the outsider

"If you protect the deer food by harvesting as many deer as hunters can find it certainly seems that the deer numbers will stay high, maybe forever."

I don't understand this statement. Does this mean that if every hunter is successful, the deer numbers will stay high?

scorp

Kill as many deer as we find will keep the deer population high. Only an idiot would stand by that statement time after time. Truly only an idiot and his clan of quacks would believe that. The escapes have gotten their straight jackets off and have infiltrated the PGC.Got one of the main ring leaders on this board. I bet the biologists all around the country would agree that only a truly to true moronicidiot without an idea of deer management would say that.

R.S.B.

R.S. Bodenhorn

R.S.B.

Even with unlimited antler less licenses not all hunters harvest deer.

The counties, and now WMUs, that have had unlimited antler less harvests for about the past twenty years still have continuously increasing deer populations even though they are now harvesting about four to five times as many antler less deer as the units where they have been continuously reducing the antler less deer harvests. Yet not everyone gets a deer even in those units. In fact the hunter success rates really aren’t any better there then they are in some of the other units with far fewer licenses even though they have unlimited licenses.

The reason they can harvest four to five time as many deer in those areas is because they have been harvesting enough deer to protect the deer habitat and food supplies. In the areas with few deer today it is because we over protected the deer for so long, with low harvest, the deer reduced their food supplies to the point the areas could support many deer.

If you want to have more areas of this state with very low deer numbers the fastest and most assured way to get there is over protect them and not harvest enough of them. Once the habitat is degraded the very first and most basic law of nature will kick in and reduce your deer herd because NATURE not the Game Commission, guarantees and promises that “no species can survive in numbers greater then its food supply for more then short term periods of ideal conditions.”

I’m not making this up, I have been studying it and watching it happen for over thirty years now. You want to see it first hand you let me know and I’ll arrange for you to do a day of ride along while I show you the affects of not harvesting enough deer. Too many deer today is not something that benefits hunters for very long into the future.

R.S. Bodenhorn

R.S.B.

It is obvious that wildlife management is so far over your head you aren’t even in the correct universe.

And, you are calling someone a moron?

That is a real hoot!

R.S. Bodenhorn

bluebird2

The facts do in fact support my opinion. If the herd was above the carrying capacity when we had 1.6 M deer , the breeding rates and recruitment would have increased as the herd was reduced ,but instead they decreased by 5%. That proves that the herd was below the MSY CC when we had 1.6M PS deer.

The habitat in the NC counties supported over 40 DPSM during the 70's and as you know ELK Co, still had 30 26 DPSM during the 90's. Now the herd in 2 G has been reduced to 8-9DPSM due to the harvest of 29K doe in 2000 and 13 K doe in 2001.
That simply is not true. The harvests increased because the harvests were less than recruitment and as a result the herd increased resulting in even higher harvests.

Screamin Steel

By maintaining the position of impossible to kill too many deer you are stealing a page from the QDM handbook and using it out of context. You ASSUME that hunting pressure and non hunting mortality, exceeding recruitment for multiple consecutive years cannot reduce the herd to critically low levels, because you don't believe there are parameters definingt critical populationlevels for deer as ther would be for other species. You already claim that predation and nature continue to control the herd in 2g. What if EHD hit there to the extent it did in 2A and 2B? A disease that in not related to vailable browse or tranmsitted from deer to deer, yet capable of devastating mortality. Let's say 2B had been reduced to less than 10 owd prior to the EHD outbreak of 2006. How many deer would there be now? What if it had similar predation rates as 2G? What if we had great weather and hunter participation increased in 2G significantly next year, and the coyote hunters toook a vacation? Weather alone can greatly affect a heravest for better or for worse. When your deer densities get low enough, when will you finally say that too low is too low? QDM teaches the principle that on quality managed land you really cannot kill enough doe. Ther reason is two fold. On QDM managed lands, they are dealing with better habitat then you will EVER come remotely close to on public land. They also want that balanced or even a buck heavy ratio because it makes an exciting rut. Their top notch habitat obviously lends toward heavy recruitment, thus the constant need to thin the herd. Our public lands are a far cry from the QDM plantations of Georgia, yet you seem to think that kill everything in sight mentality can translate to our public lands in PA? Yes, deer are adaptable. Yes, we have some remote areas with little pressure. When we reduced the herd so significantly in such a short period of time, how can you maintain that hunters are incapable of harvesting too many deer. Issue 1.5 million doe tags for the next five years and find folks willing to do it, and you will have just about annihilated them from public land.Throw in predation and EHD for kicks, maybe some late winter kill due to early greenup and a late blizzard.C'mon...it only took a few years to reduce the herd in half for crying out loud! Was HR necessary? To some degree and in some places for sure. Just admit that it CAN go to far and it DID in parts of the state. And stop begging for more. Why is that so hard?

