Wyoming Elk Areas: THE LOW-DOWN

Jan 27 2012

     The elk hunting in Wyoming seems to have stabilized. The predator situation continues in the Northwest corner of the state, but the hunting can still be good here. The winter of 2010-2011 hammered our deer herd, but thanks to Wyoming’s feedground program and the elk’s natural resilience to tough winter conditions, the elk herds in Wyoming faired well through the rough winter months. The federal government has significantly decreased the wolf population on the Cody side of the park, which has helped to curb the elk decline on the East side of the park. Although the elk hunting here is certainly not what it was ten years ago, it is still pretty good considering. I honestly believe that the best elk hunting in Wyoming has shifted from the Absaroka front to the more arid country in the center of the state. These areas historically had some elk, but not a lot of elk and certainly not huge bulls. Over time, the elk and larger bull genetics have moved from Area 7 to the West into the more non-traditional elk units. Today, there are now 350-390 inch bulls in this region of the state for the first time in modern history.

For those of you who have not applied yet, here is my personal list of favorite areas as well as a possible sleeper area and an over-rated area that gets much more hype than it deserves. Keep in mind, these are my personal picks and they may not produce the type of hunt you are exactly looking for. Always do your own research before applying for any hunt area.

 

Guy’s Top 10 WY Elk Areas:

10. Area 121

9. Area 31

8. Area 24

7. Area 78

6.  Area 22

5. Area 118

4. Area 100

3. Area 58

2. Area 111

1. Area 124

Possibly the most OVER-RATED elk area: Area 7

Possible SLEEPER area for WY Elk: Area 16

WYOMING’S Mule Deer Need Our Help

Jan 12 2012

Here’s an article about a new Wyoming organization that has been set up to help Wyoming’s Mule Deer herds, and only Wyoming mule deer. If you hunt in Wyoming or ever want to, you need to get involved to help. Joey and Josh have done a great job making sure this organization has been set up right. No excessive overhead, no money leaving the state and maximum dollars and volunteer hours on the ground helping mule deer and only mule deer.  -Guy Eastman

 

 

Wyoming’s Mule Deer Populations May Have a Solution…

 

The Muley Fanatic Foundation of Wyoming

While Coursey and Faigl acknowledge that quite of few people have been instrumental in this transition, it was the assistance of local attorney Charles Barnum and accountant Brad Radakovich that helped solidify the efforts of launching The Muley Fanatic Foundation of Wyoming, Inc. “Charlie and Brad have been vital in this tedious process. Anytime you’re dealing with the state and the IRS it is a tremendous benefit to have someone experienced with the process, just to make sure that everything is filed and recorded correctly,” says Coursey, who also adds that both Barnum and Radakovich donated their services because of their strong belief in the Muley Fanatic Foundation of Wyoming cause.

“We are so blessed to live in Wyoming. Ethics, values, patriotism and western heritage are held with the highest regard in Wyoming. Believing in a cause such as this and the willingness to get involved because of its principles speaks volumes to the remarkable amount of character that represents the residents of Wyoming and our supporters. Some would say we are lucky to live in Wyoming. When I hear this I am quick to respond that it is by design, not luck,” notes Coursey.

Part of the process of establishing the Muley Fanatic Foundation of Wyoming was the formation of a mission statement. After careful consideration the Muley Fanatic Foundation of Wyoming mission statement was chronicled as:  TO ENSURE THE CONSERVATION OF MULE DEER AND THEIR HABITAT AND TO PROVIDE SUCH SUPPORTING SERVICES TO FURTHER THE SPORT OF HUNTING AND SOUND WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT. “It was essential for us to have a mission statement that not only encompassed the aspect of working for the conservation of mule deer and their habitat, but that would also allow us to focus on our youth and still earn a position of influence for responsible game management,” said Coursey.

Acknowledging and including the youth has been instrumental in all previous activities as a chapter and will be the mainstay moving forward as a foundation. “We have always been very involved with the youth. From hunter’s safety courses; working to secure hunting licenses for children with life threatening diseases; to involving local Boy Scout troops with our functions. These efforts will only increase. The platform of this foundation is not just about mule deer, it is about everything that encompasses this iconic animal and the heritage that westerners hold dear to their hearts,” said Faigl, who along with Coursey and five other foundation volunteers are Wyoming Hunter Education instructors. “As a chapter we were a family orientated organization. This foundation is about the future and excluding anyone would be counterproductive. Likewise, involving everyone will only increase our productivity and our “difference” making efforts. We whole heartedly believe that the experience we have gained as volunteers will afford us the opportunity to truly make a difference in what we refer to as God’s perfect square, Wyoming.” added Coursey.

 

For more information regarding the Muley Fanatic Foundation of Wyoming, the upcoming banquet, or to get involved as a volunteer please contact Joshua Coursey at 307-389-7495 or Joey Faigl at 307-350-0314 or visit the website www.muleyfanatic.com

 

 

WY Mule Deer: Stop the MADNESS!!!

