WMU 118 Mule Deer

[zurevins]

I am thinking about planning a mule deer hunt in WMU 118 for my dad and I next fall in the PGR to the east of a Hamlet called Mannyberries. Is anyone familiar with this area or have any knowledge on the deer populations and the hunt quality in this area? Any replys would be appreciated.

[bwest270]

Lots of nice country,some fine people living out there but zero quality mule deer. You will find Jimmy Hoffa before you find a good mule buck there. Look elsewhere would be my advice

[trophyboy]

X2 on the previous comment. You would be wasting your time. This area used to be pretty good but it aint no more. Way too many tags, extremely poor wildlife management. Seems to be the norm, at least in the south part of Alberta.

[SouthABFlyFisher]

X3. But it depends what you want in a mulie. you have good odds of finding a 100-140" buck but much bigger are getting few and far in between. IMO

[Rackmastr]

The area used to hold some VERY big mule deer and it was one of the better zones in Alberta IMO. In the past couple years its become quite hard to find 160+ bucks. The occasional buck over 170 is shot but overall numbers of trophy quality deer are WAY down. You'll spend a lot of time hiking miles of country and most likely will look at a lot of small 3pts and average 100-140" deer as SouthAB pointed out.

Its a good zone if all you want is a deer and want to have an enjoyable hunt with lots of country to roam in, but its not the trophy zone it used to be.....

[zurevins]

Thanks for the replys. Yeah I was wondering what the hunt quality was like since I saw on the alberta SRD page they were giving out over 400 antlered mule deer tags in that zone. That number seems to be far too high to properly manage a balanced deer population in that area. That is too bad....

[madatter]

I've hunted this zone for years now,love the country and the ability to get off the road and away from people but......like everybody else it seems the quality of deer is slipping and I may try another zone next year when I'm due for a Muly buck tag..

[Jimmy Creek]

I have hunted this zone for the last two years and agree with the previous comments.

[aulrich]

There seemsed to be a lot more pressure this year, and the big shift was guys were willing to get out of the truck and walk, I have been going out there 8 years or so now, and usually the place is was a mess of road warriors.

I thought there was a policy of lowering all of border zones due to CWD.

The cougers out there are probaly not helping either, less big ones wandering out of the park, and the cats are moving out of the park now as well.