R.S.B.

I understand your concerns and they even seem logical on the surface but there is more that hunters need to consider.

If your concerns and fears were founded then the deer populations in the highly populated areas of the state, where most of our state’s hunters live and now hunt, should have declined after twenty years of unlimited antler less license and harvests. For the past twenty years hunters in those areas could legally harvest as many deer as they wanted to harvest using legal seasons and methods. But, the deer numbers didn’t decline after twenty years of unlimited harvests and instead they continued to increase to the point they had to have even longer season then any other areas of the state. The harvested there increased to where they are now two to five times as high as the areas of the state where harvests have been cut in an attempt to increase deer numbers. Even with longer seasons they couldn’t reduce the deer numbers so many of those areas also had to hire sharpshooter that go out at night and kill dozens of deer several times each month just to keep those populations manageable.

Meanwhile every since place in this state where deer harvests have been continuously reduced for that ten, fifteen and twenty year time period the deer populations have failed to increase and instead further declined over the long term. Even though the deer numbers in the under harvest areas have gone through short bursts of increase, when environmental conditions were favorable, in all cases both their habitat and their populations declined over the long term.

Shouldn’t we be smart enough to learn from what the deer have been showing us, about their ability to both increase and decrease based on harvests, during the past twenty years of those two opposite management styles? I would think that any intelligent, or even logical, person would think that after twenty years of one management style resulting in continuously higher deer populations and harvests and the other resulting in lower deer harvests and still having few deer, hunters would prefer the management style that has been time proven to produce the most deer over the one that is time proven to result in having few deer.

It kind of seems like a no brainer to me. But, many hunters just refuse to understand or accept it. If hunters allowed the management professionals to manage for the betterment of the resources it would be a winning situation for hunters and the future of hunting, but the hunters had just refused to allow that to happen in the past and doesn’t seem they are willing to change and become better educated on the subject for the future either.

R.S. Bodenhorn

Screamin Steel

Apples to oranges, once again RSB. You know darn well the accessibility problems directly responsible for those deer problems and the failure of hunters to adequately control them. Hunt them on this twenty acres, they run to those twenty owned by the birdwatcher with the posted signs. Itis the same story in metropollitan and suburban areas everywhere. So often even with a sizable state park or other area open to hunting, yet surounded by residential areas, the pressure just drives them to a safe sanctuary nearby and then they blame the hunters for not killing enough deer where it is needed. Give those same hunters access to a large area with no safe sanctuaries nearby and reasonable access, and harvest is only dictated by the traditional factors. So why are we then managing vast regions of public land, the way we manage deer in suburban areas? Just another testament of the pathetic one size fits all deer plan we had forced down our throats. Thanks for outlining it.

bluebird2

I have no idea why you continue to mislead and deceive when you know that the facts do not support your claims and I can prove it.

" Mi2 of forested landa Winter deer density estimates

County % Forest Seedling sapling Pole timber Saw timber Total Goalb 96-97 97-98 98-99 99-00 00-01
Adams 33 33 41 99 173 24 40 50 58 58 57
Armstrong 54 98 43 214 355 29 45 44 52 55 51
Beaver 48 33 60 117 210 22 34 39 36 47 47
Bedford 72 172 212 342 726 25 30 31 29 34 31
Berks 35 40 85 175 300 21 56 49 60 71 75
Blair 64 59 113 166 338 22 36 41 40 42 43
Bradford 59 127 269 280 676 22 31 37 42 45 44
Butler 50 75 110 212 397 23 42 42 47 56 58
Cambria 64 52 116 271 439 21 28 29 33 32 38
Cameron 94 20 86 266 372 19 19 15 15 19 19
Carbon 75 67 114 105 286 23 32 21 27 29 26
Centre 76 104 304 429 837 20 27 27 29 31 35
Clarion 61 91 85 194 370 26 41 42 41 45 39
Clearfield 74 145 305 398 848 21 37 33 37 38 42
Clinton 87 33 275 464 772 16 18 18 18 21 21
Columbia 53 29 102 126 257 19 34 39 46 54 53
Crawford 48 42 158 285 485 18 35 33 39 46 44
Cumberland 35 17 87 90 194 17 27 34 37 49 46
Dauphin 50 51 85 129 265 23 22 20 27 32 32
Elk 91 64 137 552 753 21 23 21 24 26 26
Erie 47 100 49 224 373 29 30 30 36 40 38
Fayette 61 74 114 292 480 23 28 26 33 33 38
Forest 93 50 43 304 397 23 29 32 39 43 37

Elk Co. had 26 DPFSM in 2000.Forest had 37 DPFSM and Centre had 35 DPFSM. The herd in all three counties increased from 1006 to 2000 and since then the herd in those counties decreased due to harvests that exceeded recruitment.