Dec 28 2011

THE TIME HAS FINALLY COME- to change the season/quota/tag allocation structure for Wyoming’s mule deer licenses. Actually it’s long over-due, but play along with me a little bit here… We can’t change the past, we can only focus on the future at this point. While working on the MRS section for Wyoming deer it continued to be evident that Wyoming needs to do something to curb the pressure on the mule deer herd here in the Cowboy state. Attached is a map that I cooked up showing where the winter kill was the worst during the epic winter of 2010-2011 which left our deer herd in even worse shape than we have become used to over the past five to ten years. Even after such a winter the Game and Fish did not hardly budge a single tag quota for the 2011 season. Looking at the data and answering floods of calls and e-mails loaded with feedback from the fall hunting season got me to thinking. Thinking about a better way to allocate and structure the mule deer hunting seasons here in Wyoming. A way that would put more control into the hands of big game managers and would allow for better hunting, better management and a better outlook for the deer herd, particularly in the Western and Southern ends of the state.

In my opinion, Wyoming needs to do three things. First we need to put resident deer hunters on a draw system statewide and scrap the general deer tag system. It works, Colorado did it and we can too. This would allow the state to completely manage the Western deer herd instead of just managing the non-resident hunters. Non-resident deer hunters make up less than 40% of the deer hunting pressure equation. Only controlling 35% of an equation is not control, it’s wildlife management anarchy.

The second thing Wyoming could do is split up the seasons inside the high demand Regions like G, H and K. We could offer an early hunt from September 10th to the 25th on a limited draw basis. This hunt would be very limited, only 250 total hunters in each region. Then offer a second season from the 5th to the 25th of October with more tags allocated. Somewhere in the range of 1,200 for each region total. Then if the deer herds are healthy and doing well a third season permit would be offered for a November hunt from the 1st to the 10th with only 100-150 tags total in each region. This would get the more serious trophy hunters out of the October pool and into one of the other higher demand pools. Making more room for the recreational type hunters to hunt in October. There would probably be left over tags for the October hunts. The archery seasons would run from the 15th of August until the 1st of September and anyone with any of the three licenses could hunt that season.

And the final piece to this  solution would be to convert two or three units inside the better mule deer regions to limited quota only areas. This would not only get the even more serious trophy hunters out of the “Region” pool, but would allow for large mature bucks to slip through the cracks and travel down to the winter range to breed does each December. Which would essentially ensure a healthy, mature breeding stock of bucks onto each winter range every year. Once the bugs were worked out these LQ areas could be rotated around about every three or four years to make things interesting and blend the gene pool a bit.

Of course added to this, Wyoming would need to institute a preference point system for Wyoming residents.

These are just some of my initial thoughts on the subject. I realize this is a very tough subject to tackle and can be a barrel of fish hooks so to speak, but Wyoming has to do something soon. The data is not looking good, but all is not lost. Colorado brought their deer herd back from the brink over a decade ago. It was a tough pill for them to swallow at the time as well, but it worked and has produced the best deer hunting and the healthiest deer herd on the planet as a result.

If you have any thoughts, concerns or additional ideal post up a comment. These are just the rambling of one man at a desk watching the Wyoming wind blow out the window. Let’s here what you think.

Thanks for reading the Blog and good hunting.

-Guy Eastman

The Predator Death Spiral…

Nov 22 2011

We’re continuing to see an alarming trend in Western wildlife management. I am calling it the “Predator Death Spiral.” The underlying cause of this phenomina is when a wildlife agency attempts to hide or “pad” their big game population estimates when over predation begins to take hold. This in turn creates a downward spiral that cannot easily be avoided, and is often not even noticed until the state hits both a financial and PR rock bottom. Idaho was the first state to hit the wall with the “Spiral” followed by Montana and now Wyoming has begun to slip into the Spiral’s grip. The wolf situation has caused these three Western states to slide down the jagged slope of diminishing herds, shrinking revenues and bad PR among their customers and financial lifeline…out-of-state hunters.

The details of the spiral start out very subtle. The wolves, cougars and grizzly bears start to take a few more elk and moose each year as their unchecked populations grow and expand. The state does not react at first with cuts in the tag quotas. This would mean a decrease in revenue that would have to be met with either more tags somewhere else or even worse, budget cuts. So they do what most Government agencies would do in this situation…nothing! After a few years of turning a blind eye to the situation a bad winter like the winter we had in 2006 and 2011 hit and further accelerated the problem. But, the bad winter was even worse than imagined from a wildlife management perspective. The increased snowpack and cold temps caused far more than the usual winter kill. The predators did extremely well because of the increased snowpack that gathered the herds even tighter than usual, on heavy snow accumulations that created a wolves dream come true scenario. A concentrated food source stuck in a snow bank that cannot escape…perfect. After the long cold winter is over the elk and deer that did survive go into the spring in tough shape. Many of the cows and does have aborted their young in order to survive.

The post winter mortality counts come back into the department as an alarming number. But budgets have to be met. So being ever optimistic the state decides to give the remaining quotas just one more year to see if they might bounce back. After-all, the counts could have been flawed, there is no way we could have lost that many big game assets in one year, right?

The next fall the hunters are complaining, the harvest stats are coming back very low and things are not looking good on the PR front. Many non-resident hunters are threatening not to apply the following year and the outfitters are starting to make their voices heard.

