By Kim Gierke Special to the Standard-Times
11 February 2012 SAN ANGELO, Texas – The West Texas deer season wrapped up in January and, as expected, it was the worst season in recent memory. The drought of 2011 had a devastating impact on the deer herd and forced hunters, guides and taxidermists to scramble to make the best of a bad situation. Deer numbers were way down and fawns didn’t survive. Antler growth was stunted in bucks. The business of deer hunting was bad as the cost of deer feed went up while the quality of the herd went down. “This drought took us to a place none of us have ever been before, that’s for sure,” said Jim Roche of Magnum Guide Service in Eldorado. He estimates about a 30 percent fawn crop survival on low-fence ranches without supplemental feed. “Two factors doomed the fawns,” Roche said. “Fawns died because the does were in such poor shape due to a lack of nutrition, and also because of the heat — 100-plus days of 100-plus temperatures killed a lot of the fawns. They just couldn’t take the heat. “The does were in trouble early in the season,” he said. “The bucks were in a little better shape because they were able to reach food that the smaller does couldn’t and they could dominate the feeders and run the does and lesser bucks off.” “This is the worst year ever for quality of deer — no question,” said Jimmy Fontenot of Safari Studios in San Angelo. “And I’ve been doing this for 20 years. Numbers were down depending on whether there was livestock, whether the deer were fed year-round and other factors. “Not one deer from a low-fence area that wasn’t fed protein scored 140 inches (Boone and Crockett) this year. Normally we have quite a few deer in that range. “I’d estimate that antler quality was down 20-30 inches from normal. It’s been bad for business. We have 50 fewer whitetail mounts than we normally have.” Greg Simons, who manages Wildlife Systems guiding service, agreed. “In this region, the drought has had an even greater impact than we thought,” Simons said. “Deer numbers are down between 20 and 50 percent in this region. And the antler quality is the poorest in the 25 years I have been in the business.” […] According to Henry Dusek, of Old Friends Taxidermy, horns were not just smaller, but also weaker. “We had a lot of bucks with broken horns. The horns were pithy, just not as strong,” he said. “We also noticed that bucks coming from fire areas had much darker horns, maybe due to rubbing on burned trees.” […] Business was down 75 percent for Stephen Gierisch, who owns a taxidermy shop in Eden, and Bartram said his business was off by half. “The deer quality is so poor and the economy is horrible,” Bartram said. “Nobody wants to spend money on a spindly little deer. This drought is affecting a lot of people in awful ways.” […] “The critical time for the deer will be March, April and May. If it is as dry as last year, these weeds are going to suck all the moisture out of the ground and if we have the same kind of summer, we will lose a lot of deer next year, too. If anyone wants to know how next deer season will be, check the rain totals for this spring.” Even if there’s plenty of rain, though, some worry about lasting damage from the drought and fires of 2011. “Many out-of-state hunters won’t soon forget the devastation they saw when they came to Texas to hunt,” said Roche. “Because of all the media coverage of the drought and the fires, they will go somewhere else next year.”
HUNTING: Dangerous drought
