idaho whitetail

[tioga]

looking at doing a late season whitetail in Idaho this yr.

any pointers as far elevation to look at, are they more geared toward agriculture ground etc.

whitetail in general is pretty greek to me.

regards,

 

[N Corey]

They’re spread from the valley floor to the highest peaks now. AG ground generally has a lot higher populations if you can get access.

 

[tioga]

Do they tend to push out the muleys

 

[N Corey]

I think whitetails are more agressive than mule deer as I’ve seen whitetail bucks run mule deer bucks off during the rut. I don’t know that they really push mule deer out of areas though. I think they’re a lot better at adapting to different/changing invironments and the fact that the does drop twin fawns more often than not have help the population grow in many areas. When I say they’re spread to the tops of the mountains I’ve seen them as high as 6,000’ or so but the numbers are definitely lower the higher you go for the most part.

 

[FreeRange]

Too add to the above where you see whitetail and mule deer heavily overlapping is more so on mule deer winter range where the whitetail are comfortable staying all year. The mule deer show up and that low country is full of whitetail thus reducing that winter range’s carrying capacity for more mule deer and we all know that year in and year out winter range is the key to sustaining mule deer populations. Add to that that it’s generally understood whitetail are more aggressive than mule deer (never observed this interaction myself but it’s what I hear) and you see the conflict. All you have to do is look at idaho’s deer season structure and harvest statistics to know that whitetail stand up to hunting pressure much better and the state is working to preserve mule deer and not taking it easy on whitetail.

On our whitetail hunt hunt this year we killed one buck in a unit that is definitely a predominantly mule deer unit, in another more whitetail heavy unit we saw more mule deer than whitetail on some days and all right next to each other.

All that to say, do some research on mountain whitetail and you’ll quickly figure out where you have to look to find them. We hunted high and low and never had too much trouble finding them. After a great couple of mule deer hunts in 2016, after last year’s hard winter and talking to biologists who were saying the whitetail had been far less affected I decided for 2017 we should go for whitetail again. The biggest challenge for you coming from Oregon mule deer country is going to be dealing with thick timber and not being able to glass much. I enjoy glassing deer so moving to an area with logging activity meant we were able to kill 3 of the 4 deer spot and stalk but that’s because I specifically looked for areas where that was possible. It’s a lot of fun. Deer densities are high and if you get away from pressure age class can be good.

 

[tioga]

I’m a glasser.. I can sit and glass for hrs. I’m in the valley so we have a lot of logged off units that are perfectly suited for glassing.
Funny the reason you stated you’re not hunting mule deer. I’ve never killed a Muley just blacktail but I was thinking the same thing why I wanted to whitetail hunt.
Now comes the fun part of figuring out where I should hunt. Got a couple GMU’s in mind just got to spend some map time.