 |
| Hours on end of glassing was integral to this hunt. |
 |
| Mule deer doe. |
 |
| The ghost of bucks past. |
 |
| A Nelson Bighorn, a few years out from his prime. Nick and I were able to glass him up with 4 others the first morning. |
 |
| A Burned Ridge That Held Deer |
 |
| Shale and Dead Trees, A Desolate Landscape |
 |
| Side-hilling is the Most Efficient Way to Move in Steep Terrain |
 |
| This was the largest buck spotted on the trip. Nice, but not special. |
 |
| Bald Ridges Above the Timberline. |
 |
| A Familiar Stance in Mule Deer Country |
 |
| This is not the country to make a mistake in. |
The following morning Joe and I hiked into a basin that looked very promising. We spotted a few does with fawns on the way in, as well as a yearling buck. In much the same manner as before we looked over a vast amount of country, but were not able to turn up even a single deer for our efforts. The mustangs, as though they were on parade, could be seen proudly posted on most ridges. If familiarity breeds contempt, this was no exception. Joe and I had planned on meeting up with our friend Mike that day around noon, so we determined we should split up and hunt back to the vehicles. I would take the ridge and Joe would walk the drainage, with a plan to have him contact me if he spotted anything below me.
 |
| More Deer Country that Refused to Yield its Deer |
Only minutes into our respective treks Joe told me that he had spotted bucks just below a rocky outcropping that we had nicknamed "Number Two" for a reference marker. They appeared to be the same small band of bucks from two days prior that Joe had gotten so close to. Suddenly the hunt looked as though it had shifted the odds in our favor. With Joe's help I worked up the ridge to position myself above the bucks. I had moved off the ridge on the opposite side of the bucks to maintain a safe wind while I readied myself. By the time I was directly above the bucks my mouth was parched and I was thirsty. I went to drink from my water tube in my backpack and was suddenly met with a terrible realization - I was out of water! Mentally I kicked myself for making such a rookie mistake, and one that could potentially be very dangerous. I knew I would be able to make the hike back to the truck where I could get water, but I also knew this would probably be my best opportunity to harvest a buck, so I elected to chance the stalk. With thirst on my tongue I slipped my boots off and tucked the hem of my pants into my socks to reduce the noise of my footsteps as I began my descent towards the bedded bucks. With constant feedback from Joe I would stop and go as the bucks changed positions. When they switched beds I crouched and waited under the unrelenting sun. When they put their heads down or bedded I would continue towards them. Without warning, Joe indicated that the bucks were standing and acting nervous. I stayed put while frantically looking for antler tips, as I was within thirty yards of their position. The slope of the hill was steep enough that I still couldn't see the deer even though I was well within archery distance. Joe again indicated that the bucks were moving away and I raced to the top of the rim rocks in the hopes that I could still get a shot. When I reached the edge nothing but dusty deer beds were below me. The deer were gone, and so was what would likely be my best opportunity.
Archery, in my estimation, is 90% mental. Of that 90%, the great majority is hindsight. Since most stalks end without arrowing an animal, the 'would haves,' 'could haves,' and 'should haves' constantly plague my mind after each defeat. Great effort is made to learn from such experience, but the haunting of failure, especially when a great animal is missed can be hard to overcome. Bittersweet for me was the hike back to my boots knowing that I had somehow blown the stalk, but at least I hadn't missed a shot. The hike back down to meet Joe at the car was taxing, both physically and mentally. I needed to hydrate badly, and I consumed close to 36 ounces of water in minutes which left me with a stomach ache. It was more tolerable than the dehydration though. As we drove the dusty dirt road to the main highway we decided that it was time to switch ranges. Hopefully the deer would be more abundant in the other part of our unit. We were going to meet Mike at a gas station down the road and he knew the other range well. He had hunted it on multiple occasions for sage grouse and had seen deer as well. He even found some sheds off of bucks from previous years. Joe and I were ready for a change of pace and agreed that switching ranges was probably just what we needed.
