NORTH DAKOTA OUTDOORS MAGAZINE

Ups and Downs in Deer Country

Ron Wilson

I’ve been writing about deer and deer hunting since 2003 for the Game and Fish Department, long enough that I don’t have to look up how to spell epizootic hemorrhagic disease.

Like EHD, caused by a biting midge that has been hard on deer over the years, life on the Northern Plains for deer and deer hunters for the last 20-plus years has been somewhat of a roller coaster.

From the days — 2001 through 2011 — when the Department made available more than 100,000 licenses per gun season to today’s allotment of just 42,300 tags, the extremes are telling.

With respect to the deer gun season opening in November, which has been the one constant over the years, what follows are snippets from North Dakota OUTDOORS over the last two-plus decades, the odds and ends that help tell the story of our most celebrated hunting season and the animals that garner so much of our attention for 16 1/2 days.

2003

In many hunting units in the state today, biologists can conservatively estimate the buck-to-doe ratio at one buck to two adult does. Which is a good thing, at least where it’s true, because scientists figure that the females are getting bred at roughly the same time of year, thus optimizing reproductive potential and the promise of survival.

The 2-to-1 ratio hasn’t always been the case in North Dakota. One of the reasons the Department went to a unitized deer hunting system in 1975 was that bucks in some parts of the state were getting overharvested. Which meant that some does, because of a lack of suitors, weren’t getting bred in November, but as late as January.

“This late breeding resulted in the does having fawns not until August instead of June,” said Bill Jensen, North Dakota Game and Fish Department big game biologist. “Deer born as late as August go into the upcoming winter too small, reducing their odds of survival. The fawns that are born late are going to be the first ones coming into farms to feed in the winter and are going to be getting into trouble.”

Old hunting shack

2004

A shot hasn’t even been fired, and this fall’s deer season has already been dubbed historic by some. And rightly so, at least in terms of the number of licenses — an all-time high 145,250 tags — made available to gun hunters.

That number is certainly celebrated when you review the history of deer hunting in North Dakota. During a 22-year stretch starting in 1931, for example, deer camps were empty 10 times. The last time there wasn’t a deer season in the state was 1953 – an unfathomable occurrence that would give today’s most ardent hunters the shakes.

There’s no question: The good old days are today.

By 1915, whitetails were so scarce in the state they could be counted in small bunches. Four or five deer here, two killed there, three seen at a farmhouse north of town during a heavy snowstorm … Wildlife managers at the time feared, what would be an unthinkable notion today, that North Dakota’s deer were nearing extinction.

2004

The spark that ignites the rut, a whitetail buck’s enthusiastic preoccupation with the opposite sex, is not frost on the pumpkin, falling leaves or snow. It’s the animal’s response to the fading light of autumn — a happening known as photoperiodism — that stirs hormonal changes.

“What may allow it to happen more one day than another is maybe a cold snap or perhaps a full moon that allows deer to be active longer at night,” Jensen said. “But what drives the rut is photoperiod.”

While deer start showing signs of breeding behavior as early as September, the peak of the rut in North Dakota, he said, is Nov. 20-25. As fall slips into winter, rutting activity continues into December and January.

2006

During the daylight-shortened days of fall, both whitetail and mule deer bucks become different animals. They’re no longer hanging with other males, discarding the bachelor group lifestyle as testosterone levels climb. Bucks become single-minded loners, concentrating exclusively on staying alive and breeding does.

(Not necessarily in that order, it would appear at times.)

When a buck’s head goes back, wrinkling its nose and exposing teeth, it’s performing what scientists have dubbed the “flehmen” behavior. In some circles, it’s called the lip curl.

As a doe approaches estrus, she provides clues to suitors as to her readiness. Some of the clues are behavioral and some are chemical — the latter found in urine she deposits during frequent stops. This is where the lip curl comes in.

The purpose of the lip curl, scientists tell us, is to expose the scent from urine to an olfactory organ called the vomeronasal, located on the roof of the mouth near the nasal passage. This organ aids the buck in his evaluation of the doe’s reproductive stage and willingness to mate.

