The days of Wyoming bursting at the seams with nearly a half-million mule deer are long gone and aren’t coming back, a Game and Fish official said.
According to the latest available number from 2024 counts, Wyoming has about 213,000 mule deer scattered across the state.
That’s 50% below the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s objective for mule deer, said Justin Binfet, the agency’s deputy chief of wildlife.
And hunters are putting far fewer mule deer in their freezers these days, he added, while speaking Friday before the Legislature’s Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee.
“Hunters statewide are now harvesting, just a third of the deer that they were 25 years ago,” Binfet said.
Mule deer are declining across the West due to a variety of factors, he said. Those include weather-related problems such as drought and winterkill, deer getting hit on highways, habitat loss, competition with other species, disease and predation.
Heyday Numbers Might Have Been Inflated
Wyoming’s mule deer numbers peaked during the 1960s to 1980s, Binfet said.
There might have been more mule deer in Wyoming at that time than there were prior to the arrival of European settlers, he said.
But those herds might have been larger than the natural carrying capacity of the land, he said.
Their numbers might have been inflated by some human-caused factors, such as the eradication of natural predators in some places.
The Wyoming Range mule deer herd was the stuff of legends in those days. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it produced a trio of gigantic bucks, Goliath, Popeye and Morty – which are talked about to this day.
That herd was also one of the hardest hit during the brutal winter of 2022-2023, during which thousands of them froze or starved to death, including that year’s entire crop of fawns.
Committee Member Rep. Robert Wharff, R-Evanston, asked if Game and Fish implemented any emergency feeding of mule deer that winter.
Binfet said the deer were not fed.
Some elk were fed that winter, to keep them from raiding ranchers’ haystacks and perhaps spreading brucellosis to cattle, he said.
Earlier in his presentation, Binfet noted that mule deer have highly specific bacteria in their guts, which makes it extremely difficult for them to suddenly adjust their diets.
That’s why mule deer are vulnerable to invasive plant species replacing their natural forage in Wyoming, he said.
Biologists previously told Cowboy State Daily that mule deer’s sensitivity to diet changes is one reason why game managers hesitate to feed them hay or other supplemental foods, because it might kill them.
Many Challenges
Winterkill and invasive plant species set mule deer herds back. And they face many other challenges, Binfet said.
They also compete with white-tailed deer, elk and horses for food, habitat and forage in some places, he said.
Habitat fragmentation is another problem, as subdivisions, energy sites and other human development springs up across Wyoming.
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) among mule deer, once isolated mostly to southeast Wyoming, has spread across the entire state, Binfet said.
CWD is caused by prions, or malformed proteins, and is fatal in infected deer, elk and moose.
And since people stopped poisoning predators such as coyotes and mountain lions, they’ve rebounded back to their natural numbers across much of Wyoming, Binfet said.
Natural predation has increased on mule deer, he said. Although it’s a compounding factor in declining mule deer numbers, not the sole cause.
Roadkill Takes A Huge Toll
Roadkill also takes a horrible toll, Binfet said.
It’s estimated that at least 5,500 mule deer are struck and killed along Wyoming’s roads and highways each year, he said.
And those estimates are likely low, because some deer that are struck run off and die from their injuries far away from roadways, where their carcasses can’t be found and counted.
Because mule deer are stubborn about their movement and migration patterns, they frequently cross roadways and are the most common victims of roadkill in Wyoming, Binfet said.
As many as 85% of yearly roadkill deaths are mule deer.
Wildlife crossings are vital to saving the herds, he said.
A series of wildlife underpasses near La Barge has helped save members of the Wyoming Range mule deer herd.
Why So Many General Tags?
With mule deer in steady decline across the region, some question why Game and Fish still issues so many over-the-counter general hunting tags for them, Binfet said.
The answer is that hunting, when regulated to mostly bucks (male deer), doesn’t affect overall mule deer numbers, he said.
Hunting tags for mule deer does (adult females) were once plentiful but now are nearly impossible to get, Binfet said. That’s because does are vital to keeping herds going through reproduction.
“We have long ago gotten away from having hunting seasons that permit extensive female harvest throughout the vast majority of the state,” he said.
“We do permit female harvest in a few places, to deal with localized crop or agricultural damage concerns and/or as a chronic wasting disease management tool,” Binfet added.
