manitoba predators

[bushboy]

There was a herd of white tail deer of about 20 or more behind my house,but have vanished in the last two!I saw on f/b where a guy got a trail cam local shot of a montain lion stalking a deer and his comment was"this is why there are no deer around!last winter I took my daughter for a walk thru the bush out back,there was fresh snow on the ground.on the way back I saw huge wolf tracks ,a pack of maybe 5 or 6 sniffing all around our tracks! I know that there is a population of m/l in the black hills n/d witch is no very south from here in the interlakes so I was wondering if anyone else has seen a decline In big game #s thx's bobbyjoe!b

[stickbender]

     I would be more inclined to think if there is a decline in deer population, it would be because of the wolves.  Mountain lions, are generally loners, and make a large kill, maybe once a week or less, and making smaller kills of opportunity, in between when attempts at larger game fails.  They will feed off of a large carcass for days.  Whereas Wolves will make multiple kills a week, due to the number in the pack.  Plus if the game is plentiful, they will make kills just to kill, then when the number of big game goes down, they will start consuming the kills.  Wolves do not always kill for survival.   Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, can attest to that!

                                                         Wayne

[JW_Halverson]

Here in the Black Hills we have had a downward trend in whitetail and mule deer populations.  Many people are blaming the mountain lions, but they can't discount the unlimited Black Hills deer tags.  If I got every tag available in the Hills a few years ago it would have counted up to something like 9 deer!  Take into account the high success rate and the high numbers of does being shot, and I would guess the population would have a radical downward trend.  Now last year they dropped the hammer and cut back on doe tags, so we should see a recovering population.

You might want to call the Provincial game authorities and ask about their predation estimates.