2008

Roughly one in six North Dakotans — it’s more like one in five if you discount those not old enough to legally secure a license — hunt during the state’s deer season. That’s significant, especially when you try to come up with another single activity that fosters as much attention from 100,000 or so people wearing the same colored outfits.

North Dakota’s first “official” deer season — the first time a specific deer license was required — was in 1931, and just 2,061 licenses were sold to hunters. (In mid-October of this year, more than 125,000 had already been issued, with additional licenses still available in some units.) Yet, because there we so few deer back then, it wasn’t guaranteed there’d even be a season most years. And when there was, it likely lasted less than a week, sometimes just 2 ½ days.

Starting in 1954, the state’s deer season has run annually for more than a half-century. Thank heavens for that, a chorus of devoted deer hunters would shout. North Dakota’s deer gun season is about tradition, about revisiting places you’ve been going to for years — grandpa’s farm, a tree stand in a chunk of woods where you shot your first deer, or maybe a deer camp that makes up in memories what it lacks in curb appeal.

2009

While hunting from natural blinds — deadfalls, thickets and tall vegetation — or tree stands has long been a tactic for deer gun hunters in heavily-wooded states, this approach was not common in North Dakota, except with bowhunters.

“Whether it was due to relatively low deer densities, short seasons and/or wide-open country, it seemed deer hunters of old in our state were too antsy to sit and wait for deer to come by,” said Greg Link, Department assistant wildlife division chief. “In the last decade or so, more and more hunters I know and visit with have gravitated to elevated stands or ground blinds and other methodical hunting methods because of success experienced while bowhunting from a stand, or because they’re trying to maximize their chances with limited hunting access.”

2010

After several seasons of some hunters carrying a pocketful of whitetail doe licenses, North Dakota has its lowest deer population in about a decade.

Game and Fish will make available 116,775 deer licenses for the 2010 season, which is about 27,000 fewer licenses than 2009, and about 33,000 short of the all-time high of 149,400 in 2008.

Deer license numbers broke 100,000 for the first time in 2001, surpassing a mark longtime North Dakota deer hunters and wildlife managers thought they might never see. It’s not like it was that long ago, less than 60 years, that there wasn’t even a deer season.

While an abundance of CRP acres played a role in adding to the wealth and quality of habitat on the landscape, an unprecedented decade or longer string of mild winters was likely the biggest factor contributing to record high white-tailed deer populations. Deer that would typically have had one fawn, or none, during tough winters, were having twins and triplets during this lenient stretch.

2012

North Dakota held its first modern deer rifle season in the early 1930s, but it’s hard to imagine much of a deer camp culture taking root initially, considering the season wasn’t open with much consistency until the early to mid-1950s. Yet, sometime between then a now, hunters started gathering in areas they’d chosen to hunt, knowing with some certainty that the state would hold a season the next year and the year after that. Traditions were built between family and friends, many of which would last for years, passed from generation to generation.

2014

While the urge to measure this fall’s deer gun season with one 34 years ago rests in the numbers — the 48,000 licenses made available today is the lowest since 1980 — the comparison could end there.

For instance, the deer gun season in 1980 was a week shorter than today’s 16 ½-day season. And most hunters 34 years ago were still wearing red caps and clothing as they were a year away from being required by law to don 400 square inches of fluorescent orange in the field.

2017

To many of today’s hunters, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s peel and stick deer tags are as conventional as, say, fluorescent orange hunting gear.

Give or take a few years, both have been standards with the deer hunting ranks for roughly 40 years.

Before today’s peel and stick tags, hunters in North Dakota tagged harvested deer with metal locking seals. What remains somewhat of a mystery is exactly when Game and Fish employed this type of tag.

2018

While the statewide deer population remained relatively stable through the 1960s and early 1970s, Department biologists noted a marked increase in the number of buck-only licenses sold. Changes were necessary because biologists felt whitetail bucks were being overharvested in parts of the state.

The Game and Fish Department first began issuing buck-only licenses via lottery in 1975. Prior to that, hunters could buy a buck license straight from licenses vendors up until noon on the opening day of the deer season. These buck licenses were not limited in number.

