Tag Archives: adaptation

The On/Off Switch: How Bucks Become Unhuntable

How Bucks Become Unhuntable

Opening morning is here, and it’s on! But not really, because the deer are effectively off. With increased human presence this year, the deer have sensed danger and left the area. It takes 20 days of futile hunting before I really understand what has happened: All the mature bucks flipped the ON/OFF switch to OFF, and have become unhuntable!

That was pretty much the story in Northern Utah last year. After several years of mild winters, deer numbers steadily rose to the point where the DWR issued more tags. It’s a traditionally difficult unit to begin with, but with the slightest increase in human traffic the deer have simply left the area and/or became completely nocturnal. I’ve never seen anything like it!

So I hunted from the top to the bottom, bottom to the top, and north to south. In some real nasty country I found tracks and beds, affirming there were still in fact deer around. But as the sun came up each day, they were nowhere to be seen. It felt like the Twilight Zone. In 2015 I counted 8 different 4×4-or-bigger bucks, including one 200” typical. In 2016 I counted ZERO big bucks!

I spent one frustrating day hiking farther and farther into a really remote canyon. Just as I was questioning my sanity for bothering, two mediocre 3-points blasted out below me. Being completely stealthy on approach, I couldn’t figure out how they’d even sensed me…unless they were completely neurotic…and that’s when it hit me: Bucks have the ability to decide whether to be huntable or unhuntable. It’s as simple as flipping a switch. Here’s how they do it:

Mature mule deer bucks are bigger, stronger, and faster than us. They also see just fine at night, maybe even better than during the day (according to biologists)! Deer are diurnal and nocturnal anyway, so being totally nocturnal simply means they don’t get up and feed during the day.

They also don’t drink water each day which helps them reduce daytime movement. And no matter what any “seasoned” hunter tells you, deer are smart. They are highly adaptable by necessity in order to survive extreme climates, terrain, and predators that they encounter daily.

When spooked by a hunter, a buck easily blasts through tangled brush, taking special care to keep trees between him and you, all while following a carefully planned escape route. The hunter hasn’t the slightest ability to chase after, or even to relocate the wizened old buck which is capable of covering vertical miles with ease and disappearing for days.

Flipping the Switch

For a deer, flipping the switch to OFF is probably not a conscious decision, but an instinct, and such a simple whim that it just happens without the necessity of thought. The buck spends a few days feeding and sleeping in some impenetrable patch of choke cherries on some ungodly-steep slope while waiting out the hunting season.

I know because I found one of these very spots (I spent every day peeking behind every tree, after all). Sure there was deer sign in the area, but it was so thick that I was literally climbing through the brush with both hands. Visibility was only a few feet and the unavoidable cacophony of my approach would spook any deer long before I ever saw it. All I could think was, “This is exactly where I would be if I were a deer.”

So, what’s the solution? How do you beat the unhuntable buck?

The short answer is you can’t. It’s game over. In my case I left the mountain and hunted out of state. Everyone knows that increased pressured makes hunting harder, but there’s a tipping point where the buck decides to go farther and deeper than humanly possible. After years in the woods, he’s learned where these places are and when to use them.

One question remains: If a deer can become unhuntable, why doesn’t he just remain in that state all the time? Well, he’s an animal; naturally lazy, hungry, lonely, and curious. He doesn’t enjoy holing up on a hill if he doesn’t have to. He also knows that hunts are short and hunters will eventually leave the mountain.

In the end, it comes down to hunting pressure. If an area has little hunting pressure, the buck might not even know the season is on and just go about his summer routine. Becoming unhuntable is simply a tool he uses in order to survive dangerous times, the same way he occasionally uses his antlers for fighting, and then forgets about them.

If you think about it, being invisible to man isn’t that uncommon in the animal kingdom. Deer share the mountain with much more elusive animals like cougars, bears, bobcats, badgers, foxes, etc. Many of these animals are nocturnal, but more notably they’re born with the natural inclination to hide from people.

Comparatively, hooved animals like elk and deer are certainly shy of people, but not overly wary. For whatever reason they have to learn to associate people with danger. It’s likely because we’re the only predators capable of killing them at long ranges…which is new and unnatural.

On the topic of long-range weapons, I’ve also observed the deer in my unit are holding tighter to the dark timber than they did in the past, even very early and late in the day. I believe the popularization of long-range rifle hunting is causing bucks to hold tighter to the deep timber where long-range rifles are rendered pretty much useless.

