Badlands deer hunting pressure takes center stage as outdoors issue

Dec. 15—Growing up in western North Dakota, Angelo Vournas developed a passion for archery hunting in the Badlands at an early age.

"My mom would call into school at noon and say I was sick, so I'd go down to the Badlands my senior year," said Vournas, who graduated from high school in Williston, attended college at UND and now lives in Minot. "I spent a lot of time down there."

Then as now, the vast amount of public land available in the Badlands of western North Dakota and the potential for shooting a trophy mule deer buck with his bow were big attractions, Vournas says.

"You can kind of go wherever you want because it's all open," he said. "The nice thing about the Badlands is that you have that accessibility, where you can stretch your legs out and cover ground and look at different things.

"A lot of it is just getting by yourself. You can get off trail and not have to worry about people, typically."

The "not have to worry about people" part of the attraction has started to change in recent years as more people discover the Badlands and what it has to offer. That includes not only deer hunting, but sharp-tailed grouse hunting, hiking, biking and other outdoor recreational activities.

But it's the deer hunting pressure that has had perhaps the greatest impact on the experience, Vournas and others say. It's gotten to the point, Vournas says, where he doesn't even hunt the September archery opener anymore, "just because of the amount of people that are down there."

Many of those people, he says, are hunters, often from out of state, who may not understand how to pursue deer in the rugged Badlands environment. Vournas prefers the "spot-and-stalk" technique, glassing the horizon with binoculars in hopes of spotting a mule deer bedded down and then making a slow, stealthy pursuit that can take hours.

"A lot of people just go walking around with their bows thinking they're going to shoot a mule deer," he said. "What they don't realize is that they're probably not going to shoot a mule deer and they're screwing it up for everybody else who is trying to (spot) one and then be able to make a stalk on it."

In response to the uptick in Badlands traffic and calls from the public, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department is exploring options for managing the situation.

"We've been hearing from the public for the last few years a bit more, I would say," said Bill Haase, assistant wildlife chief for Game and Fish in Bismarck. "Especially from archery hunters. The hunting pressure is taking away from the quality of the hunt. And then from the gun hunters — they're getting frustrated because it's more and more difficult to draw that coveted (mule deer) gun tag."

Game and Fish sets mule deer gun licenses based on population surveys, which gives them the flexibility to adjust tag numbers as necessary, but archery licenses are trickier because the regulations are in state law.

North Dakota residents can buy archery tags basically over the counter, allowing them to hunt anywhere in the state and shoot either white-tailed or mule deer.

There's no limit on the number of whitetail-only bow licenses available to nonresidents, but nonresident "any-deer" archery tags — allowing the harvest of either a mule deer or a whitetail — are limited, by state law, to 15% of the previous year's mule deer rifle tag allocation.

Nonresident archery tags cost $250.

It's a social issue, in part, Haase says, but it's also becoming a biological issue as the percentage of deer harvested by archery in some Badlands hunting units approaches the percentage of deer taken by gun.

"The success rate in archery hunters the last few years has been anywhere from 9% to 15%, so it's low," Haase said. "It's tough to shoot a deer in the Badlands with a bow, but the effort is really high. So, when you have a lot of people doing it, it starts to add up to a meaningful harvest."

Throw in a lower mule deer population, the result of poor fawn production after severe drought in 2021 and consecutive harsh winters in 2022 and 2023, and the issue becomes even more pronounced. Mule deer populations in the Badlands have declined from more than 10 deer per square mile to "probably below six," Haase said in November during a livestream of the Game and Fish Department's fall advisory board meeting in Bismarck.

Fawn production last spring was the lowest ever recorded, "and that's concerning for us," Haase told the Herald.

"It's been kind of a tough go here for a while, and our numbers have dropped — our densities are lower out there," Haase said in an interview. "They're OK — it's not like we're not going to recover from it. They're down, but not drastically down because we've been very conservative with our gun tag allocation."

In 2023, Game and Fish offered 862 nonresident "any deer" bow licenses statewide. In response to the population decline, the department drastically cut mule deer gun licenses in 2023 — 2,250, compared with 5,750 in 2022 — but this year's nonresident "any deer" bow tag allocation was higher than it should have been, Haase says, because of the state law requiring that nonresident any-deer bow licenses be set at 15% of the previous year's mule deer gun tag allocation.

Next year, nonresident "any deer" bow tags will "drop dramatically," Haase said, because fewer mule deer gun licenses were available this year.

"It'll be a big drop (in 2024) because it's a year delay on that, and so that's kind of unfortunate," he said. "We're not able to be as reactive with that (nonresident "any deer" archery) tag allocation as it should be."

