Here is District Wildlife Manager Travis Sauder talking about wildfire and wildlife at the site of the High Park Fire in Teller County (west of Colorado Springs and closer to Cripple Creek), which at this writing has burned a little less than 1,200 acres.
I don't disagree with what he says, but I think his view point is slanted towards larger animals, such as deer, elk, mountain lions, etc. Smaller critters may not know until it's too late. But they tend to reproduce faster too. Maybe it works out.
When it comes to the ungulates, he is right about the improved feeding conditions post-fire, after a few months. I have joked that all fires turning mature conifer forests back into a mixture of trees, grass, and brush are set by the Mule Deer Foundation. For evidence, I offer the fact the Colorado's MDF former Colorado regional director has lived in several residences close to major wildfires, or as they say on the internet, he "has links" to them.
Of course, no reputable conservation group would set fires. I do but jest. But their flagship species does benefit from the changes in foods available to them!
That weird-looking eye is just a reflecton from the cat's tapetum lucidum.
Mule deer does here drop their fawns in June. Last winter, we had a little group of three does and two yearlings that hung around in the forest near the house.
On July 8th, one of my trail cameras up behind the house picked up this mountain lion right in the area that the mulie does favored.
A neighbor mentioned that so-and-so had a seen a lion (that person being a sort of inept but trigger-happy back-to-the-lander whose animals escape, are killed by his own dogs, or whatever), while someone else had a seen a lion quite near our house in a different direction.
I said "Hmm" and did not mention my photograph. No point in advertising. But I wondered if she (?) had nabbled any fawns.
We kept seeing the two yearlings — now approaching sexual maturity — off and on, but not the three does. Presumably they were hiding their fawns in high grass or brush, and feeding warily.
Finally on September 10th my wife and I were eating supper outdoors on the porch — a prime deer-spotting time — when we saw two fawns grazing on what we call "the old road," which is an 1870s stage road-turned-pre-1960s ranch road turned grassy strip in the oak brush.
So two made it. There could have been as many as six fawns, since mulie does often drop twins. But I wonder how many that lion got. They have to eat too.
UPDATE: I checked a different camera today (15 Sept.), about four hundred yards from the house. It looks like our female (?) lion is still hanging around — she was there on the 10th even as M. and I were observing the fawns.
I am fudging this one just a little. The anthropologist Richard Nelson (b. 1941) actually died in November 2019, but I did not hear about it until January 2020, when an archaeologist friend sent me a link to a number of news items in his field.
That was the book that pulled me in, with bits such as the Koyukon people telling him that it was impolite to point at a mountain. (The Koyukon speak a related language to Navajo and Apache; evidently they are the ones who said, "Fine, you go south. We like it here.")
He also wrote Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America, among others, with its often-quoted statements that ""When it comes to deer, wildness is the greatest truth. And tameness is a tender, innocent lie."
A reviewer on Goodreads wrote, "It's a really interesting look at people's relationships with deer from
all angles (our spiritual and ecological connections with wildlife, the
dilemma of controlling overabundant deer, trophy hunting, hunting deer
for venison, the anti-hunting movement, etc.)."
I remember the passage about hunting blacktail deer in the coastal Alaska forest with his Border collie Keta:
Now . . . rather than staying close, Keta sidles off and lifts her
nose as if there's a faint musk drifting in the breeze. She comes
reluctantly when I gesture toward my heel. Taking her cue, I pause and
watch ahead, then move when a
sigh of wind in the trees covers the sound of our
footsteps. Luckily, the ridge is well drained and densely carpeted in
sphagnum moss, so it's fairly quiet going.
Keta's behavior telegraphs the scent's increasing
strength: she moves forward, catches herself and looks back, falls in
beside me, then shunts away to my left or right like someone pacing at a
line she's been warned not to cross.
She probes her nose into the breeze, occasionally
reaching to the side for a stronger ribbon of scent. She hesitates and
stares intently, aware that something is nearby but unable to pick it
out. And most telling of all: she leans back
and anxiously lifts a forepaw, possessed by her desire
to charge off but yielding to the discipline she's learned, as if an
inner voice were ordering her to wait.
By this time I'm convinced it must be a deer. If it were a
bear, Keta would refuse to keep still and she'd woof suspiciously, deep
in her throat. I edge along, furtive and stalking, as if I'd already
seen the animal. At one
point I even try sniffing the air, but for me there's
not a hint of smell. It's strange, being completely numb to a signal
that's as obvious to Keta as walking into a cloud of smoke. I stop for
several minutes to study the
ravel of shrubs and trees and openings ahead. But
despite Keta's certainty, the place looks vacant to me.
