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Show Status of Deer in Utah Distribution is Problem ) Estimates place the number of deer ' m Utah at 40.000, with a possibility (hot this number might be greater. This compares with nn estimate of A'., loss than 10.000 in 1920. And there are from 5,000 to 7,000 deer taken each year by hunters. The deer has had a varied career in the state of Utah and oftentimes his best friends have been his worst ene- . mies. When a plan for game management i Is finally put into operation in Utah it will be used first on the deer. Some times those persons who begrudge "1 deer the browse it eats and those who 5 have an altruistic but impractical idea of conservation to the last fawn will meet on a common ground and devise means whereby the state of Utah will v-, be fully stocked with deer and the sur-'uS sur-'uS plus taken each year and put to econ-, econ-, omic use. The present law Is too rigid to permit proper deer management. manage-ment. Laws which will permit authorities the right of discretion In l handling localities are necessary. State Not Fnlly Stocked ft In considering the deer in this state the first question naturally to come up -J is "When will Utah be fully stocked with deer." The answer given by !-",'$ David H. Madsen, former fish and Vii' game comissioner, is that the time is seme time in the future. He does not care to set a specific date. Madsen ' is ss declares that Utah, from Provo north-y.:e north-y.:e ward can still carry a lot more deer. . Utah from Provo southward can also rr" carry some, but in many places south of Provo the deer have increased to their limit and in one place, Twelve-" Twelve-" Mile Canyon in the Manti National " forest, there is an over population Iron, Millard, Sanpete,- Sevier, Garfield, Gar-field, Piute and part of Emery counties coun-ties have enough deer, Madsen says. Buck taw Good Law The second thing to be considered k in a study of deer in Utah is the "buck law." Under this law all does and $ bucks which do not have five-inch i spikes are protected. Only the larger deers are permitted to be killed by huntsmen. The buck law has been J ' the cause of many a wordy battle in Utah, but the authorities pretty generally gen-erally agree that the buck law is the chief thing which is making Utah a 3 good state for deer. There are many who are in a position to know who . SI: claim that the enforcing of the buck law is the chief reason why the num- ber of deer in Utah have increased more than four fold in the past eight f.p-1 years and why hunters nowadays bag ttili almost as many deer in one season as r were in the state eight or nine years f ag0 A flurrry about the buck law started about the time the legislature was meeting some months ago but did not last long. Many well meaning sports-) sports-) men, and some who were not well q meaning, declared that there were so 5 many "dry" does in the hills that it . seemed evident that there were not 3 enoueh male deer left. This argument """" was spiked in a dozen places by the . following facts w 1 A female deer will not bear a .' fawn until she is 30 months old. Ex-a," Ex-a," perts can not tell the age of a doe by ! ?" looking at her from a distance. How , ,,. then can amatuers tell whether a doe 2 f': is fawnless because of lack of a' mate i or because of immaturity? " .. 2 Many does have their fawns in .. ' hiding, thus appearing dry. 3 Many does have lost their fawns to predatory animals. It was in 1915 that the buck law ft- was passed by the Utah legislature, ) but it was not until six years later that this law was really enforced. A-J A-J mong other reasons why it was not enforced two may be mentioned: first, 2 there were some who were skeptical about its value. Second, deer had become so scarce in the State of Utah v4 that it was useless for the average "," - man to hunt. Hence, the average . ' man figured the deer had gone with P"v the dodo and he proceeded to forget c;t; all about the animal. Way Back in '84 The deer had become scarce in Utah because of almost unrestricted hunting and because of lack of organ-S organ-S ized effort in ridding the hills of pre-Z pre-Z datory animals. Looking back into the laws we find that in 1884 the old territorial law says nothing about deer jfTj at all. In 1889 there were some rcg ulations. A man could hunt between August 15 and November 15, with no ,.,! limit on the kill. Ten years later the v: season was open only during tne ' month of October and there seems to H. have been no limit on the kill. m " 1901 the first restrictions were put on. The season was open from October lb to 31 and each hunter was allowed two h deer. Restrictions Made This restriction did not do the work and in 1905 the hunting of deer was stopped, only to be started again in 1907 by allowing two male deer as the y limit. In 1909, 1911 and 1913 the limit lim-it was cut to one deer of either sex and in 1915 further restricted to one male deer. The increase between 1915 and 1921 was very limited, due to the fact that the buck law or other hunting laws y were not especially well enforced. One of the staunchest supporters of fl the buck law in Utah is S. B. Locke of the forest service, who declares that the buck law as applied to Utah is 11 absolutely