When we meet up with Mike at the gas station it becomes quickly apparent that we will need to get gas at another location - the pumps are nothing more than the charred remains of an apparatus that likely used to dispense fuel for people in a previous generation. Mike offers some info about another location 15 miles further down the road that has gas so Joe left to get fuel while I decided to hang back with Mike as I hadn't seen him in awhile. Another friend of ours, Zach, decided to tag along too. The gas station, which is really more of a country store-inn, has an add for some micro-brewery nut brown ale that sounded appropriate for the circumstances. I offer to buy the first round which meets with no objections. As we enter the store I stop to admire the skin of a large mountain lion hanging in the entry way. I can only assume it was a large Tom, since the identifying marks had been removed by a hap-hazard skinning job. It appeared more as a statement than a trophy, a warning to other lions, which is a shame because it would've made a fine mount. Inside I can't help but smile as I see several game heads hanging on the walls - this is rural Nevada, and I feel right at home. Further inspection of some of the larger mule deer betrays two pieces of information: the unit they came from (the same we were hunting) and the timeframe they were harvested (given the quality of the taxidermy). These were the types of bucks I had hoped we would see, in fact they are the kind of bucks I always hope to see. They serve as proof that the range once held that caliber of animal, but apparently it was a time before mine. Some more recent mounts of the desert bighorns and pronghorn antelope from the area mix up the wall decor, and its good to know that some of our native species are faring better than the deer.
I settle up to the bar with Mike and Zach, and we are greeted by a kind woman with silver hair and a shining smile. The characteristic crow's feet and reddish tanned skin of a lifetime spent in the Nevada sun add to her spirited presence. This is rural Nevada, and I'm glad to be here. We order the advertised beer and it does not disappoint; it is quite good. A full bodied ice cold libation, a rich nutty flavor characteristic of the brown ales. Soon we have ordered a second round and the conversation grows lively over a number of subjects, not least of which is hunting. I ask the bar tender where the beer is brewed, thinking it must be somewhere local. "Las Vegas" she replies with a smile.
Las Vegas?
This is rural Nevada, and at least the beer is ice cold.
I ask another question.
"Do you know where we might find some bucks?"
"There's some up in those mountains. Follow up the creek and check the headwaters."
"Ok."
"But you know, it hasn't been good in a long time. The lions have been really bad - you've seen the one out front right? He was shot just back behind the store here. There just haven't been many deer here for some time."
Another elderly patron chimes in with some comment about it "...not being like the old days."
This is rural Nevada, and I'm wondering where I am.
 |
| Golden Hour, Walking Out of the High Country |
I've heard so many stories of the "Old Days" that any more I would just as soon not listen to another for inevitably they end with how it was so much better than the way things are now. The deer were everywhere, big bucks were easy to find, lions didn't exist... Well, that's the way they go anyways. I remember an old timer I met while solo hunting near Jarbidge, NV. He recounted a story of Nevada's heyday of deer hunting in the 60's, and of some of the gross excesses that occurred in those days by overhunting. I grimaced as he mentioned it was not uncommon to find poorly hit deer dead and bloating, unrecovered by the shooters. He told me that in those days it just didn't matter because there were so many deer. And just like most stories of the old days, it ended with some comment about how the lions are so bad these days. I learned basic arithmetic in deer camp, as most young hunters did. I was told often about how a lion would kill a deer a week and at 52 weeks per year, that added up to at least - I don't know, maybe 500 deer per lion per year?
But like with most problems in life, if you keep asking questions eventually you can trace the issue back to its origin. Questions like: How can an apex predator that has been neither removed nor reintroduced suddenly buck the trend of thousands of years of ecosystem development and evolutionary biology and so effectively reduce their prey species to create the massive ecological imbalance purported? Rather than offer my own answers here I'll lean on a giant - Arizona's beloved son and legend: Jack O'Conner. In an article penned regarding the desert mule deer he offers these words:
"The outlook for the [Mule] deer is, alas, not so good. In both Arizona and Sonora he is receiving pressure from every side. In Arizona most of his range is either leased from the state for peanuts by cattle ranchers or is Bureau of Land Management land leased from the federal government. The ranching interests are very powerful in Arizona -- so powerful that they have fought off any attempt to regulate the use of state-owned land. As a consequence, most state land in Arizona is fantastically overgrazed and overbrowsed and the desert deer must compete with cattle.
