Deer hunt results good in south, spotty at best in northern areas

Deer hunting ended Wednesday in the southern and southeastern regions of Utah. Overall success is being rated good in the southern units and spotty elsewhere.

The remaining three regions — northern, central and northeastern — will remain open through Sunday.

Snow at higher elevations in the northern mountains on Wednesday will start deer moving lower and grouping, but it will also make it very difficult for hunters to go off-road.

Consensus among hunters contacted would indicate that they are seeing more deer, and in some cases significantly more.

Shane Boren of Pleasant Grove and his party of five, working the canyons near Heber, had five tags filled in the first hour of the hunt on Saturday. It was, said Boren, a complete turnaround from last year.

"We saw three deer last year, all doe," he explained. "This year I saw more deer than I ever have in this area, and I've hunted there most of my life."

Check stations will be open over the weekend in the three regions to monitor the hunt and collect samples from deer to be tested for chronic wasting disease.

Leslie McFarlane, disease specialist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, hopes to collect 2,700 samples from both deer and elk hunts. Collection efforts are statewide, but more samples will be taken from three areas where the disease has been found — an area northeast of Vernal, the LaSal Mountains east of Moab and areas around Fountain Green, Sanpete County.

McFarlane said thus far there have been 27 cases of the disease found in Utah, most coming from the LaSal Mountains.

"Utah is still pretty low on the scales," she noted. "We don't have the density they have back east with whitetail, for one thing, and we haven't had the disease as long as states like Colorado and Wyoming, so right now we're dealing with a relatively small number of contaminated deer."

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