PinnedAndRecessed
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http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12749169p-13444552c.html
A lone doe, about 100 yards away, stared at us as we rode by on horseback.
She suddenly turned and bounded away, quickly disappearing into the backdrop of granite, sagebrush and trees of the Emigrant Wilderness in the Sierra east of Sonora, California.
It was the only deer we spotted during a two-day backcountry trip that ended Friday, a day before deer-hunting season opened.
About six hours later, we walked through downtown Sonora. A doe and two fawns munched on the lawn at a house across from the famed Red Church.
One deer in the high country, where the hunters headed to make camp. Three deer in downtown Sonora.
So what's wrong with this picture?
Beautiful and graceful, deer once migrated en masse from the foothills to the high country each summer.
"When I moved to Groveland in 1978, you could tell when the deer moved down from the snowfall and when they'd go back up," said Ron Colombani, a game warden in Tuolumne County. "You'd see 30 or 40of 'em in a herd."
There are now fewer deer, period, than there were 30 years ago. Disease and predators — the least of which are the seasonal hunters — contributed to the decline of the herds.
The biggest impact, wildlife officials say, might come from development — though not in the manner you might suspect. When valley residents think of development, they think of farmland being paved over for shopping centers and homes.
In the mountains, though, you don't see many tracts where houses are an arm's length apart. Many of the homes up there are designed to blend with the landscape.
Residents then plant vegetable and flower gardens and shrubbery that attract the deer, which prefer the tasty imported stuff to the bland fare of the high country.
Instead of being driven away by civilization, the deer are drawn to it — to the point where it's altering nature.
"(People) have created all kinds of habitat," said Jim Maddox, a retired state game warden. "The deer in the residential areas are doing a helluva lot better than in the high country."
Consequently, they no longer need to migrate, he said.
"They've got it made," Maddox said. "The ones that do may have to migrate 50 miles and find all kinds of dangers: cars, stream crossing, mountain lions, coyotes — you name it."
Deer in lower elevations are as much in danger as they would be in the sights of a hunting rifle. From 2002-04, 261deer were killed by vehicles on state highways alone in Tuolumne County, according to Troy Bowers of the California Department of Transportation.
Because so many deer now live year-round at the lower elevations, their migratory instincts aren't being passed on to Bambi.
"The fawn will never know to go (to the high country)," Maddox said.
The deer population hasn't rebounded from 1993, when the adenovirus — which ultimately gives a deer pneumonia — killed hundreds in the backcountry. Hikers and horsemen that year reported seeing deer carcasses along streams and established trails.
"There were at least 11 in Long Valley (east of Strawberry) alone," Maddox said.
Maddox believes the sightings represented only a small portion of the herd the virus claimed because other carcasses were cleaned up by bears and coyotes, which he calls nature's "garbage cans."
Deer also are the prime source of food for mountain lions, which have been protected since the early 1970s.
While biologists disagree on the number of mountain lions in the state, they do agree that a lion eats about one deer a week.
"So if there's 5,000 lions (in the state), that's roughly 250,000deer a year," Colombani said.
The big cats follow the deer, and both have been spotted in recent years near Oakdale, Escalon and even Modesto.
There haven't been any mountain lion attacks on people reported in Tuolumne or Stanislaus counties. But one lion killed a donkey and then took a particular interest in a Tuolumne County elementary school. The cat had to be destroyed, Maddox said.
Hunters? They dent but don't devastate the deer population. They can't hunt in the rural subdivisions, nor can they hunt the private land of the lower elevations without the property owner's permission.
They patrol the Stanislaus National Forest and its high country, relying upon the declining migratory pattern.
As recently as 1986, hunters brought 244 bucks through the check station west of Long Barn over the opening weekend. This year, officials counted 30, said Holman King, a state wildlife biologist. Those represent deer killed in zone D-6, which includes Tuolumne County.
"We're trying to collect as much data as we can to get an understanding of what's going on with our herd," King said.
One deer spotted in the high country. Three in downtown Sonora.
