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There’s at least one huge Muley Buck left out West. Saw him real close about an hour ago when the car in front of me swerved to miss him at 70 mph nearly losing control. I braked hard to avoid hitting both of them. The buck towered above our Grand Cherokee, rack was wide, tall, with good mass. Impressive sized buck.
More than one for sure. I saw several nice muleys while pheasant hunting out there last week. I always enjoy seeing them.
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I sure hope the mule deer herd in southwest Kansas and for that matter their entire range in western Kansas makes a comeback. I really didn’t see any this year for the first time ever……
This is the famous mule deer buck killed near Greensburg years ago. He’s 43 inches wide outside and frame wise as big as they grow. Assymetry keeps him from being a world record and the rack is sitting above a 260 class game farm whitetail for reference. I guess the hunter sold the rack to a collector from Junction City who owns him now……
Huge but that lower one doesn't look like a whitetail. I was told there used to be big mulies up by Salina years ago.
I used to jump a boomer muley or two every pheasant season in Ness County. And my brother has arrowed three there between 190” and 214”. He arrowed those back in the early 90s. We have not seen a big mule deer buck in 15 or more years.
At one time, obviously long ago, we had Top 20 mule deer listings from Reno, Franklin and Mitchell Counties.
I remember a herd of mule deer on the east side of Tuttle Creek and in western Clay County.
In the mid-80s easily half the deer we saw in Barber, Comanche and Clark counties were mulies.
Grew up in Sw Kansas and they use to be alot. Just five years ago they seemed to be coming back strong. The last two years total reversal of the trend. With no antlerless tags in unit 18 I feel there should be way more deer of both species however that does not seem to be the case.
There are no more “mule deer doe tags” in any unit.
Has that region lost a lot of CRP, Matt?
Is it loss of habitat mainly the cause! I remember reading an article way back that some researchers believed whitetails were a big part of the problem as they out-competed the mulies.
I have heard that whitetails run them off. If that is correct, I vote we try to eradicate whitetails out of select units similar to what Idaho does.
Not really. Alot has been grazed that seemed to change one spot. I had over 20 that held deer though.
In my view, the decline of mule deer in Ks is due to these things in priority order. To many tags, killing to many mule deer, whitetails pushing them out, and loss of habitat (CRP). The first of these issues is easiest to control. Someone said there’s no muley doe tags given out. I’m sure there are “any deer” tags given.
If whitetails are pushing out the muleys where are they being “pushed” to? You’d think wherever they are being “pushed” to there would be a lot of them or do they just “push” them west into CO?
Nebraska has printed this in at least the last couple reg books and they’ve been talking about it for probably 20 years now. Never heard a peep about it on the KS side. Mike and others in the know, is it a non issue south of the state line, or do we have a clue?
The article I referenced did not say mulies were pushed out of areas, rather whitetails were more aggressive at breeding them and thus diluting the muley gene pool, basically into non-existence.
30 some years ago I regularly saw mule deer in a couple different areas of Chase County. I pass a shot at a small mule deer buck one year in the late archery season. I have not seen one for years in this area.
I've heard of it, KB, but not that it's been an issue in Kansas. As many dead deer as they've examined trying to find CWD I'd assume they'd have come across it.
Don't see how "over-harvest" can be blamed for the population decline. (That said, I played a role in the end of the "either-species, antlerless-only" permits. For the good of quality bucks, I feel that muzzleloader should be via draw, as well.)
Over the past four years Kansas has had between 85 and 155 mule deer does harvested annually between archery, muzzleloader, any-deer and hunt-your-own-land permits. That averages about five per county for the western one-third of the state. Like most mammals, one buck can breed numerous does.
It's interesting that Nebraska and South Dakota still, I think, sell permits that allow the taking of mule deer OTC.
The problem is we're not getting enough fawns to make into adulthood to replace adult bucks and does that die from whatever cause, - vehicles, coyotes, hunters, CWD... If we see a group of five or six does, there may only be one or two fawns with them. The studies just completed in western Kansas found alarming, at least to me, survival rates of mule deer fawns. Some areas it was below 30-percent, possibly well below. Remember, mule deer does usually have a single fawn.
Drought surely had an impact. We had almost no recruitment across western Kansas in 2011 and 2012. Many who were out bowhunting around 2015 and 2016 noticed most bucks were either very young or very old. The three and four-year-olds just weren't there.
Loss of good fawning habitat, vegetation about knee to thigh-high, is decreasing across our main mule deer range as well lose thousands of acres of CRP. Current high grain prices aren't helping any.
Mule deer are in decline over most of their range, and their numbers in central Kansas continued to drop even as CRP became more prevalent across the landscape and permits were lowered or totally abolished for those deer units. So...that makes it even more confusing.
The KBA gave $5,000 to get the study started in Western KS several years ago, it would be nice to maybe hear some of the facts gathered?
I assumed brainworm was on the radar. Just surprising Nebraska is confident it’s a big player in their “recession” and nothing of note on the Kansas side. Though their stronghold counties butt up against Kansas’ highest densities, so maybe it’s indeed a non issue along the state line.
Death by a thousand cuts it feels like for muleys. I know we all like to throw around CRP stats and say that’s the answer. But it took a severe economic ag crisis to even spawn the program and years of stagnant crop prices to get to where we were in the mid 2000’s. Hoping for a redo of that in favor of wildlife seems fairly selfish and unlikely. For now the government has said they have no intention to compete for acres and payments/acre caps reflect that. So CRP isn’t coming back in a big way anytime soon. Maybe those who got to live and recreate through the CRP boom simply have an inflated baseline for their expectations. Having said that I think there are a pile of acres in most states that are currently in production and shouldn’t be. Focusing on negative, or “red”, acres should be the goal of conservation groups. The programs are already there. Having half a county planted to grass may have been a one time occurrence. But finding acres on every section that don’t take away from a producer’s bottom line while adding a mix of habitat throughout should be the direction now.
The playa program is a good example of what can and should be done. Overpay for acres that lack consistent production and provide high quality habitat. Same could be done for waterways, rocky areas and terraces without too much opposition from producers. Spread the money and acres farther. Instead of the all or nothing whole parcel approach.
Yepper...dang good plan there.
Dave…here ya go. The 2021 report on results of 3 yr study. Kinda long at 151 pages but you could skip down to page 121 to see what needs to be done to help change the trajectory of the western KS muley decline.
Bottom line is more CRP, Woodlands and Standing Crops = MORE future mule deer.
I have great photography of collared bucks and researchers, if KBA ever needs to, to show what they’ve helped fund.
I think several members were on hand when they were collating animals. too.
Thanks for the synopsis, Crested. Once again, loss of habitat is a villain. The loss of CRP lands is going to have great consequences on many species of ground-nesting birds, from sparrows to pheasants.
I do not know what the answer is other than shit it down for 4 years and then strictly limit ones ability to get a tag. Maybe even do some transfers to diversify the genetic make up of the herd.
