In 1988, hunters bought 51,011 deer hunting licenses (\u201ctags\u201d) in Nevada, and harvested 26,784 mule deer.<\/p>\n
In 2008, the Nevada Department of Wildlife sold 16,997 tags. Hunters bagged only 7,025 deer.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a huge decline. Where are the deer?<\/p>\n
And oddly enough, whatever the problem is, it seems to affect ONLY mule deer — the species that generates most of the Department of Wildlife\u2019s revenue, when you consider that Uncle Sam matches deer tag revenue three-to-one.<\/p>\n
Bighorn sheep populations are up. Antelope tags and harvest doubled over those same 20 years. Elk tags skyrocketed, from 182 to 2,723, with the elk harvest growing from 91 to 1,315.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to believe all those other game species could thrive if the problem were drought, or wildfires, or fences or roads cutting off migration routes (as though a road or a four-foot fence ever stopped a mule deer.)<\/p>\n
A state biologist says the apparent decline is due to cherry-picking the 1988 date — a wet year and a high point for the state\u2019s deer herd. Just six years earlier, for example, 23,053 hunters took only 11.954 deer in 1982. Current deer populations and harvest are only \u201cslightly below\u201d the historic average, according to Tony Wasley, the Nevada Department of Wildlife\u2019s official expert on mule deer.<\/p>\n
But a prominent hunter\u2019s advocate, along with current and past members of the state Wildlife Commission, disagree. They paint a more ominous picture of a Californian re-appointed to head the agency as a political favor by incoming Gov. Brian Sandoval after that director, Ken Mayer, was fired by former Gov. Jim Gibbons precisely for failing to take concrete steps to bring back the deer herd.<\/p>\n
They worry Mr. Mayer may have brought from his 27 years with California Fish & Game — a state where mountain lions are no longer hunted except when they eat a jogger — a reluctance to thin out predators including lions and coyotes.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor over two decades, NDOW has used 15 different excuses for Nevada\u2019s mule deer decline,\u201d argues activist Cecil Fredi, of the group Hunter\u2019s Alert. \u201cFor the past few years, NDOW has used the habitat excuse. This is an excuse they can use for several more decades until their retirements kick in. It\u2019s hard to blame habitat when elk and deer occupy the same areas. Elk numbers have increased dramatically over the past two decades while deer numbers have dramatically declined,\u201d Fredi says. \u201cThe reason for this decline is that the main source of food for the mountain lion is the mule deer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost biologists (but not NDOW\u2019s) believe that a lion will eat a deer a week,\u201d Fredi writes in a recent report with the attention-getting headline \u201cNevada\u2019s deer will never recover.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow bad is the lion problem in our state?\u201d Fredi asks. \u201cIn Hunt Unit 014, which is one of the smallest units in the state, Wildlife Services (a federal agency operating under contract with the state) removed 40 mountain lions in three years. This means 480 deer and bighorn sheep are still alive because of this lion removal. …<\/p>\n
\u201cWildlife Commissioner Scott Raine worked long and hard on a new mule deer Management Guideline,\u201d Fredi reports. \u201cThe committee was composed of people like Cliff Gardner and John Carpenter who had witnessed the Ruby Valley deer migration which numbered in the thousands in the 1950s and 1960s. Today the migrations are all but gone because there are no deer. At the December 2011 meeting led by Chairman Mike McBeath and director Ken Mayer, the complete policy was deleted. So much for deer restoration in our state.\u201d<\/p>\n
I called deer hunter and Wildlife Commissioner Scott Raine — the immediate past chairman of the Commission — in Eureka, where he runs the town\u2019s only grocery, to ask him if Fredi\u2019s account is accurate.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s exactly correct,\u201d says Commissioner Raine. \u201cThe mule deer population has just been crashing like a bomb in the past decade. They say, \u2018We don\u2019t know why it\u2019s happening but it must be habitat.\u2019 When in doubt blame the habitat. …<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you start talking about predation control, they don\u2019t even want to consider that part of the equation. That bill was set forth by Jerry Claborn in the Nevada Assembly, a bill to put the $3 predation management fee in place. He came to our meeting and said that money is supposed to be for on-the-ground predation management, that\u2019s it, and you guys are spending that money on salaries and other things. … Mayer says \u2018That may have been your intent, but the Legislature as a whole passed it, and you can\u2019t speak for them.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the mule deer management plan, the first point is we need to come up with a number of animals that we think is appropriate for each management unit,\u201d Mr. Raine explains. \u201cWhen they heard that they absolutely went into a fit and flopped around on the floor. \u2018We can\u2019t do that, you expect us to come up with an appropriate number for each management unit?\u2019<\/p>\n
Mr. Raine responded \u201cIf you can\u2019t set an exact number, at least give us a range. They said \u2018No, no, we can\u2019t do that.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say predation isn\u2019t necessarily additive mortality, it\u2019s just compensatory mortality,\u201d Mr. Raine say. \u201cIn other words, the lions aren\u2019t necessarily killing ADDITIONAL deer, they\u2019re just killing deer that might have died off, anyway. They say if you were a professional, you\u2019d understand this.\u201d<\/p>\n