correct and should be continued. con-tinued. In a communication to the fish and game department last fall Mr. Locke says: Locke's Statement ji "Considerable comment has been , wade suggesting that there was a real 0' shortage of bucks in Utah which resulted re-sulted in there being many dry does , ofctorved. I believ: this impression ', is eironeous. , "There is a decided lack of definite .information on the necessary relation S of numbers of bucks to breeding does I ??u'. considerable of a general nature. ' is always the tendency for hunters hunt-ers to believe that bucks are searse. During the hunting season the early stoims have generally broken up the buck, herds and the bucks arc widely scattered m the high timbered sec-ions sec-ions whore they are much mm- di'-ricult di'-ricult to find than does and fnwns I beheyo the bucks move slightly and aie laying up fat for Inter activities On my recent trip to the MicW'e Fork or Salmon river I counted about in does and fawns and not a singU buck Hcwever, the increase of fawns on all noes was 90 per cent or in other words 15 per cent of all the deer I saw wei-fawns. wei-fawns. This was in a section where does and fawns may be shot .'In making the tallies of docs and fnwns all three of us were mnkin" careful observations and many times it was difficult to be sure without the use of -glasses just which were youn" animals, if we had to use care to distinguish them what about the o-d-i-mry hunter? How many hunters realize that all yearling does are dry and that there are always some does which dropped fawns which have lost them? In Idaho where does are killed it is the tendency to call any fat doe a dry one. Aldo Leopald on the oasis of a large amount of data on deer ranges in the southwest gives the normal make-up of deer herds where there is an abundance of bucks as 70 per cent dry does and 30 per cent bearing 150 fawns. John Bumham in his deer park allows one buck to seven or eight breeding does. Glen Smith thinks one buck to four does is plenty without any question. 'On the Stanislaus National Forest California, where a buck law had been in effect several years at least and when the deer were practically ex-term: ex-term: nated in controlling the font and mouth disease, information gathered during the killing indicated at least one 1 uck to two does. "From personal observations I would not be at all surprised if some ratio would be found to exis". on most of the Utah, ranges. I Believe that if wo count all deer observed at a time v. hen the bucks are w:'in the does and and iind one in ten to be bucks, that iki segregated on the higher sections there will be more than a normal number of dry does. "I have not mentioned the natural wildness which hunting produces among the mature bucks in contrast to the does and fawns so much more easily observed. I think we need to urge the necessity of kiiling does soon bir, not because of a lack of bucks to keep the herds productive. Private Land "There are sections where considerable consid-erable private land occurs or where the grazing use is established by many small owners where a continued stocking stock-ing wilh game will ies'jlt in the de-vclopmi de-vclopmi nt of a sentiment strongly igainst game conservjton. An in-sistance in-sistance on the use of such areas for very he'avy stocking by game will" in the end react adversely against game conservation. There are also areas within the national forests which are at present stocked by deer very nearly to the full carrying capacity of the range and greater use will lower the capacity of the range to support deer. Under a buck law properly enforced, it is only a question of time before overstocking will result. Such a situation has resulted in Pennsylvania where in certain sections serious damage dam-age has occurred to forage plants which has reduced the carrying capacity ca-pacity of the ranges and caused . very heavy losses among youa? animals. Before the killing of does is undertaken under-taken in Utah it is essential to have a well co-ordinated series of sanctuaries sanctuar-ies so that a concentrati i i of hunters in any one unit of gam'; range will not make too great a reduction in the breeding stock. Sines deer do not range widely, the most desirable arrangement ar-rangement will be small areas well distributed. Such will require a greater cost to patrol and post and the coperation of the sportsmen will be necessary to make it effective." S. B. LOCKE. The deer in Utah will bear watching. watch-ing. The present kill represents a big percentage of the annual increase, which means that the deer in the state as a whole will not reach their maximum maxi-mum limit for some time yet. But in those places where the deer reaches its limit first something will have to be done about it. Fanatical action on the part of the ultra-conservationlist might prove the undoing of the deer in Utah. Real damage done in one locality will lead to imaginary damage done in a dozen more. Besides that it is entirely possible for deer, when fully protected, to eat themselves out of house and home and then to eventually even-tually starve to death and at the same time put the range in such a condition that neither deer nor stock can exist it for many, many years. |