And that passage concludes,
No scientist, no shaman, no stalker, no sentimentalist will ever
understand the deer . . . and for this I am truly grateful. I am
possessed by a powerful curiosity about this animal, but what I desire
most is to experience and acclaim its
mysteries. In our explorations of scientific and
practical information about deer, we should always keep in mind what the
elders and philosophers teach: that while knowledge dispels some
mysteries, it deepens others.
I just wish someone had kidnapped him from the hospital to let him spend his last days with friends on that island, beneath the open sky, hearing real ravens, letting his spirit float free.
I hung this scout camera on May 9th at a little seep that I call "Camera Trap Spring." (You won't find that name on Google Earth, not if I can help it.)
It's in little bowl in the foothills about 45 minutes' walk from my house, but a walk that involves scaling a step ridge, negotiating a small talus slope, and winding through a lot of oak brush.
The camera also recorded turkeys, bears, deer, elk, and gray foxes, all drawn by a tiny water source that kept running through this drought summer. When I finally got motivated to retrieve the camera today (the batteries had died in mid-July), I was truly surprised to find water there. That probably explains the bear with a muddy rump that was captured on another camera on my side of the ridge—if they can't do more, bears like to just plop their butts down in the water.
When I stand up at the spring, I can see houses, maybe hear a far-off dog bark, and watch traffic moving on the state highway. Yet because there is no vehicular access—and it's a serious hike in—the animals act undisturbed, like this cat having a drink at 8:49 a.m., no fear at all.
The camera recorded some deer there two hours earlier. I wonder if he was thirsty after a meal.
Orphan mule deer fawn arrives at the rehabilitation center.
This is the time of year when fawns are dropping and wildlife agencies are telling people, "Don't think that fawn has been abandoned unless it is still there 24 hours from now! Its mother had to go eat, but she knows where she left it, and she will be coming back."
Generally that is true, unless she is lying dead by the side of the highway, which is the back-story to some of the wildlife transport runs that M. and I do every June. That was the case with this little mule deer from eastern Fremont County.
We picked him up two days ago from the woman who had found him. He had a quick 45-minute ride to the wildlife rehabilitors, and now he is in the antelope/deer fawn enclosure, behind a high chainlink fence reinforced with barbed wire and electric wire— all to keep predators from thinking it is some kind of snack bar. (So far, so good.)
As all Colorado Parks & Wildlife volunteers are trained to do, we politely thanked her for taking care of the fawn and for contacting CPW about it.
As I picked up the carrier, she asked that I hold it up to the passenger seat of her Chrysler Pacifica so that the young kids in the back could say good-bye to the fawn. I did that.
I got the impression that she had kept it longer than she should have as a learning experience for the kiddies. Like some people let the cat have kittens so that the kids can witness "the miracle of birth."
On the plus side, she had given him goat's milk, which he accepted, and he was alert and lively when he arrived at the rehabbers' place. No harm.
Not like the woman who lived in a little house up the river in Huerfano County and found an injured great horned owl. I think it had collided with a fence or power line.
She kept it for about four days while looking up information on the Internet, where she got some site that told her to feed the owl oatmeal or something equally wrong for a carnivore.
Finally she or someone talked to the Raptor Center in Pueblo, and I was dispatched to get it. When I picked up the owl, she cooed over it, "You'll be going to a better place where they will make you all better."
No, you will be going to a better place where you will get the needle because you are too far gone.
But I was polite and (I hope) upbeat, even though I knew it was a hopeless case.
So if Colorado Parks & Wildlife ever moves on behind the "Leave the fawns alone!" message, which is super-important, maybe they could add, "If you pick up an injured bird or animal, call now, not two days from now!"
. . . and he will spend a while trying to stack them into a balanced cairn.
I say "man" because the boot tracks down here were pretty large, just in case you are questioning my gender assumptions.
There used to be a road under this slide, but then came a forest fire, followed by flash-flooding. I used to know the area well. Now it's all changed. Time for re-exploring.
Yes, the ridge in the background was burned pretty thoroughly. Gambel oak is coming up in profusion, so the deer, bears, and turkeys will benefit from acorns.
M. and I were in Pueblo today, and someone tipped off one of the game wardens, who called me to say that she was going out to the Transportation Technology Center (where the levitating ghost train once ran) to pick up an orphan fawn — and could we relay it to the rehabilitators who live near us?
Oh sure. We had to hang around for an hour at the public library, which was torture, until she and a state wildlife biologist pulled up in her shiny black Colorado Parks and Wildlife truck.
When they handed over the crated fawn, they mentioned that it had a lot of ticks in its ear. And when we unloaded it, we saw them, like a bunch of grapes.
C., the rehabber, said she would enjoy popping them and killing them. She has a macabre sense of humor sometimes.
It can be worse. This page, from an organization devoted to creating perfect private habitat for whitetail deer, has some gruesome pictures under the heading "Can Ticks Kill Fawns?"
