Archive for the 'Hunting' Category

The details of this study present interesting aspects of western Mule Deer behavior patterns. It can be read with a mind toward improving your hunting, tracking, and land nav skills. The article includes a video depiction of her route.

While a few mule deer are known to basically stay put in specific areas year-round, most migrate between summer and winter ranges, Wilde said. Distances can be only a few miles, and most deer aren’t known to travel more than about 100 miles each way.

However, extended migrations like the ones 255 take might make for larger, better and longer-lived deer, he said.

In addition to her unusual longevity, Deer 255 also is huskier than most mule deer does, he said. Most does weigh about 140 pounds. Deer 255 tips the scales to a robust 170.

It could be that traveling longer distances as the seasons change has allowed her to “ride the green wave,” he said.

Meaning that, during the spring, she follows the lushest food sources northward, moving onward before an area starts to dry out, Wilde said. Likewise, on her way back south and downward in elevation during the fall and early winter, she stays ahead of the snowfall, enjoying the best available food sources as winter closes in behind her.

Deer that don’t travel as far don’t have that advantage and are pretty much stuck with whatever they find within their limited ranges, Wilde said.

That could mean the urge to migrate long distances is genetically embedded in some mule deer, he said. Deer 255 could have come from a line of deer that migrated far. And her fawns might continue to trek vast distances across Wyoming after she’s gone.

It’s thought that a fair number of her fawns have survived, Wilde said, though there’s no way of knowing for certain.

She had a single fawn in 2016, and birthed twins each spring from 2018-2022.

[…]

How Long Does The Journey Take?

The time Deer 255 puts into her treks varies. She has numerous “stopover” places along her preferred travel routes where she might linger for as long as 20 days, Wilde said. The rate of snowmelt and when and where her fawns are born each spring factor in.

Sometimes she takes months to amble down to the Red Desert and doesn’t arrive on her winter range until mid-January, he said.

“During some years, this same deer will zip all the way down in a week” if the snow comes early and hard enough, Wilde said, adding that mule deer can frequently travel 20-40 miles a day when migrating.

Deer 255 is loath to leave her summer stronghold in Jackson Hole because the living is good there, Nickerson said. She’s picked hangouts in high, steep country where to forage is good, but the roughness of the country discourages people from going in.

Only when the snow starts to fly thick will she leave, he said. But when it does, she has to hurry out because the area quickly accumulates several feet of snow.

There’s no telling when Deer 255 will take her last steps, but Nickerson said he hopes that’s not for a while yet.

“She catches our attention as humans and biologists,” he said. “She serves to teach the public about how the migration story is important to these animals.”

Found at SurvivalBlog

Outdoor Life.

Camouflage made in the U.S. might not sound novel, but it’s a rare product. If hunters are anything, as Fulks points out, they’re a patriotic bunch, emblazoning the stars and stripes on truck sides, bumper stickers and gun stocks. But look at the tags in your new pants, wicking shirts, and down jackets, and you’ll find very few modern-made garments that weren’t made overseas. While Origin isn’t the only company making camo in the U.S.—Forloh and Voormi also manufacture stateside—the company is coming to the public with a splash that includes big names, a high-profile social media presence, and the bootstraps, made-in-America origin story that consumers can’t seem to get enough of.

Roberts and Fulks say domestic production is a matter of principle: Clothing manufacturing can and should return home to the U.S. Other camo companies, like Kuiu, say it’s about the final product: If a Japanese company makes the best waterproof and breathable fabric in the world, then they’re going to source their materials from a Japanese company.

Aaron Snyder, co-owner of Kifaru, says it’s good to see someone else joining the made-in-the-USA game, though he’s reserving final judgement until he sees Origin’s camo in person. (The camo has been available for pre-order, but most consumers have yet to get their hands on the gear.)

“I think that they have an uphill road to hoe because it is a difficult thing to make clothing in the U.S. I think it can be done. We’re doing it and have been doing it for 30 years,” says Snyder. “Only time will tell what that final product will be and what the feedback will be from the end consumer. Are they going to come through and buy it? Is it going to be high quality?”

This is a difficult one, and I have thought a lot about it.

