The final death toll from what once was one of the world’s largest herds of mule deer is in – and it’s significant.
The Wyoming Range mule deer herd sat at about 30,000 deer a couple years ago, but last year, the state had one of the harshest winters on record.
“In fact, I call it cataclysmic,” said Gary Fralick, Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department’s [WGFD] wildlife biologist for that region.
In a recent aerial survey, WGFD found that only about a third of the herd survived.
“Probably the most substantial winner mortality event in the history of the herd – probably in the history of many big game populations in Western Wyoming,” Fralick said.
That leaves about 11,000 in the Wyoming Range mule deer herd, which is a prized herd for hunting and wildlife research. The herd spends its winters in the flat desert stretches between the Wyoming Range and Wind River mountains, and then summers in the Wyoming Range.
Fralick said it’s too soon to say how hunting will be impacted and that will be determined in the spring at the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission meetings. It also depends how this winter plays out.
“This year so far, thankfully, isn't going to be the effect of 2023,” Fralick said. “But, we still have a long way to go. And there's a lot of winter left.”
Last fall, the agency shortened the hunting season and reduced the number of tags available. There were also local efforts to limit the number of hunters on the landscape.
So far this winter, the mule deer are looking great with less mouths on the range than normal and an abundance of food last summer from the wet conditions.
“The high fat levels are a result of increased forage production, fewer deer on the landscape and many does being liberated from rearing fawns — all of which contribute to allowing deer to store more fat coming into winter,” Fralick said in a WGFD press release. “This year the winter ranges have received below-average snow, allowing animals to easily access abundant forage.”
The herd peaked at 60,000 mule deer in the early 90s and has mostly declined since, which researchers are still trying to understand. But, some known factors to herd health are the harshness of winters, habitat conservation and maintaining migration corridors.
