Below is a news release from the Idaho Fish and Game Department.
For any of you headline skimmers out there, the takeaway of this year’s deer and elk hunting outlook is one of optimism; statewide, deer and elk hunting in Idaho looks positive heading into the 2025 big game season.
Now, the nitty gritty, beginning with elk. By now, you’ve learned that mild winters are a winning recipe for building deer and elk herds. Typically faring better than deer, elk this past winter did particularly well.
Specifically, 82% of collared elk calves (statewide) survived the 2024-2025 winter.
On the other hand, survival of collared mule deer fawns was around 58%—an uptick from the long-term average of 57%—and 91% of collared does survived.
“With 58% fawn survival, we’re growing mule deer herds,” the state’s Deer and Elk Coordinator Toby Boudreau said.
Before you rush down to the sporting goods store to buy a new, fancy rifle or bow (not that you need our encouragement), remember Idaho is a big state, and not every region had the same winter. Fawn survival also wasn’t uniform, and there are some troubling signs ahead, but more on that later.
Lastly, there’s whitetails. White-tailed deer aren’t tracked the same way throughout winter as muleys and elk. But biologists do look for many of the same ecological conditions heading into spring and summer before they can make a reliable estimate on what the fall/winter hunting season may look like.
But yet again, with white-tailed deer herds, it’s estimated we’re not only over the hump but clearing that hump as if it were a downed Doug fir.
It’s usually at this point in the summer, however, that biologists begin looking for signs of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD), which has a nasty track record of wiping out huge portions of white-tailed deer herds during the dog days of summer, as seen quite dramatically in 2021.
Wildlife staff in the Clearwater Region recently confirmed a case of EHD in a white-tailed deer in Unit 11, southeast of Lewiston. This is the first confirmed case of the season in the Clearwater Region.
It is still too early to determine how serious this EHD detection may or may not be. However, regional wildlife biologists will continue to monitor the situation and keep hunters up to speed as we head into the fall.
Last Year’s Harvest
Here’s a story worth celebrating.
Big game hunters apparently got after it in the fall of 2024, accomplishing a statewide hat trick of harvest increases—the first time since 2020—of elk, mule deer and white-tailed deer. Hunters are no strangers to swings in populations and harvests, and Fish and Game wildlife biologists highlight that each year; there are a lot of contributing factors. But last year’s hunter harvest is a hopeful indicator that herds are once again back on track.
Not to harken back and beat a frozen horse, but it always helps to remember recent history regarding the brutal winter of 2022-23. That winter didn’t just leave its mark in the record books; it greatly impacted mule deer herds in Idaho. The hunting season that followed some six months later came as no surprise as statewide harvests dropped.
But fast forward to 2024—a year that granted Idaho’s deer and elk some much-needed reprieve from harsh winter weather—and now we could be starting to see the dawn of greener pastures for both big game and big game hunters alike.
But the moral of this story? Increased hunter success across the board in fall 2024 should be chalked up as a win. After all, hunters can’t harvest animals that aren’t there.
There’s not too much to go over in the “lows” department since harvest of all three species increased, but let’s start with mule deer this time, since they were the tragic stars of the dramatic 2023 winter. After a 22% drop in harvest (remember, these numbers are statewide) from 2022 to 2023, it was enough to put a smile on any mule deer hunter’s face to see that number go from 18,568 to 23,898 in the fall of ’24.
And elk were no different. While the mountain bruisers didn’t necessarily see the same impacts of that brutal winter as their smaller, long-eared cousins, elk harvest in 2024 still rose roughly 13% from the previous year. Nearly a quarter of all general season elk hunters last year successfully hiked out of the mountains with an elk on their back, a statistic also slightly up from the previous hunting season.
This year’s harvest landed at 97.5% of the 10-year average, which makes it about as close to a “normal” harvest as you can get with fluctuating annual harvests.
What about whitetails? What were they up to last fall? Well, I’m glad you asked.
White-tailed deer represented the only “X” in the win column back in 2023’s hunter harvest report, where the primary “W” word was winter, not whitetails. But for the last two years now, white-tailed deer harvests have kept pushing the needle clockwise, accounting for roughly a 9% bump since 2022. In 2024, roughly 48,766 white-tailed deer hunters took home an estimated 20,908 whitetails statewide.
For the full 2024 deer and elk harvest stats, check out this earlier story.
Elk Hunting
If you recall, the drop in elk harvest two seasons ago was a bit of a head-scratcher. Anecdotally, we heard reports from experienced elk hunters who were not finding elk in their usual spots during fall and suspected that maybe a combination of hot temperatures and scant precipitation might have been a significant factor. Boudreau stated that the dip in statewide harvest did not reflect a dip in the overall elk population, but it would possibly take another year to know for sure.
And now, a year later, that’s exactly where we’re at, and Fish and Game biologists believe the statewide elk population is healthy and relatively stable.
“While things vary from elk zone to elk zone, statewide elk populations tend to stay relatively stable from year to year,” said Boudreau.
Environmental conditions can sometimes have misleading observations when it comes to the perception of populations. For example, rain was plentiful in August 2023 which led to fantastic summer range conditions for elk. Combined with a mild fall, elk didn’t necessarily feel the need to lock up their summer vacation homes and head to cooler habitat, so the effect (in hunters’ minds, at least) was the perception of fewer elk on the landscape.
In reality, the elk were still there on the landscape in 2023; just not on the same landscape as you.
That’s all good and well. But what about this year?
Over-winter survival and collar data concluded in May, indicating excellent conditions for Idaho’s elk heading into summer. Remember that every year Fish and Game wildlife biologists collar and track deer and elk survival throughout the winter, paying especially close attention to that data in April and May when the animals are at the end of their rope nutrition-wise.
While elk, hardy as they are, tend to fare better than deer, it’s always cause for celebration when their survival numbers stay relatively high. With yet another mild winter in 2023-’24, elk herds across the state will continue to grow, as Boudreau forecasts bigger herds this fall than last.
“Seasonal factors like mild winters and spring moisture are how you get healthy herds, as far as elk go,” Boudreau said. “This year, we’re anticipating earlier antler growth among bulls and fuller-bodies calves and cows.”
Factors, such as wildfire and dry conditions, could still shuffle the deck in the months and weeks leading up to the elk opener. Dry conditions, for instance, could mean fewer food options available on the hillsides, forcing herds to head for greener (and higher) pastures.
But, and I’ll leave you with this, the flipside to that is a mild summer. So far this summer, you can count the number of triple-digit days on one hand, with most days sticking to the 80s and 90s—depending on where you are in the state.
In years past, summers with higher average temperatures have noticeably played a role in elk distribution. Recall that head-scratcher season of ‘23? That’s exactly what can (and could) happen if we see an uptick in temperatures into September.
But for now, look forward to another average to above-average season in the mountains chasing after Rocky Mountain elk.
Last Year’s Numbers
- Total elk harvest in 2024: 20,996
- 2023 harvest total: 18,568
- Overall hunter success rate: 24%
- Antlered: 12,610
- Antlerless: 8,390
- Taken during general hunts: 13,170 (19% success rate)
- Taken during controlled hunts: 7,830 (42% success rate)
Click here for a more detailed region-by-region outlook, the whitetail and mule deer forecasts, and information about chronic wasting disease.
(Photo credit: Idaho Fish and Game Department)