Would you believe that a retired professor of wildlife management would make predictions that are dead wrong? Well, that is a rhetorical question because I readily acknowledge that you could indeed believe it. And I have to plead guilty to making predictions a few years ago that turned out to be just the opposite.

The issue has to do with how mule deer and elk would respond to the fires in the Middle Fork of the Salmon River region. Over the past few decades, a 2.2 million-acre area in this region has seen more than 50 percent of it burned by wildfire. I predicted elk populations would respond favorably to the vegetation developed after the burns and mule deer would suffer. As it turned out, the mule deer seem to be thriving while the elk are holding their own or declining. That is the case currently, but what happens in the future is what we are concerned with.

So what do I now think might have happened? In that country - which includes the Chamberlain Basin, one of the premium elk areas in the nation - by the mid-1990s, the elk population had reached what was probably all-time highs, with many older individuals, and was not a very productive. On the other hand, the mule deer population was low. So the condition of the populations of the two species likely had a lot to do with how they responded.

Elk forage in that area, especially in fall, winter and spring, is largely grasses. Grasses respond rapidly following burning, as anyone growing bluegrass crops around here knows. Our information suggested that bluebunch wheatgrass, a major forage species, increased in nutrient quality for at most a year or two after the fires. But can an unproductive elk population respond to such short-term changes in their major forage base? Apparently not.

On the other hand, we noticed the mule deer were using areas that were forested with Douglas fir, on north-facing slopes, even in severe winters in this region. The wildfires burned these stands and the result was a proliferation of the understory plants that provided food for the deer. We even noticed a doe followed by triplet fawns after the fires, and the general consensus was that the mule deer were increasing in the region, subsequently born out by increased harvests.

The moral of the story is that populations that are unproductive are less apt to respond to improvements in habitat. And for species that are not that very productive, such as elk, this would be especially true. Elk can breed initially as yearlings, but often the age at initial production of a calf is delayed in the more unproductive populations. And when populations are comprised of older-aged individuals, such as in the Salmon region where harvests of cows are low because of the inaccessibility of the populations and emphasis is placed on bull harvests, cows over about nine years of age begin to lose their capability to produce a calf.

On the other hand, the mule deer, at lower levels in relation to the forage resources, apparently were able to take advantage of the improved forage. Mule deer can breed as yearlings, and twin fawns aren't unusual.

One wonders about predators and their influences in this kind of situation. Cougars and bears had been extensively reduced, and the wolves hadn't showed up in any numbers until the early 2000s. It was unlikely that predation was having much of an influence on the trends in elk and mule deer populations. Now, wolves appear to be keeping elk populations at lower levels, especially in the Middle Fork of the Salmon River hunting unit.

So another moral of the story is: If we intend to manage predators and big game, let's attempt to keep the elk and deer at levels that are productive. Fewer individuals in productive populations will be vulnerable to predation, something seen time and time again. But we also need to recognize that management of the predator complex will have to occur as well.

Is there anything in all of this that can be applied to the populations in the Clearwater, Selway, and Lochsa?

The Clearwater drainage is a very different situation from the Salmon drainage to the south. The ecology of elk and deer is not the same, either. So I do not wish to apply the observations from the Salmon to the Clearwater. But I do think we should attempt to develop predictions of population response to predation, habitat conditions, and weather conditions for these areas.

We can't do this with the information we have available except in rudimentary form thus far, so this becomes a challenge for the future. And I fully expect to be wrong again until the predictions incorporate enough aspects of the environment to represent what is going on.

One is never too old to learn something, and good old Mother Nature is the best teacher.

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Peek is a retired University of Idaho wildlife professor who lives in Viola.