2019

Considering the whims of Mother Nature, changes in the landscape, rising and falling deer populations, deer hunter expectations and differing landowner tolerance levels, managing deer in North Dakota isn’t easy.

North Dakota Game and Fish Department wildlife managers certainly understand this. They also recognize the enormity of the task because many North Dakotans have a vested interest in a celebrated outdoor activity that seemingly takes so long to get here but is over before you know it.

2020

Chronic wasting disease takes its time, and the outcome is always the same.

Once a deer, elk or moose is infected with the disease, it can take on average 18 months or longer before the animal rapidly loses body condition, starts to act strange, becomes emaciated and dies.

“It’s important to remember that for the most of that period of time that infected deer will look perfectly healthy, feed with other deer and travel across the landscape as a normal deer would,” said Dr. Charlie Bahnson, North Dakota Game and Fish Department wildlife veterinarian. “The fact that you have this seemingly healthy deer on its way to death is what makes this disease particularly challenging to manage.”

2021

North Dakota’s deer gun season is, in part, held starting in early November to increase hunter success as deer are more active at that time. Plus, odds of a winter storm not hampering hunters are better at this time of year.

“That’s part of it, because people do have higher success during the rut, but we also structure it around tradition,” Jensen said. “We schedule it for the first Friday before Veteran’s Day. That way it does not always overlap the Thanksgiving holiday.”

For more than 30 years, the state’s deer gun season has opened on the Friday before Nov. 11, which means the range of opening dates is Nov. 4-10. The season has consistently spanned 16 ½-days during that same three-plus decades and when it does happen to be open over Thanksgiving, it’s simply a coincidence of the calendar.

2022

In 2021, amid significant drought conditions that hamstrung much, if not all, of the state, the Game and Fish Department received its first report on Aug. 1 of deer dying from epizootic hemorrhagic disease near Mandan.

And reports of the fallout of the naturally occurring virus spread by a biting midge that is often fatal to white-tailed deer, and less commonly to mule deer, pronghorn and elk, continued to pour in to Game and Fish for many weeks thereafter.

“I’m going to temper my strong statement, but it’s safe to say the EHD outbreak in 2021 is on par with the worst year that we’ve witnessed in terms of EHD attributed mortality,” Bahnson said. “Devastating is probably a good word for it.”

2022

Mule deer have sort of a distinctive gait where when alarmed they bounce across the landscape. It’s called stotting, a Scottish term for bounce. Whereas whitetails just tend to have an all-out, bolt run.

Jensen said there’s some evidence that stotting is a signaling mechanism for young or other members of the family group that there’s danger nearby. There are other theories, too, that it’s a better means of traveling across the landscape and being able to get above the vegetation and see. But that’s yet to be determined, he added.

2022

An always fatal disease to deer and other cervids that has found some footing in North Dakota, yet has a smaller footprint compared to some other states, will forever remain on the landscape. The reality of this, the certainty that chronic wasting disease is going nowhere and has the potential to significantly impact our big game populations if left unchecked, is sobering.

2023

There are multiple generations of North Dakotans that don’t have any idea it was a rarity at one time in North Dakota to see a whitetail deer outside of your traditional riparian areas. Not that long ago if you saw a whitetail running around, it was something you told your neighbor, said Jason Smith, Department big game management biologist.

“We’ve got to remember that we are on the Northern Plains and winter at times can be a pretty big equalizer no matter what we do,” he said. “We’re lucky to have deer where we have them, but it’s not surprising that they run into the struggles that they do.”

2024

When I moved to North Dakota nearly 40 years ago, I felt as green as that 12-year-old sitting on a stump. I’d never seen a white-tailed deer before. I didn’t know where the deer hid for the lack of trees, didn’t know how people hunted them, was quick to learn that I couldn’t just buy a deer license over the counter but had to apply, and not only was it mandatory to wear fluorescent orange during the season but fashionable in a way to wear around town when the season was in swing or not.

Return to North Dakota Outdoors November 2025 Edition