Mule Deer Archives - Page 3 of 3

5 03, 2018

Potential State Record Mule Deer Sheds!

admin2020-06-10T09:15:54-04:00March 5th, 2018|Big Deer Stories, Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Management, Mule Deer, Shed Hunting|Comments Off on Potential State Record Mule Deer Sheds!

My friend Ricardo, a New Mexico hunting outfitter who specializes in limited-entry archery hunts for giant mule deer, found this antler on public land. Look at the size and deepness of the front and back forks--that is what you look for on a trophy mule buck. The shed taped out a tad over 96 inches. “If you double the antler score for the other side and give him a 30-inch spread the buck would score 223 4/8, potential state record! I’ll keep looking for the other side.” Picture below is last year’s shed off the same buck. “He put on a lot (tine length and mass) this year, but lost the extra point,” Ricardo says. Deadline to apply for the [...]

9 08, 2017

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD): Rules for Transporting Deer Across State Lines

admin2020-06-10T09:16:11-04:00August 9th, 2017|Big Deer Stories, Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Deer Management, Deer Science, Mule Deer|1 Comment

I recently attended the National Deer Summit and was struck by the dire reports of CWD that came from the country’s top deer scientists. Map Source: Tennessee WRA To a man and woman, all the experts agreed that CWD is the most serious threat to our deer herds and hunting that we’ve faced in decades, and possibly ever. To a person they said the thing we must do to stop the spread of CWD is to immediately monitor and restrict the movement of deer and deer parts across state lines. First is to immediately stop the interstate transport of live deer to penned facilities, something that does not affect the 99.9% of us that hunt wild deer. Second is to [...]

12 07, 2017

How Bad Was The Mule Deer Winterkill?

admin2020-06-10T09:16:11-04:00July 12th, 2017|Big Deer Stories, Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Management, Deer Science, Mule Deer|1 Comment

I recently attended the 2017 North American Deer Summit, where Jim Heffelfinger of the Arizona Game and Fish Department reported on the status of the mule deer across the American West. Jim said that while mule deer went through tough times in recent years, the good news is that muley populations have been trending up, and are stable or increasing slightly in most states. But Jim did point to the hard, snowy winter of 2016-17 in some regions of the West, saying that "will lead to a dip in deer numbers this year in some states." Well, turns out it will be quite a big dip in places. U.S. News and World Reports has just published a compilation of how [...]

14 06, 2017

2017 Deer Update: How Are Mule Deer Doing?

admin2020-06-10T09:16:12-04:00June 14th, 2017|Big Deer Stories, Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Management, Deer Science, Mule Deer|Comments Off on 2017 Deer Update: How Are Mule Deer Doing?

At the 2017 North American Deer Summit last week, Jim Heffelfinger of the Arizona Game and Fish Department reported on the status of the mule deer across the American West. Mule deer went through tough times in the 1990s, and populations declined in many areas. More than 20 years later most people still think mule deer numbers are down, “but actually there’s good news,” said Jim. “Mule deer populations have been trending up, and are stable or increasing slightly in most states.” Jim pointed to Utah, Idaho and California as bright spots, with herds on the slight rise. But he did acknowledge that the winter of 2016 was brutal in parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, where there should be [...]