Someone with an abacus might conclude that Colorado’s fast-approaching deer season will turn into a balancing act.
On one end of the lever, we find a serious loss of animals caused by the brutal winter kill of 2007. On the other, there’s a significant carry- over from a lagging harvest that left many mature animals in the field.
It’s one of those optimist-pessimist things. Pack your gear for the Oct. 17-25 deer opener and take your pick.
From a positive viewpoint, biologist Bruce Watkins points out that most of the mortality, particularly in hard-hit areas such as the Gunnison Basin and certain parts of the northwest, occurred among bucks that were very young or very old.
“That left us with a large number of bucks in the middle,” the state big game coordinator said. “We had a high buck/doe ratio. There’s still a lot of big bucks out there, even in the Gunnison Basin.”
The worry is the overwhelming loss of fawns, an event that weighs heavily on that ratio as well as the size.
Places such as Middle Park took a profound hit. A radio-collar survey showed survival had been running close to 70 percent.
After the killer winter, that number dropped to 30 percent.
Still, Watkins says, deer hunting should be excellent.
“Many units out there run 50-60 success ration. Most hunters who get out there and do the work have a good opportunity to shoot a deer,” he says.
Watkins believes one factor is that hunters have become more selective as deer herds flourished under limited license restrictions.
“It’s a combination of things. One is that there’s not so much emphasis on putting meat on the table. It used to be that a hunter was more than happy to shoot a yearling buck.
“Now that we have a lot more deer in older age classes, some may pass up to 20 bucks before they shoot one. It used to back before limited licenses that our buck-doe ration was on the order of 10 to 15 per hundred. Now it’s up in the 30s.”
Watkins emphasis another development in the wake of the storm, which largely missed most areas east of the Continental Divide.
“The East Slope is producing better opportunities than usual. Units around the Hayman burn, 511, 501 and part of 51, have some really good bucks coming out of the burn. The burn really improved habitat conditions, and hunting pressure probably dropped off.”
Good bucks, Watkins says, are where you find them. It’s just a matter of deciding which end of the pole to look.