GETTING RANCHERS OFF THE LAND<\/p>\n
\u201cPredator control can allow a population to respond more quickly to favorable conditions,\u201d responds NDOW\u2019s deer expert, Mr. Wasley. \u201cBut if that population is at or near the carrying capacity, all the predator control in the world won\u2019t have any effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Mr. Raine\u2019s complaint, of course, was precisely that NDOW biologists won\u2019t set a number for any given area\u2019s carrying capacity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is that carrying capacity fluctuates widely,\u201d Mr. Wasley replies. \u201cThe drawback is if you choose a number that\u2019s based on an all-time high, if you choose too high a number you\u2019re constantly in a state of failure. But if you set your goal too low the other users of the land will say, \u2018Hey, you guys already reached your capacity.\u2019 …\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vast majority of the money is not spent doing anything productive to increase the game animal population and the sage grouse is probably the worst example of that,\u201d Commissioner Raine warns. \u201cThe sage grouse could devastate Northern Nevada; if it becomes listed it could become our spotted owl.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ranchers are the only reason there\u2019s much wildlife out here to begin with,\u201d Scott Raine points out. \u201cBefore ranching started in the 1800s … Nevada really was a wasteland. The ranchers created all the hay meadows out of a dry desert. And a lot of that is going away because they\u2019re trying to eliminate grazing on the public lands, I think that\u2019s part of the goal of Ken Mayer is to end grazing on public lands, especially domestic sheep.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never heard our agency take a stance to get domestic sheep off the land,\u201d Mr. Wasley of NDOW responds.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see bitterbrush all around here, there\u2019s not enough deer here to keep it pruned back,\u201d Commisioner Raine continued. \u201cWe\u2019ve got huge seas of forage that have been unburned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deer eat young bitterbrush, Mr. Wasley responds. They can\u2019t digest older plants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose areas that were burned back then are some of the best habitat that exists, now,\u201d says Commissioner Raines. \u201cThe sagebrush are 12 inches tall, it\u2019s turning into great habitat. You need a little bit of fire to do that. We used to have grazing to keep the burns down, (but) they\u2019re shutting the grazing down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got 70,000 domestic sheep in the state of Nevada; we used to have 3 million. When you get down to single decimal points of what we used to have, they\u2019re basically gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe argue that historically there were not a lot of sage grouse present,\u201d here, Mr. Wasley responds, but \u201cThe agency not in favor of reducing sage grouse numbers so the species will be listed as endangered. … We have no agenda to get the public off the public lands.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMike Stremler, a rancher and lion hunter, submitted a proposal for deer enhancement by removing lions in a particular area,\u201d Cecil Fredi notes. \u201cDuring Stremler\u2019s initial presentation, Director Ken Mayer stated that his biologists told him there were no lions in the Stillwater Mountain area. … Stremler\u2019s total in a little over a one year period was the removal of eleven lions and there are at least three more in that area. All of this in a 12-mile radius!<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the course of one week, 139 coyotes were removed in Unit 031 on the Hunter\u2019s Alert project with this money. Pat Laughlin\u2019s project was responsible for removing 239 coyotes in less than three days in Elko County. All the coyotes removed were in wintering deer areas and many were shot off freshly killed deer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had $400,000 in Heritage Funds to spend on projects,\u201d recalls Gerald Lent, the now-retired Reno optometrist who chaired the Wildlife Commission for two years and served as vice chairman last year, but who was not reappointed by Gov, Sandoval.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo sportsmen\u2019s groups, Cecil\u2019s was one of them, and then Hunter\u2019s Alliance in Elko, proposed to do predator control on mule deer and sage grouse. The commission passed (approved) them. Director Mayer fought against all these, he called the feds and shut down the sage grouse study.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why would Director Mayer do that?<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d says Dr. Lent. \u201cIt\u2019s been proven if you kill the ravens you bring back the sage grouse,\u201d since the ravens eat the grouse eggs. \u201cThe sportsman\u2019s group said let\u2019s put the money where there\u2019s the most sage grouse and see if we can save them, He wanted to put the money in central Nevada where there\u2019s one sage grouse per 100,000 acres. …<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said the predator project to save the deer he wouldn\u2019t go along with. I think he\u2019s from California where they outlaw predation projects. …\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018IF YOU DON\u2019T WANT TO DO IT, YOU STUDY IT\u2019<\/p>\n
