was 64 percent ..,

DEC releases 2019-20 deer harvest report March 30, 2020 New York, Auburn Citizen
...  hunters in New York harvested 224,190 deer this past season. The estimate includes 103,787 antlerless deer and 120,403 antlered bucks. This represents a 9% decrease in antlerless harvest and 6% increase for bucks...  Full Report

Fond du Lac tribal council supports elk restoration March 30, 2020 Minnesota, Duluth News Tribune
... The Fond du Lac Reservation Business Committee has given the go-ahead for the long-developing effort to restore elk to eastern Minnesota ... State support, funding sources and a disease-free source of elk all still remain unclear...

Pa. Game Commission's new deer hunting rules promote 'bloodthirsty greed' (opinion) March 28, 2020 Pennsylvania, York Daily Record/Sunday News
... The Board of Commissioners have proposed ... ability to continue shooting at deer before retrieving and tagging the first one ...  Along comes a herd of deer… since you can legally shoot six of them, he starts blasting. Suppose he drops a buck and a doe, and several of them run away leaving blood trails. Which one does he go after? ...

... On state Highway 21 ... In 2016, 77 deer and elk were hit by cars ...  the Idaho Transportation Department is proposing a wildlife overpass that would be 150-feet long and 54- to 66-feet wide ... estimated to cost somewhere around $2.5 million ...

Big survey of winter deer yards completed March 28, 2020 Vermont, Times Union
... “Knowing where deer overwinter, the quality of the habitat, and how deer are using it will help us keep the local deer herd stable, healthy, and in balance with available habitat.” ...

DNR reviews 2019 deer seasons March 28, 2020 Michigan, The Iron Mountain Daily News
... The DNR tested just over 20,000 deer for chronic wasting disease ... In all, 65 CWD-positive deer were identified from the 2019 hunting seasons – and all were from counties with a known CWD presence... “Fifty-three of our total positives came out of Montcalm and northeast Kent counties, where we tested about 3,000 deer,” ..,

... Gov. Jim Justice signed into law a bill amending the natural resources code making West Virginia the 40th state to allow hunters to track wounded big game with leashed dogs ...

... Mule deer have seen a decline in total numbers throughout the West ... A majority of the funding will be used to support habitat improvement efforts around the state, like fighting cheatgrass spread to support native plant productivity and reducing the encroachment of conifers into aspen stands, which provide coverage and forage for mule deer...

... the total number of deer hunters for all seasons has been on the rise since 2015... The total number of deer hunters during the third season in 2019 was 25,544. While the harvest numbers were lower, the number of deer hunters in the field was not. That number marks a 9.44% increase in the number of hunters for 2019...

Preliminary hearing held in trophy deer poaching case March 26, 2020 Utah, Daily Herald
... A witness saw the spotlights in the dark ...  charged in Fifth District Court with wanton destruction of protected wildlife, a third-degree felony, and with a tagging requirement violation, a class B misdemeanor ...

New shed antler boundaries now law March 25, 2020 Wyoming, wyomingnewsnow.tv
... “In the winter, big game animals such as mule deer and elk use most of their energy just to survive,” said Rick King, chief game warden. “Limiting disturbance during this critical time of the year may help them hold on to more of their valuable reserves.” ...

Overabundance of Black‐Tailed Deer in Urbanized Coastal California  BJ Furnas, RH Landers, RG Paiste, BN Sacks - The Journal of Wildlife Management, 2020
...  Our estimate of average deer density was 1.7–6.1 times higher than published density estimates for deer from elsewhere in California and on the low end of densities reported for mule and white‐tailed (O. virginianus) deer in regions where they routinely cause a nuisance to humans. High black‐tailed deer densities in Marin County may be partially attributed to a paucity of large predators, but more investigation is warranted to evaluate the effects of a recent increase in coyotes (Canis latrans) on the deer population. Analyses of highway road kill rates and citizen science surveys suggest that the deer population in Marin County has been stable over the past 10 years...

... In most of the permit areas of the Central Hills Prairie Block, the recommendation the DNR came to was to manage toward decreasing the deer population ... significantly (50%) in permit areas 213, 214, 215, 276 and 277... [link to view and comment on proposals] ...

DNR proposes changes to balance deer herd March 23, 2020 Iowa, Iowa Farm Bureau
... would reestablish general deer licenses in seven counties and rescinds the January antlerless-deer-only season for all 99 counties... Due to a widespread outbreak of Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) last summer in some 60 counties, particularly in central, south central, southeast and east central Iowa, deer numbers and the harvest were down in the state. The state’s total deer harvest last season was 93,964, a decrease of more than 12% compared with 107,857 the previous season..,

Fire Island National Seashore: 230 deer shot to reduce overpopulation March 22, 2020 New York, Newsday
... About 130 of the deer slain because park officials said their overgrazing was destroying the landscape lived on the actual island ... The hunters, hired through a contractor, were focused on the Wilderness Area though they also targeted deer in other locations that had grown accustomed to people, partly through hand-feeding...

Managing chronic wasting disease in the Greater Yellowstone March 21, 2020 Wyoming, Explore Big Sky
... The disease infects as many as 50 percent of the animals in some herds, while in others, it stays around 30, 10 or even 5 percent. “I think every herd responds to CWD differently,” Edwards said. “We [don’t yet] understand why some herds are more resilient.”  What we do know is that CWD can remain in the environment for years at a time...

