Drought affecting deer population

The Utah Wildlife Board faced a number of issues during its Thursday wrapup of spring meetings, among them whitetail deer, dedicated hunters and the drought.

On almost each agenda subject, the drought was brought up, more with deer and antelope than with other big game animals.

Of particular concern is the survival of fawns this summer. The drought has taken its toll on does, which in turn will produce weak fawns.

In a presentation by Jim Karpowitz, big game coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the most striking information was a chart on statewide fawn production.

Since low-water conditions began in 1998, the annual doe/fawn ratios have dropped from more than 70 fawns per 100 does to slightly over 40 per 100 does.

"We discussed harvest bucks today, but the big issue we face right now is that we need to make deer populations healthier," he said. "In order to do that, we need to change our deer management plan and put increased emphasis on improving the habitat."

The board recognized the hardships on deer and antelope and approved the DWR's request to drop the number of limited entry special draw-buck deer permits by 190 to a total of 908, and drop antelope buck permits by 101 to a total of 394.

In contrast, the board increased the number of limited entry special elk tags by 92 to a total of 950. Moose permits dropped by four to 96 and bison tags went up by 15 to 63.

This led to speculation that at some point the annual cap of 97,000 deer permits may have to be dropped. In fact, one request from sportsmen at Thursday's meeting was to drop the number of deer permits in the slowly recovering Northern Region from 20,800 to 15,800 on the general rifle.

One reason for the request is that success on the general rifle deer hunt last fall in the Northern Region was 18 percent, compared with 33.3 percent in the Southern and 26.2 percent in the Central. The motion failed.

What the board did pass was a flat non-resident allocation of deer tags of 10 percent. In the past it ranged from 6.2 percent in the Central Region to 12.2 percent in the Southern. What this means is that the less popular regions, like the Northern, will get more tags for non-resident hunters where popular regions, like the Southern, will get less.