I hate to send my money overseas, and if I can avoid it and get the best product for the money in America, I’ll do that.  Ford still makes the very best trucks, especially the ones built in their Kentucky plant.  That may soon end because of the idiotic decisions by the Ford CEO to go all EV, laying off so many internal combustion engine workers.  That’s why the price of F-250s is so high right now, and still continuing to climb.  Everybody knows it’s a stupid decision and waiting until now to buy that new truck ended up being a costly decision.

So with Ford, at least until now, the best was combined with made-in-America, but also combined with high prices.  I have always opted for the higher price product rather than cut costs and be sorry later for owning a poor product.

The problem heretofore has been mainly the loss of the Christian work ethic, combined with unionized labor, combined with economic incentives to move manufacturing overseas designed to gut the American infrastructure by the politicians in favor of the economic engineers.  They want to bust corporations, make money, and have great products too.

But that just-in-time logistics chain has proven highly problematic, yes?  And the poor quality of foreign made components has caused the regulators to prohibit the use of those products where it matters, e.g., nuclear power, or ASME boiler and pressure vessel code work.

As it applied to this point in question, do you want to be in a tree stand with apparel designed for cold weather and freeze to death because the apparel sucks?  Do you want to be in the field with rain gear that soaks through in five or ten minutes?  Or are you willing to buy gear, part of which is sourced from a foreign company, that actually works?

I opt for the later.  I wish all the best to a startup trying to compete with the big boys, but the product had better be good.  Here’s a quick note to the company: I’d rather pay more for a product that works.  The cost is important, but whether the product works is supreme.

Source:

A hunter was attacked by a brown bear Thursday morning [This happened at the end of August] near Ship Creek after he shot it but didn’t realize it was still alive, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game official said.

That’s a perilous situation. Any large animal and all predators can be dangerous when shot, and it can be hard to know if they are actually dead.

The hunter, treated at a hospital for injuries, was able to make his way out of the area without calling for rescue, said Cory Stantorf, an assistant wildlife biologist for the Anchorage area.

The man shot a large adult brown bear between about 9 and 10 a.m. in an area near Ship Creek and up the valley from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson land, Stantorf said. It is legal to hunt in the area, he said.

The man then approached the bear, which he thought was dead, and it got up and charged him, the biologist said.

The bear wounded him during the attack, according to Stantorf, although he said he could not provide additional details about the injuries or how severe they were.

Others in the hunting party shot at the bear, Stantorf said, and it stopped attacking and left. The hunters made it out of the area without further incident, he said.

It wasn’t clear by Friday morning if the bear had died from the gunshot wounds, Stantorf said. The hunting party was returning to the area to look for the bear, he said.

Grizz are tough critters.

There have been several other bear maulings in Anchorage this year. A soldier was killed and another was injured during a defensive attack involving a sow brown bear with cubs on a remote area of JBER in May.

A man was treated at the hospital last month after he surprised a sow brown bear with a cub in Eagle River. A woman was also injured last month when a black bear swatted at her on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail near Point Woronzof.

Stantorf said it’s important that anyone recreating outdoors in the backcountry or even in Anchorage is paying attention to their surroundings and looking for bears.

Source.

Across the United States, the deer population has ballooned in recent years to an estimated 30 million. Once a rare sight, deer have become something of a pest, spreading disease and causing fatal car accidents at an increasing rate. But for people like Arnow, who has a background in environmental science, the biggest issue is the impact of too many deer on the forest. With fewer bears and mountain lions around to keep their numbers in check, deer can reproduce with abandon and decimate the young trees and native plants that live beneath forest canopies.

“[If] we have a beautiful overstory of mature oak trees [but] zero oak saplings in the woods, there’s no future for the forest,” said Arnow, whose concern has turned into an obsession with herd management.

To protect these crucial habitats and carbon sinks in order to help keep climate change from spiraling further out of control, scientists say deer population density in much of the country must be drastically reduced. “For this thing to work, you have to drive the deer numbers down to a very low level,” said William McShea, a wildlife ecologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Ecology Center. “You can’t just have casual hunting.”

I don’t know if I agree with the superlative “very low level.”  But the point is that the proliferation of hunting regulations on bag limits, allowable antlered and antlerless take, time, season duration, etc., etc., has overdone it.

I agree with that.  It’s time to pull back on the overbearing regulations.