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Big game in Nevada doing well

RENO — With the exception of mule deer, the state’s big game animals are healthy and thriving, according to an annual report by the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

“We can dwell on negatives, but there’s a lot of positives,” said Mike Cox, a big game biologist with the wildlife agency.

The report, a detailed analysis of big game populations around the state, is compiled yearly and used by staff biologists to recommend tag quotas for the fall hunting season.

Nevada wildlife commissioners, meeting in Reno, will set final tag allocations today.

For the most part, agency staff is recommending similar or increased tag quotas over those issued last year for deer, elk, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep and mountain goat. Specific recommendations vary by area.

For resident hunters using rifles, the most popular tags requested each fall, staff biologists recommend 778 bull and 1,420 antlerless elk tags; 10,265 buck deer tags; and 1,743 antelope tags.

The department also is recommending 150 desert bighorn sheep tags, 16 more than last year. Recommendations for other species of bighorn sheep are on par or slightly higher than last year’s quotas.

“We have more desert bighorn sheep hunting opportunities than anywhere in North America,” Cox said. “Mexico is in second place, then Arizona.

“Desert sheep are doing well throughout the West.”

The biggest wildlife concern remains the long-term health of Nevada’s mule deer populations, according to the report.

“They’re hanging; holding their own,” Cox said.

Wildfires last summer burned more than 1.3 million acres in Nevada, more than 2,000 square miles. About 1 million acres of that was prime range and wildlife habitat in Elko County.

A vast region known as Area 6 — which stretches from Battle Mountain to Elko and is bordered by Interstate 80 and the Idaho state line — was hit particularly hard.

The area provides critical winter range for mule deer.

In the fall, the state authorized an emergency hunt of 1,000 does to try to prevent a massive die-off caused by starvation or exposure.

Though this winter lacked heavy snow accumulations and prolonged extreme cold, biologists estimate 50 percent of fawns died because they couldn’t survive the long journeys through burned areas to suitable feed and shelter.

“They have a very complex migration,” Cox said. “When you have to take a fawn 30 to 50 miles through a burn route and there’s no feed … the adults, they can handle that. But the fawns, even though they were probably in decent shape, they just couldn’t go those distances.”

Long-range outlooks for the herd in the area are disheartening.

The capacity of the winter range habitat is estimated at 6,000 to 7000 deer, the report said, down 35 percent to 40 percent from eight years ago, and 75 percent from 40 years ago.

“The reality is, that herd’s going to continue to struggle,” Cox said. “It will be years.”

To try to restore the landscape, state and federal agencies along with conservation and wildlife groups seeded roughly 400,000 acres, or 625 square miles, in Nevada after the fires, Cox said.

But with little moisture this spring to germinate seeds and establish seedlings before the heat of the summer, they are not optimistic.

“We flat out don’t think our huge, huge reseeding effort was too successful this winter,” Cox said.

The report warned that with a continued cycle of wildland fires, “this deer herd will continue to spiral downward to the point that there will be little hope of ever restoring it.”

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