In Sonora the story is about the same. Most of the land is public domain; some of it is privately owned. All is overgrazed and overbrowsed. Most Southwestern ranches, whether in Arizona or Sonora, do not sell beef; they simply sell ambulatory carcasses that can be fattened and made into beef. Desert land is fragile. Growth is slow. Though the annual rainfall is only from one to nine inches a year, rains are often torrential and topsoil that has been laid bare by overgrazing is washed away. The desert was never intended to be cattle country."1
In another article by O'Conner, this one about the Coues deer (this blog's namesake) he writes thus about the role of lions (and predators in general):
"The main enemy of the [Coues] deer is the mountain lion, and until hunters get more skillful and are allowed to shoot does as well as bucks, predation by lions is necessary for healthy whitetail herds. In areas where lions are kept killed down, the deer become too plentiful, destroy their own browse, and die off from disease. The best Mexican deer ranges have a lot of lions -- and a lot of deer..."2
 |
| There is a small buck in this photo, or so I am told... |
And to think that Jack O'Conner was one of the old timers and held such views! Renowned wildlife photographer Earl Bauer penned a thoughtful essay on the tragedy of the Kaibab Plateau, which can be found in the North American Hunting Club's book on Mule Deer. In summary he writes this paragraph:
"Since then, the management of the Kaibab mule deer has been based more on scientific principles than on guesswork, emotion, and politics. The herd and the land are nothing like they were before the cattle ranchers, livestock, and predator controllers appeared on that unique high plateau. A good many mule deer live there now, but the body size and and antlers are small compared to those magnificent specimens of the past. Decades of blundering and greed have squandered a matchless wildlife resource there beyond the north rim of the Grand Canyon."
He offers two lessons to be learned from the Kaibab: "The first: Inviolate refuges for grazing and browsing animals such as deer will become death traps when predators, human hunters, or both are removed. The predator's natural role is to keep plant-eaters in balance with their food supply. When the balance is upset, humans must function as the controlling agent if they want vigorous wildlife living on a healthy range.
The second lesson: Neither mule deer nor any other ungulates can survive long where the range is degraded year after year by too many sheep and cattle. Already too much livestock has ruined too much land in the American West - and the world - and that process is ongoing... Most of our professional wildlife managers, as well as our hunting and nonhunting public, have learned those lessons, but too many range managers and most politicians have not. 3
I have a bleached lion skull sitting on a book shelf in my house. I arrowed him while bayed over hounds. It was, perhaps, one of the most exciting hunts I have ever been on. Another time I found a location where a large Tom had drug a deer across a snow covered road in eastern Nevada. Hours later I watched a friend put an arrow through its heart and the skull measured above the B&C minimum. I've also been on a hunt where a beautiful blue eyed female lion was treed and she was only forced to suffer the shutters of our cameras and we left her alone. Having spent a little time with houndsmen and asked them many questions about lions on a number of occasions, I could never provoke any malice or even an indictment on the lions regarding deer herd numbers from any of them. Typically, they never harvest female lions, and may even leave all but the best Toms they tree for another day. I will hunt them again to be sure, but not because I hold them responsible for low deer numbers, I simply love the chase of big cats.
 |
| Joe Surveys the Descent Back to Camp |
Unfortunately for the lions, they are a particularly easy scapegoat for many people. Rather than recognize the impacts we have had on the land, and our mismanagement of it, the lion's share of the responsibility is dumped on the, well, lions. Lion tags are typically the most readily available of all big game species in most of the west (excluding California), and some states even allow multiple lions to be tagged in a year by an individual hunter (like Nevada). For all of this effort on reducing lion numbers, I would be hard pressed to say that the deer numbers have rebounded in correlation. I know that the unit we hunted this year is by no means an isolated case; many ranges in Nevada exhibit deer herds well below the land's carrying capacity. And yes, of course, there are exceptions to this too. A good friend of mine hunts an area where he consistently sees twenty or more bucks a day, often half of which are mature animals (there are no horses there). The legendary hall of fame archer Randy Ulmer consistently puts Nevada on the map for giant mule deer. But these are exceptions.