Think about it: A group of bachelor bucks are standing in the open, and one suddenly falls over dead long before the report of the rifle is heard. The far-off shot is difficult to pin-point, and therefore difficult to avoid. The remaining buck’s only option is to dive into the timber and not come out until dark. How many times will this happen before old bucks stop coming out all together, and then teach their apprentices to do the same?

What is the future of deer hunting? Are deer getting smarter? Are they adapting to human predators faster than we’re developing more efficient ways to kill them? If deer are bigger/faster/stronger than us, will there come a time that they are no longer huntable?

All of these valid questions, and definitely up for debate. During a recent hunting seminar, someone asked the speaker if he thought deer were getting smarter. The so-called expert replied, “No, I think deer are the same as they’ve been for thousands of years.” I quietly but wholeheartedly disagreed, and then wondered how much time this guy really spends observing deer in the nature.

All I know is that I’ve watched deer become more unhuntable by the year, and since unhuntable deer quickly spoils my season, I’ve opted to hunt elsewhere. It’s really my only option. I know there are some real bruiser bucks in my old unit, but I can’t keep wasting my valuable hunting time there.

No matter where you hunt, there will always be another area with less pressure and huntable bucks. Remember, bucks hate people pressure more than anything, so you must avoid people with as much fervor as you hunt for deer.

The Future of Hunting: Part 1

The next two articles address the future of hunting and the changes I predict will happen to both hunters and their prey through the natural process of adaptation and evolution.

esther

The Future of Hunting (Part 1)

Rest assured hunting will change in the future, just as it has been changing rapidly over the last 30 years or so. The three primary factors driving these changes: a) an exploding human population, b) the development of super high-tech hunting equipment, and c) the hyper-adaptation of prey-animals which is necessary for their survival, especially concerning elk and deer.

What’s been occurring, and will continue to occur is a split–or chasm–between hunters and super-hunters. Hunters will either do what it takes to get a buck, or they will fail most of the time. Most hunters can be divided into two camps depending on their priorities. These two camps are: a) Super-hunters dedicated to the sport and willing to spend tremendous resources for trophy-class animals, and  b) Fair-weather hunters who spend little time afield, hunt mostly for fun rather than food, hunt mostly on weekends, and are happy with any deer, whether a spike or a 4-point.

A similar split is occurring between regular deer and super-deer. This means there will be isolated groups of less experienced and less pressured animals that react much like their ancestors did and get shot. The rest will adapt quickly to modern hunters, developing much more specialized bodies and evading the average hunter for life.

Here are some of the changes I predict will occur, or are already occurring, in today’s deer and elk:

muledeer_013

Future Changes in Deer

  • Deer will become completely nocturnal. The reason you see more deer at evening and morning is because they’re most active at night. But if left undisturbed, deer will occasionally rise and feed during the day. In the future, not so much. Deer’s eyes are already adapted to see well at night, but in the future I predict that their eyesight will become further specialized to low-light conditions. The trade-off is that their eyes will become highly light-sensitive, causing them to bed even farther into super-deep/dark timber and never emerge until it’s completely dark. I’ve already witnessed deer doing this in high-hunter pressure areas. So much for seeing deer early and late.
  • Deer will grow narrower racks. This is already the case in places like Oregon and Washington where bucks live in dense timber full time. Since the popularization of the long-range rifle, I’ve noticed that deer in the Intermountain West the previously fed in the open are now spending more time in the thick timber. And since a wider rack impedes their movement, their antlers are already becoming narrower.
  • Deer will grow longer legs, similar to elk. Deer naturally have a difficult time moving through deep snow; basically anything over 30 inches. Thus, they are forced to winter on lower elevations. The problem is that humans are developing on most winter range elevations, especially here in Utah. This makes them highly susceptible to death via highways, dogs, poachers, destruction of native forage, and other wintertime stresses that force them to burn through fat reserves. As this is a fairly recent phenomenon, deer haven’t had time to develop bigger bodies and longer limbs which would allow them to winter at much higher elevations; but they will, eventually!
  • Deer will grow bigger hooves. Until recently, deer haven’t had to live in very cliffy or rocky terrain. But they are starting to. With increased pressure, dwindling habitat and the threat of long-range rifles, deer are increasingly forced into some very unnaturally rugged terrain. My brother-in-law Josh actually found bucks living in and around caves in the unit where he hunts. Have you ever noticed how small a deer’s hooves are compared to cliff-dwelling species such as sheep or goats? As a taxidermist I’ve had the opportunity to compare various characteristics between species. Sheep and goats have approximately the same body mass as deer, but their hooves are nearly twice as big. Other than size, another interesting difference between deer and goat hooves is the foot pad. The footpad of any hooved animal is made of a softer, cartilage-like material. But the goat’s hoof is much softer than the deer’s which allows goats to grip onto rocks easier. I predict that deer will develop not only bigger hooves, but softer ones too.
  • Deer will grow bigger brains. Any trophy hunter already knows how incredibly smart today’s bucks are, but they will become smarter yet! This is a simple law of nature: survival of the fittest. As humans develop smarter hunting technology, the deer will be forced to adapt. In a previous article I wrote about the different and ingenious ways that deer have adapted to hunters in just my lifetime. Big bucks are using higher levels of intelligence to evade hunters. Some examples include using does as security buffers between open feed and tree line, moving into non-deer habitat such as caves, and using complex sentinel-based security systems.