Mule deer are on their spring migration March 21, 2020 Nevada, Elko Daily Free Press
... Each spring migration takes place any time from February through April, depending on the spring conditions. Most deer will travel over 100 miles this spring, one of the longest migrations in both Nevada and across the West.  A rough estimate of migrating numbers is 4,500 deer will likely cross I-80 east of Wells and 6,000 will cross Highway 93 north of Wells...

Sheridan representative supports wildlife crossing funding efforts March 20, 2020 The Sheridan Press
... Every year, around 5,000 mule deer die from vehicle collisions in Wyoming... The Wyoming Game and Fish has determined a need for 240 wildlife crossing projects in the state ... about 90% effective at reducing mortality ...

First Report of Adenoviral Hemorrhagic Disease in Three Mule Deer in Arizona  SH Ferguson, JK Lee - Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine, 2020
... These cases represent the first known outbreak of deer adenovirus (Odocoileus adenovirus 1) in Arizona. Over the span of a month, three female captive mule deer were submitted to Midwestern University's Animal Health Institute for postmortem examination. All of these deer were from the same deer farm and historical findings were similar, consisting of acute presentation of hemorrhagic diarrhea and sudden death...

... “Reports 10 years ago were occasional sightings, but sightings are the norm now,” said CPW district wildlife manager Matt Yamashita. “Pets and livestock are being either injured or attacked on a fairly routine basis, and on the more serious side of things, we’re getting reports of attacks on people.” ...

... Pennsylvania hunters posted their highest overall deer harvest in 15 years when they took 389,431 deer during the state’s 2019-20 hunting seasons, which closed in January, the Pennsylvania Game Commission reported today.  The 2019-20 deer harvest topped the previous year’s harvest of 374,690 by about 4 percent. The last time the total deer harvest exceeded this season’s total was in 2004-05, when 409,320 whitetails were taken.  The statewide buck harvest saw a generous bump of 10 percent, coming in at 163,240..,

Mountain lions are here, and here to stay March 19, 2020 Nebraska, Beatrice Daily Sun
... The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (NGPC) has a map showing where mountain lions sightings have been documented in the state... mountain lions need food and deer are one of their main food sources...

... Dr. Powell, along with Dr. Charles Maynard ... have created an American chestnut tree that will resist the fatal blight... true American chestnut trees have been genetically altered to help them defend against the fungal parasite... chestnut trees spanned the Appalachian Mountains and beyond, offering to wildlife an abundance of nuts with more digestible protein than acorns or beech nuts...


Deer Collars Used for Research Can be Harmful or Fatal - March 15, 2020







Searching the internet to find and conserve deer information.  

Deer in the News

... shows that Interstate 80 is an almost impenetrable obstacle to movement of pronghorn, mule deer and elk. The highway has severed or truncated migration corridors originating as much as 150 miles away...

... A piebald deer has patches of white on its body ... about 2 percent of deer are piebald... One woman described the deer as “our baby we have watched in our backyard for two years.” ...

Mule Deer Migration: One Woman Follows in Its Footsteps March 26, 2020 Wyoming, GearJunkie
... The film opens with one researcher’s mission to track tagged doe No. 139.  The lead researcher, Sam Dwinnell, decides her team will trace the doe’s 6-week, 85-mile migration in just 9 days... [link to video]

... Santa Rosa Ranch was originally a hunting preserve ... Now, the preserve is home to over 2000 fallow and axis deer, all descendants of those from the hunting days ... with 540-acres of farm and animal agriculture...

This video was obtained from February through November 2019 at the water hole in my Tucson, Arizona yard on a Bushnell trail cam. - March 22, 2020


Blind Deer, Seen ‘odd’ acting deer with strange eyes? It’s not your imagination, experts say March 5, 2020 Alabama, Raleigh News & Observer
... a 5-year-old buck with discolored eyes, and experts later determined it was living totally blind in the wild ... It had been stabbed in the eyeball by another buck’s antlers ...


 Duluth firefighters rescue deer from icy Lester River February 28, 2020, Minnesota, Duluth News Tribune
... "I've never seen an animal that wanted to be helped as much as this deer did," firefighter Mike Chad said. "When I got down on the ice, it had a look in its eye like, 'Help me.'" ... firefighters used a chemically activated heat blanket to warm the shivering deer...

Why do some bucks keep their velvet? February 19, 2020 Pennsylvania, Penn Live
... A birth defect known as cryptorchidism leads to lower than normal production of testosterone, the failure of one or both testicles to descend from the abdominal cavity into the scrotum ...

... one of the man’s dogs went out onto the ice and water... the firefighters also spotted a deer in distress in the water... was alive when the crew left ...

Pointe Coupee hunter kills buck with upper canine teeth February 13, 2020 Louisiana, Louisiana Sportsman
...  It is a rare find to get a deer with these upper teeth, technically known as maxillary canine teeth ... Some researchers see it as a genetic throwback in the evolution of deer...

Colorado woman fined for feeding deer in home February 11, 2020
Colorado, WIS-TV
... Authorities discovered videos ... posted online of her feeding the animals... fined $550.50...