The past three years, Haase says, Game and Fish has expanded its post-hunting season archery surveys in an effort to learn more about where bowhunters are going and whether certain times of archery season are busier than others.

"We found it's busy, and it's busy throughout the season," he said.

In an effort to gain even more insight into the Badlands issue, Game and Fish last spring assembled a three-person "Badlands License Working Group," which included a representative from the North Dakota Bowhunters Association, a representative from the North Dakota Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and a certified Pope and Young scorer with ties to landowners and the Mule Deer Foundation.

The group met twice in the spring and early summer, said Brock Wahl of Bismarck, co-chairman of the North Dakota Backcountry Hunters and Anglers chapter who was part of the group.

"In those meetings, we went over some of the data that Game and Fish had — what they're seeing with that data, what they're hearing from hunters, and some of that is just what's going on in the rumor mill," Wahl said. "Is there a lot of people concerned about it, or is it just a few people, or what's going on — is it rifle hunters, bowhunters, landowners — what's happening here?"

In response to those meetings, Game and Fish contracted with a Colorado firm, HDNR Consulting LLC, to develop a survey, which was sent in September to a random sample of 8,000 North Dakota resident deer hunters.

Out of those 8,000 hunters, more than 4,000 responded, and Game and Fish is in the early stages of analyzing the report, which is about 55 pages long, Haase says.

"One of the takeaways was that the majority of people are interested in some type of specific management of these archery licenses," Haase said. "It's certainly something that we're going to look at (for) nonresidents and residents," in terms of how archery licenses are allocated.

One thing's for sure: Whatever changes ultimately result — if any — won't be to everyone's liking.

"No matter what we do, I can assure you not everybody will agree with us," Haase said. "There's people on each end and everywhere across the middle. And there's a lot of different ways to go, so it's tough."

Max Hoefs of Grand Forks, who moved to North Dakota from Minnesota in the early 2000s, says he's been hunting the Badlands since about 2006 and so far this year has spent about three weeks in the rugged country trying to fill his archery tag.

"I fell in love with the Western-type of hunting; the spot-and stalk part of it is a little more challenging than sitting in a tree stand for whitetails," he said. "Sitting on a nice butte, sitting on a nice hillside with a good pair of binoculars and just enjoying nature and looking for a good mule deer. ... That's how I fell in love with the out-West (style of hunting)."

Like other resident archery hunters, Hoefs says he appreciates being able to purchase a license every year. On one hand, Hoefs says, he'd like to see fewer nonresident archery hunters in the Badlands — or perhaps even none — but understands the revenue that nonresident license fees bring to the Game and Fish Department.

"I'd be really sad as a North Dakota resident not being able to bow hunt in the state" every year, Hoefs said. "But if it was proven that, 'Hey, if we do this, if we cut the number of tags back, the deer population (and) the success rate would be better,' would I be for it? Honestly, I don't know."

The broad range of opinions definitely adds to the challenge, says Wahl of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.

"Everybody's got an opinion about what's going to work and what's best for them. And I'm no different," Wahl said. "I have my own biases, and I think the challenging thing for us as a chapter is this is going to be a difficult issue for us to really come out strong in support of one particular idea or concept because, with social issues, you're going to have a lot of unique and passionate opinions. Everybody has their opinion of what's best. And so as an organization, it would be very difficult for us to come out really strong in support of something and expect that all of our membership is going to be in unified agreement with that."

Once Game and Fish has analyzed the survey results, the department will meet in January with the Badlands License Working Group and hold public meetings around the state sometime in February or March to gather additional input, said Haase, the assistant wildlife chief.

Whatever regulation changes are implemented for next fall, if any, will have to be included in the proclamation of proposed 2024 big game hunting regulations due at the governor's office in mid-April, Haase said. Others would require legislative action because they're in state law.

"We don't have to do everything this year," he said. "Maybe we'll implement some things this year and then analyze, see what happens and then adjust accordingly.

"I don't know yet, we'll see. We haven't made any determinations."

Change is often difficult, and this process is no different, Wahl said.

"What we're talking about here is changing a really long history of the way things have been done in North Dakota," Wahl said. "And whether or not there's going to be a change, I don't know at this point. But I do think when you're talking about these hunting traditions, tag allocation and season setting, those are tied to our traditions, and so anytime you're talking about a change like this, which could affect archery and rifle seasons and how often you get to go hunting with certain weapons, that's a big deal.

"I would really encourage hunters who engage on this issue to keep an open mind and not be selfish."