elk-6a

Future Changes in Elk

Now let’s look at future changes in elk:

  • Elk will become mostly silent, like deer! After just a few decades of calling to them, big bulls are becoming increasingly less vocal. This is the basis of the relatively recent “silent calling” technique, wherein modern bulls often approach a caller without calling back. Thirty years ago it was easy to bugle up a bull. Now that bulls have wizened up to bugling techniques, we’ve switched over to primarily cow calling. But even this technique is becoming increasingly ineffective. Smart bulls now distrust any calling and rely instead on wind and scent before coming to a call. Simultaneously archery equipment has become far more efficient, forcing bulls to hang up farther and farther back. Now I predict a time when elk are completely silent and use scent and wind direction to rut around, just like deer already do.
  • Elk will grow narrower and smaller racks. Just like deer, elk will move deeper and deeper into thick timber and will therefore be forced to grow narrower racks for easier travel through dense timber.
  • Elk will grow bigger ears. Relative to their body, elk ears are fairly small, albeit efficient. But just like their mule deer cousins, there’ always room for bigger ears. Since elk will become more timber-dwelling, and since sound doesn’t travel nearly as far in thick forests, elk will need bigger ears to locate both danger and other elk.
  • Elk will develop better vision. Elk and deer eyes are practically the same: good night vision, wide field of vision, and sensitive to movement. But deer species’ eyes have two major weaknesses: a) they can’t see the color red, and b) they can’t see fine detail. This is why an elk can’t see you standing five feet away, unless you move. Of course they use their noses to make up for this shortcoming, but their eyesight has room for improvement. In the future I predict elk and deer will either develop the ability to see a broader color spectrum, and/or their eyes will evolve to see better detail.
  • Elk will have smaller bodies. During the last ice age, animals had much bigger bodies which allowed them to survive better in low temps, move through deep snow, and evade larger predators like the saber-toothed tigers. After the ice age, animals got smaller. Today’s elk are much larger than most other western big game animals. This is advantageous during winter, but for the rest of the year it hinders them in two ways: a) they need to water more frequently, and b) they need to eat more food more often. As any predator knows, it’s much easier to ambush an animal that’s feeding and watering. Unlike deer, this makes hunting elk over water a viable option. Also, because elk are grazers rather than foragers, it’s easier to predict food sources and travel routes. In the future, smaller elk won’t need to water as often and will likely adapt their stomachs to include browse-type foods such as forbs/shrubs/etc. As a result, they will bed earlier, rise later and probably become completely nocturnal as well.
  • Elk will grow smarter. I suppose they’re already kinda smart, but they’re getting smarter yet. Last year, while hunting with my wife, we called up a herd bull by using an estrus call. The bull came stomping in, and then, just before showing himself, pushed two cows right through us. When the cows passed the shooter they picked up her scent and bolted taking the bull with them. This well-thought-out security measure worked perfectly. In the future I predict elk will develop even more sophisticated security techniques to avoid hunters.

Conclusion

For all of evolution, both predator and prey were forced to adapt to each other to survive. In today’s world, finding and harvesting a trophy animal is getting increasingly more difficult each year. Today’s deer are ingenious survivors capable of adapting to us and evading us no matter what we throw at them. It just proves that technology isn’t the answer.

