When Cody District Senior Wildlife Biologist Tony Mong arrived in Cody in 2017, area deer herds were suffering significant losses due to harsh winter weather. About eight years later, herds in the Upper Shoshone, Shoshone River and Clark Fork areas have recovered and there are now more of the iconic Western deer on the landscape.

The species is a favorite for hunters and wildlife watchers, but as the herd rebounds there is a fine line between healthy populations and too many mulies, which, in higher populations, increases exposure to the always fatal Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). Mixed with a warming climate, hunters don’t always have the best opportunities to harvest migrating deer — which is crucial for managing populations — and seasons need to be set to offer the best opportunities. And, to add even more complexity to mule deer issues, competition from white-tailed deer — which have a higher prevalence for CWD — is increasingly complicating the issue.

Mong has walked that fine line since stepping foot in the northwest corner of Wyoming. Every year he leads season-setting meetings, complete with a presentation on how they are managing the herds and the hunting seasons. But he doesn’t want folks in the area to think of him as a guy alone in an office making decisions about harvests. In fact, he wants your opinion.

“We don’t want the management of mule deer to happen in some vacuum where it seems like we’re the only ones with opinions or making decisions,” he said. “We want to involve the public in that.”

To give folks opportunities to weigh in on management of the species and discover what goes into those efforts, the department is offering several public forums to hash out the intricacies of mule deer management.

“We want to break down some of the walls that may be formed with people thinking that we do this work in a building without the input of people,” he said in a Monday interview with the Tribune. “We want to hear from people and we want to make sure that they know that we’re accessible to them outside of meetings.”

Mong, who admits he can be long-winded at times, is eager to listen to answers from attendees to a few topics he’ll use to prime the meeting. But conversations won’t be limited to the topics and he’ll be open to any topic concerning to local residents.

“I think this is a really big deal to be able to gauge where people are at; information that might be lacking or misconceptions — either by us or from the public,” he said.

Before joining the Cody crew, he worked for the department for seven years in Baggs. He has seen how misconceptions and rumors have affected those choosing Wyoming for outdoor recreation and sports.

Mong has been on site every season to check deer coming out of the North and South forks of the Shoshone River.

Mong said we’re lucky in the area. There are herds across the West struggling to rebound after winter die-offs. While he’d like to see even a little higher numbers moving forward, he also knows how lucky we have been in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Historic numbers

Wyoming’s mule deer are not only a cherished part of our wildlife heritage but also play a crucial role in our ecosystem and rural economies. Historically, mule deer were relatively uncommon in the early 1900s. Due to favorable conditions, populations surged in the 1950s and 1960s and reached historic highs. The most recent population peak occurred in 1991, with around 578,000 mule deer in the state. However, the number has declined to an estimated 216,000 animals. Sharp declines in mule deer have occurred throughout western North America, most notably due to habitat loss and degradation along with changing weather patterns.

Mule deer declines highlight the continued need for action, according to the department.

“Game and Fish, along with many partners, has long been dedicated to addressing these challenges through implementing large scale habitat projects, working to minimize impacts to habitat, highway crossing projects, research and conservative hunting seasons. It is critical we continue — and even expand — mule deer conservation efforts while ensuring Game and Fish understands current public sentiment toward managing hunting opportunities now and into the future,” the department reported on its mule deer chapter of the online site.

The 2024 harvest in the Cody and Powell areas was just slightly down from the previous year, but not far off, Mong said. Considering statewide mule deer numbers is about half what it was in the early 1990s (down from 578,000 in the early 90s to about 220,000 currently) northwest Wyoming has been spared from some of the recent storms that have diminished numbers quickly. Statewide harvests have fallen off from the peak of about 87,000 to about 13,500 now, according to department statistics.

Last year was a good harvest, Mong said, yet he is seeing changes in the timing of migrations out of Yellowstone National Park into adjacent areas open to hunting.

“We hunt them during their migration, but if we don’t have [winter] weather, they don’t move like normal,” he said. “If we continue to have kind of warming trends in October, we’re gonna have to really rethink our seasons.”

CWD

The department has also been pushing for as many samples they can get to check for CWD. Mong said the public is responding to their pleas and they received a good number of samples this year, partly thanks to Northwest College biology students.

Students in associate professor Eric Atkinson’s biology class met with three Cody Region Game and Fish officials in October to help them learn how to pull samples for CWD and age testing from the heads of deer. With the training, the class was once again available to test deer and elk heads hunters drop off.

Atkinson’s classes have been doing this since 2019. While not mandatory this year, Game and Fish was hoping to collect 200 samples from each hunting zone covering the Lower Shoshone deer herd. None of the deer available for the class to dissect had been harvested this year, said Austin Wieseler, Cody regional wildlife biologist — most were deer from in town that had to be put down due to illness or injury. One white-tailed doe, whose head was available for the experiment, had been killed in a vehicle collision just that morning nearly in front of the Game and Fish Office outside Cody. 

By learning how to extract specific lymph nodes — or in lieu of that, other tissue — required, Wieseler said the students would be fulfilling an important purpose in adding convenience to hunters this season. 

“We have a focus herd in and around Powell, so it’ll be good to have you guys help sample,” Wieseler told the students. 

He said amongst the herd around Powell, roughly half of the mule deer bucks, and a lower percentage of does and white-tailed deer, test positive for the devastating prion disease.

Meetings

The meetings start tonight (Dec. 3) and end with meetings in both Powell and Cod on Dec. 13 and 14 respectively. The Powell meeting will run from 4-5:30 p.m. at WYOld West Brewing Company, 221 N. Bent St., while the Cody meeting will be held at the same time at Millstone Pizza Company & Brewing, 1057 Sheridan Ave.

The meetings are in partnership with the Wyoming Wildlife Foundation, the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and the Mule Deer Foundation.

Mong is also speaking at the Draper Natural History Museum’s Lunchtime Expedition lectures Thursday (Dec. 5) in the Coe Auditorium from about noon to 1 p.m. He plans to highlight the extraordinary migration mule deer make from Yellowstone to their winter habitat in the area. He’ll also discuss the fine line the department faces in deer hunting in the future.

“It’s more delicate now than I think it has ever been with mule deer management. With all these factors kind of coming together — whether it’s disease development, public perception and the needs for harvests. You know, it’s becoming more difficult,” he said.

For those who can’t attend the Lunchtime Expedition, the meetings are recorded and uploaded to Youtube on the museums channel: youtube.com/@drapernaturalhistorymuseum3506.

(Zac Taylor contributed to reporting)