The state reacts, and cuts the elk tags inside the wolf  and winter zones. But the money has to be made up somewhere, after all a few hundred non-resident elk tags equate to big money. So the state moves to increase the quotas on elk outside the wolf zone and increase the deer and antelope tags substantially in an effort to compensate for the loss in revenue.

A second harsh winter strikes and wipes out the antelope and deer herd excesses. Things are looking bad, but the state budgeteers don’t give up easily. Someone recommends the idea of raising license costs to all hunters, after all supply and demand economics formulas say a non-resident elk tag should go for over $2,500. But the resident tag increases get shot down by the commission but everyone likes the idea of sticking to the non-resident hunter a bit more. They can afford it, have you seen how much a house in California is worth? (pre-2008 of course). The following fall the hunters don’t see near the game they did even the previous year. Things are getting bad. Thanks to the internet the word gets out and many of the non-resident hunters move their camps and non-resident dollars to Colorado and New Mexico to hunt elk and deer.

The next thing the state knows, they are sitting on millions of dollars worth of unclaimed and unwanted non-resident tags. Now with the wildlife resource in shambles and a multi-million dollar budget shortfall the state is finally forced to wake up and smell the coffee. This isn’t the 1970′s…it’s no surprise to us that a non-resident hunter who pays over $1,000 for an elk tag expects a good elk hunt, why should it come as a surprise to the state Game and Fish Commission? But it does. What the state fails to realize is, that once they began to charge that kind of money for tags and preference points they in affect gave up the option to simply brush it off as a “bad winter, try again next year” excuse that worked so well in the past.  In the information age non-resident hunters no longer accept excuses easily.

This is the bottom. A state is stuck to come clean and admit they are in a real hole. They don’t have the wildlife any longer to support their budgetary needs and their customers know it. This is the type of situation where a little fudge in numbers here and there has created a beast that cannot be controlled and is getting bigger, badder and uglier every year until the bottom is hit.

Why? Because it would mean that the states would have to admit to contributing to their own financial demise. Some Western Fish and Game Departments have in fact become a wolf in sheep’s clothing to their constituants. Some inside the departments have, although reluctantly, in some cases went along with the Federal Government’s master plan to re-introduce super predators back into the ecosystem to eventually control big game herds without the use of hunters. It’s almost as if the state neglected to realize that this would, in fact, slit their own throats by gutting their departments of the necessary funding to run.

And this is not just a Wyoming, Montana and Idaho problem. Wolves have already begun to take hold in Washington, Oregon and Utah. Nevada, and Colorado are certainly next. And for all of you midwest whitetail hunters out there, sorry, your not safe either. The government has devised a plan to expand the Mexican wolf North from Arizona and New Mexico into Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, North and South Dakota and Nebraska to connect with the upper midwest wolf populations in Minnesota and Wisconsin. This would give super predators a way to control whitetail deer populations minus the use of hunting as a management tool.

This is a critical situation but all is not lost yet. There have been huge strides made in the recent wolf debate and wolves are starting to be controlled now in Montana and Idaho. We all as hunters need to keep pressure on our politicians and state agencies to make sure they do the right thing for our wildlife. We pay them to manage our wildlife resource in a responsible manner, make them earn their money. Taking the easy way out is not good enough. They need to do better, our big game wildlife resource depends on it.

Drop me a line and let me know what your thoughts are…maybe I’m just a conspiracy theorist…who knows. I know what I’ve heard and seen first hand so far, though, and it’s not looking good.

Guy

Mule deer downgrades to come in 2012

Oct 27 2011

The evidence that the Northern Rocky Mountain mule deer herd is in a tailspin keeps piling up. The deer herds in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have had a very rough go at it as of the past few years, however the winter of 2010-2011 seems to have put many of the mule deer herds in this region over the cliff. After a 150-mile, seven-day horseback ride in the historic Region H of western Wyoming, I only turned up 15-20 bucks and less than 100 deer total. I tend to agree with the western Wyoming state mule deer biologists when they said last winter was the hardest winter in over 20 years on the western Wyoming mule deer herd, and I would certainly have to agree with that assessment. I’m not sure the deer in western Montana and the entire state of Idaho did any better. David Long just completed a seven-day trek into the Idaho backcountry where he only found five or six bucks, and nothing with any age on it.

When I compile the Wyoming MRS section for mule deer in the Feb/Mar 2012 issue of EHJ, many areas and regions in the state will need to be significantly downgraded. The affected regions and areas will include but not be limited to: Regions G, H, and K and areas 130, 141/152, 101, and 102. Make sure you look at that MRS carefully if you plan to apply for a Wyoming mule deer tag in 2012. Nothing would be more depressing than blowing five mule deer points on an area that is in such poor shape.

The Wyoming mule deer herd is in the worst shape I have seen in almost 40 years. And the saddest part of the whole mess, is that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department probably won’t cut the tags back as much as they should to ensure a quick rebound which will possibly add between two and five years to the rebound process. Depressing news I know, but the elk and antelope in Wyoming seem to be doing very well. Good luck in your research and watch for that MRS section in your Feb/Mar issue of EHJ for more details.

Guy