Whitetail deer decline

In about half of your letter you refer to the “mandatory” annual reports. Although the intent of the report started out as a mandatory requirement, the Idaho legislature eliminated any consequence for not reporting. As a result, the kill data you quoted is lacking close to 40% of actual harvest figures (Fact: IDFG Staff). As our past Fish and Game Commissioner (Dan Blanco) said: “That’s quite a hole in your data bucket.” The Idaho Department of Fish and Game in fact ends up having to call hunters to gather more data for these statistics you quoted. You also left out the biggest piece of information that these statistics don’t provide…animal quality (body size and age class). Since there has been such a large harvest of animals for all the years you listed, there has been a general and consistent decline in quantity and quality of animals being harvested. This data was gathered by our group visiting and talking with meat processors and taxidermists throughout the Clearwater area.

I contacted a very prominent taxidermist for the Clearwater area on Monday for the latest deer data for his business. He stated that deer quantity (mostly buck mounts) is down over 50% in the last five years. He also said that the average antler scores have reduced from 150 points (was quite common) and are now down to 125 – 130 points (average)…quite a negative change!

The 90% deer loss reported in Unit 11A that you refer to was taken from an IDFG internal email obtained through a public records request search. We find this email very important because it seems to have triggered this refund response by IDFG. Since you want to argue its validity, I suggest you talk to IDFG staff….it was their internal email.

As for your “lightly veiled accusation” comment, there is nothing lightly veiled at all. We simply stated the facts that IDFG conducted a refund offer process that has never been done before in such large numbers (225) for only one Unit and to only nonresidents. We have since also been contacted by residents that bought some of those nonresident tags and didn’t receive a refund email. Any thoughts on how you want to respond to those “resident” folks and explain why they didn’t receive a refund offer?

Apparently you missed the whole point of our report if you focus on the nonresident refunds. Since IDFG totally excluded the public from knowing a “disaster” had been declared for Unit 11A, the public wasn’t allowed to openly discuss future management plans. This point is very important because the public was denied participation in proposing possible season adjustments to help Unit 11A herds recover. I attended that March meeting in Boise, I don’t recall seeing you there.

In conclusion, I noticed your 70 acres on Crow Bench is completely surrounded by other private landowners and right near a large chunk of Nez Perce Tribal ground. I sincerely doubt you let the general public hunt on your property and this leads me to say that you probably do have a very protected and productive localized deer herd. Most of the general public doesn’t enjoy such a privilege.

Finally, I truly don’t feel you can fairly equate your deer success on just those 70 acres as representing what the rest of us are NOT seeing on the other 999,930 acres of Unit 10A and the millions of acres in the surrounding Units.

NIWF will continue to strive for better deer management for those reasons.

William Samuels

Orofino

NIWF President