On the flip side, we should be thankful that our beloved deer are such brilliant survivors. Otherwise there wouldn’t be anything left to hunt.

Stay tuned for the next article where we analyze the future of hunting and the division between hunting camps. I think you’re gonna like it.

The Future of Hunting Part 2

Mule Deer Adaptation

Mule Deer Adaptation

My biggest frustration is empty woods. In places like Monte Cristo and the Manti-Lasal range, a hunter can travel past supreme habitat all day long without catching sight of a single deer. Thirty years ago, these places were crawling with deer, even giving up dozens of record-book bucks along the way. Today, not much about these woods has changed except there are almost no deer. And the few deer that still exist are the neurotic descendants of lone survivors.

During the seventies and eighties, while hundreds of trigger-happy hunters clambered around the mountainsides shooting wildly at any buck that dared step into the open, those few crazy-bucks held up in the thickest trees. They sprung from cover at the slightest human sight or scent and barreled along thick tree lines and out of sight without glancing back. Even something as benign as a squirrel’s bark would send these wide-eyed crazies flying into the next valley, never stopping to question the validity of the threat as they retreated into some dark hole on some private property or high mountain cliff. Today, the descendants of these neurotic deer are all that’s left—no longer Odocoileus hemionus, but Odocoileus neuroticus.

My friend Scott and I often travel together down a long and dusty road leading to an area on Monte Cristo where we both hunt. Every time we drive past a certain clearing in the trees above the road, Scott points out the exact location where his brother-in-law once shot a little two-point buck long ago. This appears to be the highlight of his family’s gun hunting tradition in recent years. Now, each time I drive down that road and look at that hillside clearing, I can’t help but wonder if that little buck was indeed the last of a generation of careless mule deer—yesterday’s deer.

What the modern mule deer lacks in numbers it makes up for in elusiveness. As an example, there are a few spots where I hunt that are always covered in deer sign—tracks, rubs, and droppings everywhere. But in a hundred days of hunting you’ll never actually see a single animal—at least not during daylight. It’s well known that deer are crepuscular animals (being most active in the morning and evening). But on heavily pressured public areas where I hunt, I’ve observed that today’s deer are mostly, if not completely, nocturnal. For the bowhunter, setting the alarm for 5 a.m. is almost useless because the deer have already fed, watered, and traveled to hidden bedding areas by starlight. That “great” area you chose to sit and watch before first light, remains quiet and empty as the sun comes up. It doesn’t matter how early you arrive because you’ve already missed the action. Utah wildlife biologist and author, Walt Prothero, wrote extensively on the mule deer’s keen ability to adapt to modern dangers. In his book Mule Deer Quest he wrote the following:

“But mule deer are quick learners and highly adaptable… The bucks that didn’t pause to watch their backtrail survived to do most of the breeding and pass on genes that made them more secretive. Bucks have essentially become nocturnal, at least during hunting seasons. They don’t pause in the open during daylight hours, and they won’t even come out in the open unless it’s dark. Most won’t move unless they’re certain they’ve been located (Prothero, 2002).”

Traditionally, mule deer experts have agreed that mule deer must rise out of their beds to feed occasionally throughout the day in order to maintain adequate energy and fat stores. However, in most of the high-pressured public areas where I hunt, I have observed that this is no longer the case. These modern mulies have simply adapted to a nocturnal lifestyle which provides plenty enough food ingestion at nighttime to negate daytime feeding. It’s like saying humans have to get up to eat occasionally during the night to survive. It’s just not necessary.

Another example of the mule deer’s ability to adapt to adverse conditions took place following the particularly harsh winter of 1983-1984. Every single deer in the mountains of Northern Utah was forced down to the lowest possible elevations in order to survive the extremely high snowpack. This forced many of the herds into our cities and even farther into the farmlands west of Ogden. By springtime, many deer had simply adapted to the city lifestyle and never did return to the mountains. Even today, small herds of mule deer are living year-round in the suburbs of Logan, Brigham City, North Ogden, West Weber, Hooper, Farmington, Bountiful, and many other small cities.

This amazing ability to adapt to innumerable adverse conditions—primarily man-made conditions—is all that’s kept the wily mule deer from becoming an endangered species.