I tried to reach NDOW Director Ken Mayer for a response, last week. He didn\u2019t return my calls, but delegated Tony Wasley, one of those wildlife biologists and NDOW\u2019s expert on the mule deer, to answer my questions. Mr. Wasley argues the very fact his position was created two-and-a-half years ago demonstrates the department\u2019s commitment to maintaining the species.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have several predator control projects ongoing, and have spent millions of dollars in that arena,\u201d Mr. Wasley argues. \u201cWhen we have removed a considerable number of predators we have not been able to show any positive impact on game populations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Commission Chairman Dr. Lent has a different recollection.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder Sen. Claiborne\u2019s bill $3 per hunter is supposed to go to predator control, it\u2019s $300,000. So we put it into (Hunt Unit) 014 west of the Gerlach Desert,\u201d Dr. Lent remembers. \u201cThe project was started in 2005 by (U.S.) Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services. From 2005 when they started, up till now, in the smallest deer management area in the state they\u2019ve taken probably 45 lions out of there, killed them. In 2005 the deer population was 850, this is out of NDOW\u2019s own book. Right now they estimate 1,400 deer there in 2011 — that\u2019s a 65 percent increase in deer population. And you see it in the tags issued. In 2005 there were 45 tags, and now there\u2019s 101 tags (in area 014.)<\/p>\n
\u201cRight across the road in area 015, that area is going down down down,\u201d Dr. Lent insists. \u201cThere\u2019s no lion control in there. The lions kill a deer a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no significant difference in the area Dr. Lent is referring to in comparison to areas where there was an absence of predator control,\u201d Mr. Wasley responds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Idaho the wolves have decimated the elk herd,\u201d Dr. Lent reports. \u201cUp in Alaska the caribou and moose population is down. They\u2019ve got a law there now that the department must take immediate action, they must do predator control immediately. They can\u2019t wait to do study after study. I think basically Mayer wants to study. If you know the right thing to do and you don\u2019t want to do it, you study it, and then you retire in 20 years and enjoy your pension of 75 percent of your highest year\u2019s earnings.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked Dr. Lent is he believes NDOW is inflating the numbers of the current deer herd.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely. They cannot prove the deer went up 2 percent from 107,000 to 109,000. The deer tag money is matched three-to-one federally. It\u2019s their cash cow.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a predator conference that we had on the agenda,\u201d Dr. Lent says. \u201cKen Mayer brought in his buddies he used to work with down in California, and they basically said predation by mountain lions had no effect on the deer population, and that\u2019s not true. See, you can\u2019t hunt mountain lions in California and I think that philosophy comes over the mountains. I said \u201cHow many lions do you think kill the game animals, the deer,\u201d and they said they\u2019re not even supposed to report that.<\/p>\n
I asked Dr. Lent if he also believes it\u2019s part of the agenda of the current NDOW administration to get the last of our ranchers off the public lands.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. That\u2019s why he (Director Mayer) opposed the sage grouse (study), because he\u2019d like to get the ranchers off the land. If they get the sage grouse listed (as threatened or endangered) it\u2019ll get the ranchers and miners off the land, although he\u2019d never say that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Wasley defends the Department\u2019s current estimate of 109,000 mule deer in Nevada, arguing that number is arrived at by tripling the deer seen from helicopters in aerial surveys.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo for somebody to suggest that it\u2019s as small as half of our published estimate, that would suggest that what we\u2019re seeing is close to 70 percent of the deer in the state, which simply is not the case. If the numbers were that small, we would begin to see hunter failure. …<\/p>\n
\u201cUtah closed their season for two years and that herd rebounded with predator control — killing coyote and mountain lion,\u201d Dr. Lent reports. \u201cThen they went to a restricted hunt the first year and the deer were unbelievable, so it\u2019s been proven, if you deer-manage that way, it works.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not under any constraint,\u201d Mr. Wasley argues, \u201cthe director hasn\u2019t come down here and told me \u2018We\u2019re not gonna kill lions, we\u2019re not gonna kill coyotes.\u2019 If there was a way that I knew we could increase mule deer, I would do it today, for selfish reasons. I love mule deer; I love to hunt mule deer. … If there was something we could do to create more opportunity for Nevada\u2019s deer hunters, we\u2019d do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1988, hunters bought 51,011 deer hunting licenses (\u201ctags\u201d) in Nevada, and harvested 26,784 mule deer. In 2008, the Nevada Department of Wildlife sold 16,997 tags. Hunters bagged only 7,025 deer. That\u2019s a huge decline. Where are the deer? And oddly enough, whatever the problem is, it seems to affect ONLY mule deer — the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35,18,34,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earth-stewardship","category-economics","category-nevada","category-public-land"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-fU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":987,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions\/987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}