This is rural Nevada, and I wonder if I will fit in. We could choose to look critically at grazing impacts by cattle, but we won't. Grazing rights carry too much political weight. We could choose to reassess the management of wild horses, which would mean actually ANY kind of management, but we won't. They have too much charisma in the public eye, and well meaning but ignorant activists have crippled most attempts at reducing their numbers in Nevada's ranges, often at the expense of indigenous species. How often emotional politics trump good science! We could rethink the last century of fire management that has only increased the latent supply of fuel, so that when fires do happen they burn more severely and more extensively than our collective wisdom and resources can manage, but we won't. Smokey the Bear and Bambi have made certain of that. For everything a season... a time to mourn...
 |
| Bald Hills and Eroded Creek Beds. What Would This Country Look Like 100 Years ago? |
Suddenly a cheerful face offers to refill my pint of brown ale. I decline with a smile and request our tab, thanking the bar tender for her generous hospitality. I make sure to leave her a good tip, still paying some sort of penance for the time I forgot to tip the bartender in Jarbidge several years ago. I can see Joe pulling in to the dirt parking lot, having returned from fueling up. I manage to pay my respects to the large antlered deer that have quietly observed our merry-making from their perch atop the store's walls. Still hopeful for a chance at our own wall hanger, we get in the trucks and head for the next range.
The next range was a breath of fresh air - literally! At 10,000 feet, with a slight breeze, we could see for miles in each direction. More of that same big, beautiful country unfolded below us with every step we climbed up the rugged mountainside. We hunted that evening and another day and a half but were unable to turn up a mature buck. The trip wasn't a complete bust though, as we were seeing more deer than we had in the previous range, just no mature bucks. Most of the does we saw had twins, or at least a single fawn. There were yearling bucks and both Joe and I had opportunities to harvest but we were unable to connect. Another chance sighting of mountain quail rounded our upland slam, as we saw chukar and sage grouse in this range as well. But there was something else promising about this range than just seeing more deer, even with the ever present cattle and horses interspersed throughout the range. The land was healthier. The springs, seeps, and riparian areas were fenced off, protecting the most sensitive portions of the land from the impacts of livestock. It was a real treat to find a piece of prime real estate next to a bubbling creek that wasn't absolutely pounded by cattle - quite rare in Nevada! Time and again we marveled at the great camping areas in the range, all because of the forethought to manage the watershed by mitigating the impacts of livestock! A game and fish sign hung on one of the fences, noting the enclosed area as part of a watershed protection program. This meant that a portion of my license and tag was helping to fund the project - bringing full circle the ideal of the sportsman-conservationist. There's still more work to do for the future of the mule deer throughout the state of Nevada, and the west in general. But this was a start, this was a hopeful sight! I will be back to chase the mule deer again next year, and the year after, with my daughter someday, and every year until my body will prevent me from making the yearly sojourn to the high country in pursuit of these fine animals. For everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven... a time to build up... a time to plant... a time to speak... a time to mend.
 |
| Joe (r) and Myself (l) Posing for Our Wives Back Home |
 | ||
| From left: Myself, Zach, Joe, & Mike |
The views reflected in this blog are solely those of the author.
-The reintroduction of wolves in northwestern states is an entirely different issue, and no correlation is intended with my discussion of mountain lions. Wolves must be managed.
REFERENCES -The reintroduction of wolves in northwestern states is an entirely different issue, and no correlation is intended with my discussion of mountain lions. Wolves must be managed.
1 The Desert Mule Deer, Jack O'Conner, Originally Published in Outdoor Life Magazine, December 1970. Outdoor Life/Harper & Row, New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London. Copyright 1974.
2 The Arizona Coues Deer, Jack O'Conner, Originally Published in Outdoor Life under the title Our Smartest Game Animal, February 1958. Outdoor Life/Harper & Row, New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London. Copyright 1974.
3 Mule Deer, Behavior, Ecology, Conservation, Erwin A. Bauer, North American Hunting Club. Published by Voyageur Press, Inc. P.O. Box 338, 123 North Second Street, Stillwater, MN 55082 U.S.A. Copyright 1995.
No comments:
Post a Comment