Herter wrote with no regard for the norms and niceties of "sporting literature," just saying whatever was on his mind. Dare I say it, he was the Donald Trump of hunting writers.
A really large rhino with a trophy size front horn of 30 inches of more [sic] is now [c.1960] impossible to get. Tick birds feed off of ticks that inhabit rhinos and also off from the blood that continually uses out of the scars on their skins. By watching for tick birds you can often locate a rhino. The tick birds, however, warn the rhino of your approach.
And also this exchange:
Jacques walked to the rear of the rhino and lifted its tail. Its anus was ringed with huge ticks a half inch in diameter.
"Every time I shoot one of these pigs I can't help feeling sorry for it. How would like to go around all your life with ticks like that around your anus?"
Show me another safari/hunting writer who discusses rhino ticks. Not "unhinged" as the New York Times described him, but just untroubled by the niceties of sporting lit.
UPDATE: The fawn died four days later. Tick-infested fawns are often "compromised," the rehabbers said, which fits with the article that I linked to.
Mule deer does in recently burned area — good habitat for them!
M. and I own a cabin in the Wet Mountains, near our home, which functions as a guest house, occasional writing hide-out, and which we also rent to tourists now then.
Recently a woman from Virginia whose family stayed there last summer wrote, "I thought Colorado was better than this."
The first source, NPR, said, "The state said it would also pay $435,000 per year for a
nine-year study of the "effects of mountain lion population density on
mule deer populations."
Times nine years, that makes $3.9 million plus change. OK, let's take the lower number. It is equal to selling 10,142 nonresident deer licenses, or 126,290 resident licenses.
"Nineteenth-century scicnce" is what they called the state's proposal.
But the designated "sportmen's representative" on the Wildlife Commission, John Howard, chose to mock the three biologists on his blog, calling them tools of "various groups on the left side of the conservation movement."
And he was upset that they did not cancel class or whatever and come to a commission meeting when it was held in Fort Collins.
The implication seems to be that unless the commenter kneels and kisses Howard's ring, then their comments, whether written, emailed, or telephoned in, can safely be disregarded by the commissioners.
If you want mule deer, create mule deer habitat. It's that simple.
Ironically, big forest fires create mule deer habitat — they like brush better than deep woods — so maybe the commission should hire some arsonists instead of hired guns from USDA Wildlife Services (Motto: "Trapping and poisoning animals is not all that we do.")
In 2014, I got a nice buck on a ridge that burned in 2012, and I had never seen so many deer there as I did that summer and fall.
So Colorado Parks and Wildlife scores a twofer: While dodging the real issue on mule deer populations, they have given the state a black eye noticeable all the way across the country.
The lawsuit contends mule deer numbers in Colorado are rising at a pace
that by 2020 could result in the population reaching CPW’s goal of
501,000 to 557,000 deer. It also says the agency’s population goals fail
to account for loss or degradation of historical habitat due to
development.
"Within this blurry focus, however, some colors are better perceived than others.lue, violet, and near ultraviolet light are seen more clearly by [whitetail] deer than other colors. Near sunrise and sunset, blue and UV makes up much of the light available, and that's what deer see better than other colors. So keep those jeans at home, boy."
And if you say that you have shot plenty of deer and elk while wearing
blue jeans, well, I have done that too — from a distance.
At left, a photo from an old experiment of shooting pictures of hunting clothes in B&W to try to simulate deer vision. The model's camo sweater is black/blaze orange, and shortly after this time, Colorado changed its regs to forbid blaze orange camouflage — you had to have a solid color. He is wearing blue jeans.
As I understand, this is all about color-blindness in men, not about deer or elk. If a man is color blind, he can still see the blaze orange as a light color, even better than he could see "safety green," which is right in the center of the human visual spectrum.
For a time in my early twenties I sold menswear in a department store, and I was surprised how often a customer would select a shirt, for instance, and then say, "I'm color-blind, so could you pick out a tie to go with this shirt for me?"
Edges of reflective hat band catch your eye.
Yet some say that color-blindness has evolutionary value, giving those men affected a sort of predator-type vision, an ability to spot movement against jumbled backgrounds.
On the afternoon of November 5th, I walked out the back door and hiked to some burned-over BLM land about 45 minutes from the house.
Maybe it was my scouting and camera work at "Camera Trap Spring," maybe it was the red gods' favor, but about an hour after leaving home I shot a mule deer buck, three points or four points (Western count), depending which side you looked at — not a huge buck, but since I would be backpacking the meat out, that was OK.
I boned the meat and filled my Osprey Talon 22 day pack past its design specifications, I am sure, but it's a tribute to that design that it still felt comfortable, even though heavier than I had ever loaded it.
