you get up in that high country during the summer but you can't stay there during
the winter so you need to move down to the basins and that's what you do if
you're a mule deer in Wyoming
you know when we look at these migrations we're looking at generations
of cultural knowledge we make these maps but if you lose the migration even
if you know where the map is you can't recreate it because it exists in their
experience
as landscapes get developed subdivisions go in changes are happening to this
landscape a big question is how much can use animals tolerate
well what's the winter range?
winter range is anywhere a deer decides to try to winter
spent all my life out here but I started when I was young my father gave me a
camera when I was 14 and told me go out take stills a wildlife where I grew up I
could sit there and watch deer and elk it's been all my time doing that that's
a trouble most people just go out and observe a wildlife during hunting season
I think you need to do it year-round to understand the animals well those elk
went over the top so it's time to move down they got tired of me talking
Matt Kauffman that we got we had the opportunity to sit down with Matt who is one of the
leads on the Wyoming Migration Initiative what's your takeaway from
that conversation
what they're doing is is really great so these deer are
there's a buck there's a buck right there
let's talk about the migration
initiative what started it
our group at the University of Wyoming we're all
wildlife biologists we're researchers we're doing all this migration research
I mean wow these migrations are getting a little more difficult every year we
just had this thought that we could do more to help educate the public and make
it more useful to wildlife managers
Dad you've known about these migrations
for a really really long time let's talk about some of the stuff that you've seen
back when I was growing up you were able to hunt in the corridors in
November and the season ran until the end of December on the winter ranges if
you can believe that I learned how they cuz gotta leave
tracks you just watch their tracks and you can see where they were going and it
was very interesting to it because you could go along and suddenly run out of
track so you know the migration will hurd sometimes they'd stop this areas
they would just all just suddenly be down there there was a gradual thing
that was part of knowing how to hunt a deer so I learned that
every step
towards winter range as a step towards poorer food that you're gonna have to
share with everybody else that's all that's down there they try to stay up in
the high country as long as they can
it would have been impossible to figure
this out with 100% surety without GPS technology that's true
oh yeah I mean a lot of
it is built on the fact that you can now call it in these animals and those
collars give you locations in a couple hours for two or three to four years and
so then when you get that data back and then have a really clear picture
two little bucks standing right in the rocks skyline
they look pretty healthy this year we haven't had any below zero weather it's
really pretty nice you know
we haven't done much work on males but we do see it
doesn't take as much snow to push the does out of the high country the
bucks will stay up there longer
back in those days when we could hunt during
November and December as soon as it got 15 below or colder it seemed like
suddenly they all started showing up on a winter range it was like they flipped
a switch then they of course have to eat several times a day and you know when I
got 25 below everybody showed up for the party
I know some of those bucks they
come out early because Popeye he's very noticeable and the buddy of mine saw him
the last year of his life within 15 miles in the winter range 12th of
November that picture is taken on the western side of the Salt River Range can
you go over that mountain range down the other side across the Gray's River up
over the Wyoming range and back down winter going on the thing fighting us up
yeah yeah winter down there by LaBarge
now there was a lot of guys hunting
Popeye that year in the high country but nobody took him suddenly in November on
the winter range here he shows up with that 41 inch outside spread you know
nobody ever took Popeye we had a bad April storm come in and Popeye was 11
years old and just didn't make it
we look at these migrations we're
looking at generations and generations of cultural knowledge
like Popeye when
he was a fawn his mother took him over there into the
Salt River Range if he did it two years in an in was in these gray matter and
that's that was home to him
the does teach them how and where to go for
the winter and the bucks kind of like is a fraternity teach these bucks where to
hang out in the summer so they're the ones that are passing off the summer range
and if you shoot them all out kill them whether it's a late hunt or if
they get all winter killed or whatever it takes years and years and years in
fact I know areas that have never come
back
mule deer they can deal with a fair bit of development it's not that these
corridors have to be pristine but we don't want to cross sort of that tipping
point and unfortunately we don't know where the tipping point yes you know
migration is important you know how to map the corridors you know how to
identify the threats we have all these tools in the toolbox it's all right
there in front of us to be implemented to maintain the corridors
the solutions are clear and doable
that's when the mapping comes in it speaks to the
efficiency of the conservation
and we've already seen them the implemented
so for the first time in a hundred years a mule deer showing up to the
winter range and seeing an easier path than a harder path to where the head
also the game of fish is better able to manage their hunting seasons hunting
these migratory animals is extremely dangerous
there's isn't a western state that doesn't have migrating deer
yeah a lot of the Western states are looking to the
Wyoming example mapping the migrations
science is really guiding what we do and this is a conservation issue that we
should be able to win
finally it isn't just hearsay or me lecturing to people
saying yeah I watch the old migration and I was deer down here on the winter
range I just kind of wish dude what happened 25 years ago but it happened
now that's it's good
and we still have time