A lone doe, about 100 yards away, stared at us as we rode by on horseback.
She suddenly turned and bounded away, quickly disappearing into the backdrop of granite, sagebrush and trees of the Emigrant Wilderness in the Sierra east of Sonora, California.
It was the only deer we spotted during a two-day backcountry trip that ended Friday, a day before deer-hunting season opened.
About six hours later, we walked through downtown Sonora. A doe and two fawns munched on the lawn at a house across from the famed Red Church.
One deer in the high country, where the hunters headed to make camp. Three deer in downtown Sonora.
So what's wrong with this picture?
Beautiful and graceful, deer once migrated en masse from the foothills to the high country each summer.
"When I moved to Groveland in 1978, you could tell when the deer moved down from the snowfall and when they'd go back up," said Ron Colombani, a game warden in Tuolumne County. "You'd see 30 or 40of 'em in a herd."
There are now fewer deer, period, than there were 30 years ago. Disease and predators — the least of which are the seasonal hunters — contributed to the decline of the herds.
The biggest impact, wildlife officials say, might come from development — though not in the manner you might suspect. When valley residents think of development, they think of farmland being paved over for shopping centers and homes.
In the mountains, though, you don't see many tracts where houses are an arm's length apart. Many of the homes up there are designed to blend with the landscape.
Residents then plant vegetable and flower gardens and shrubbery that attract the deer, which prefer the tasty imported stuff to the bland fare of the high country.
Instead of being driven away by civilization, the deer are drawn to it — to the point where it's altering nature.
"(People) have created all kinds of habitat," said Jim Maddox, a retired state game warden. "The deer in the residential areas are doing a helluva lot better than in the high country."
Consequently, they no longer need to migrate, he said.
"They've got it made," Maddox said. "The ones that do may have to migrate 50 miles and find all kinds of dangers: cars, stream crossing, mountain lions, coyotes — you name it."
Deer in lower elevations are as much in danger as they would be in the sights of a hunting rifle. From 2002-04, 261deer were killed by vehicles on state highways alone in Tuolumne County, according to Troy Bowers of the California Department of Transportation.
Because so many deer now live year-round at the lower elevations, their migratory instincts aren't being passed on to Bambi.
"The fawn will never know to go (to the high country)," Maddox said.
The deer population hasn't rebounded from 1993, when the adenovirus — which ultimately gives a deer pneumonia — killed hundreds in the backcountry. Hikers and horsemen that year reported seeing deer carcasses along streams and established trails.
"There were at least 11 in Long Valley (east of Strawberry) alone," Maddox said.
Maddox believes the sightings represented only a small portion of the herd the virus claimed because other carcasses were cleaned up by bears and coyotes, which he calls nature's "garbage cans."
Deer also are the prime source of food for mountain lions, which have been protected since the early 1970s.
While biologists disagree on the number of mountain lions in the state, they do agree that a lion eats about one deer a week.
"So if there's 5,000 lions (in the state), that's roughly 250,000deer a year," Colombani said.
The big cats follow the deer, and both have been spotted in recent years near Oakdale, Escalon and even Modesto.
There haven't been any mountain lion attacks on people reported in Tuolumne or Stanislaus counties. But one lion killed a donkey and then took a particular interest in a Tuolumne County elementary school. The cat had to be destroyed, Maddox said.
Hunters? They dent but don't devastate the deer population. They can't hunt in the rural subdivisions, nor can they hunt the private land of the lower elevations without the property owner's permission.
They patrol the Stanislaus National Forest and its high country, relying upon the declining migratory pattern.
As recently as 1986, hunters brought 244 bucks through the check station west of Long Barn over the opening weekend. This year, officials counted 30, said Holman King, a state wildlife biologist. Those represent deer killed in zone D-6, which includes Tuolumne County.
"We're trying to collect as much data as we can to get an understanding of what's going on with our herd," King said.
One deer spotted in the high country. Three in downtown Sonora.
, Art