The next morning I returned — with a larger pack —carefully glassing the area as I moved through the burnt pines, lest a bear have found the gut pile, bones, etc. No, just a few crows were flying around and talking.
Magpies came first, the morning that I set the camera.
So would a bear or other scavengers come? One way to find out — I brought a scout camera with fresh batteries, piled bones, hide, rib cage, and skull with the guts — and set it to cover the scene.
Today, twenty-four days later, M. and I went back for it. The deer's remains had been rearranged considerably.
The well-nibbled rib cage and spine were a few yards away, downhill. The hide was in several pieces, and the head was not immediately visible.
The slideshows are 19 MB and 16 MB, so if you don't want to load them, see highlights below.
The bear came later. An ear-tagged bear, meaning it has been relocated once — not like there is any vacant habitat.
The golden eagle made multiple visits.
Golden eagle
The ear-tagged bear has a feast.
Of course there were lots of crows visiting, and a couple of ravens and a red fox. And other deer walked past the scene unconcerned.
M. and I were preparing to go to Pueblo when the telephone rang. On a hot, dry day with the wind blowing, that sound always makes me jump. (Why I prefer email.)
A game warden was driving down from Colorado Springs with a newborn, weak fawn. Could someone meet him and shuttle it to the rehabbers? I went quickly, but he was quicker—when I reached the roadside cafe that was our rendezvous, I could see the big tan pickup with the light bar on top parked under some cottonwood trees.
The fawn—one of two whose mother had apparently been hit by car—was almost limp. Just a rag doll. He lifted it from his pet crate into mine, and we took off on our separate ways. It bleated a few times, but I had twenty miles still to go, which was too far, as it turned out.
It was hard to just stand back and wait for the mother to return. But I
guess by deer standards, those does are being very good parents.
The only time to pick up a fawn is if you see the mother dead or if it is obviously injured and bleeding. Or if a wildfire is coming. Otherwise, leave them alone.
Cottonwood fluff in the air, red flag warning, and orphan fawns. It must be late June.
Yesterday I posted the picture of a firefighter with a mule deer fawn during the Black Forest Fire; today I held it too. It's one of these five little mule deer. One of these was described to me as the "fawn that was on the news," and I think that it is the same one. Whatever.
One or two of these were rescued from the fire area directly. Three were already at the home of a rehabilitator who herself had to evacuate. Another transporter brought them from Colorado Springs to Penrose, where M. and I transferred them to our Jeep and brought them to Wet Mountain Wildlife.
Here is the area that we re-visited as it looked at 6:40 p.m., October 23, 2013.
Fisher, our Chesapeake Bay retriever, came too. On the ground behind him you can see scattered clumps of shredded bark, mixed with grass seed and dropped from a helicopter on April 13-14, 2013.
Fisher, not bothered by dirt and ash.
This particular area is public land (Bureau of Land Management), although most of what burned was private.
Attaching a sling-load of mulch and grass seed to a helicopter—April 2013 (Pueblo Chieftain).
Concerned about the possibility of ash and dirt washing down into
streams, the BLM paid for re-seeding of its portion, which is mostly
along a higher ridge.
Mulch had fallen into the little spring. Fisher decided to clear it out.
Then we went to see if the seeding had had good results.
Grass coming up through the mulch.
This was one of the better-looking patches. And I should add that mulch was used only on the steeper slopes. Other areas received a grass-seed mix with no mulch. Since the seeding a month ago, snow and rain equivalent to 2–3 inches of precipitation has fallen, luckily without serious erosion.Whether this counts as acceptable results in re-seeding, I do not know, although I am attempting to check on that. Some other areas do not look as good.
Dandelion and deer droppings (to left of central rock, top of clear spot).
Here, for instance, is a dandelion and some other plants growing, plus evidence of deer passing through the burn. Some of the new grass had been nibbled too. There were no tracks at the spring, however—if there had been, Fisher probably obliterated them!
Golden banner with 500 ml bottle.
This looks like golden banner (Thermopsis divaricarpa), a member of the pea family. Self-seeded, I assume.
And of course the burnt Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), which could probably survive atom bombs, is sprouting from its roots. As the CSU Extension office says, "Fire readily kills the above-ground portions of oak brush. However,
intense sprouting follows almost immediately and usually causes the
stands to become even denser."
Birds seen: some crows, two woodpeckers (probably hairies—did not have a good look), and to our surprise, two Western tanagers (migrants).
• Colorado writer Dave Petersen brings "the mule deer wars" to The Huffington Post.
In fact, the most dangerous long-term enemy of mule deer and hunting
throughout the West is a growing and increasingly consumptive and
nature-ignorant human population, causing habitat loss, degradation and
splintering.
(1963), a book that now feels as distant as anything by Hemingway or 
