Screamin Steel

Doug, I believe you truthfully represented your harvest numbers...and numbers can't lie. I'm just curious if you think that those numbers are reducing the herd in TL, keeping it stable, or insufficient. Maintaining similar harvest over the two years would indicate stability, but I don't know how much your number of participants may have varied in that time. Just trying to figure what the harvest indicates the population to be, to see how much the actual varies from the pellet count. Any thought of a FLIR survey? It could help in proving definitivenumbers and establishing goals.

ManySpurs

I think maybe I misworded my post. What I meant to say is that I think the TL herd is being reduced, but the browse impact surveys and the pellet count surveys aren't showing as good a reduction as is actually happening.

DougE

It's hard to say for sure.I truthfully believe the herd is smaller today than it was in 1995 when I moved there and there was no hunting allowed.The last few years,it's being timbered like crazy and there's all kinds of temporary food because of the tops.I do think the herd went down but I think it's going right back up.Most of the deer are in the areas where you can't get at them.There's 14000 acres in there and we can only hunt about 2200 of them.I honestly think we'd have to kill at least 350-400 deer a year just to keep the herd from increasing and that's a low estimate.That of course is assuming the logging continues over the next several years,which it should.The true measure is the habitat and it's not coming back.Every stumnp sprout on the property is browsed and the only regeneration is in areas where the tops are keeping the deer from getting at them.We have 8 miles of transect lines set up for doing browse impact surveys.We were doing them every yeat but as of last year we decided to do them every other year.Nothing was changing so we figured we'd get just as good data if we did it every year.So far,75% of the property had no regeneration at all.Of the regeneration present,75% of it was beech and striped maple.Beecjh is an indicator species,meaning that deer shouldn't be eating it.If they are,it's a sign that there's nothing else for them to eat.Our last browse impact survey showed that 59% of the beech was severly or moderately browsed.That's a sure sign that there's a definate habitat issue.I stared an sd card last year showing the habitat and overbrowsing.I'll finish it up this year and send it to someone that can post it.It's disturbing.

We talked about doing a helicopter count during the winter several years ago but there isn't any funding.Treasure lake is pretty much flat broke and they won't put any money into the wildlife or the habitat.Golf is much more important here.

DougE

We keep pretty good records so here's some other statistics.Last year we capped the number of hunters at 200 but only had about 194 actually register to hunt.Of those hunters,only about 60 actually harvested deer.We dmap'd the property into two different sections.That way,hunters could get two dmap tags per section and the efficiency would increase.The vast majority of hunters killed nothing but the die hard guys hit them pretty hard.Every year about the 3rd week of october,I start to hear hunters complain that there's no deer.The deer are there but even at those densities,they avoid people much easier than you'd believe.We opened a section this year for a trial flintlock hunt.Thirty eight people are participating and I believe as of saturday,only three deer have been killed during the late FL season.Weather has certainly been a factor but the deer aren't in the same areas now as they were earlier in the fall.

DougE

I honestly believe we're overwintering every bit of 70 dpsm but there's no way to tell.If we're killing 43 dpsm with bows in the areas with lower deer densities than most of the property has,the dd is pretty high.Add that to the fact that we can only hunt 15% of the property,we aren't having much of an impact.85% of the property can't be hunted so leaves the vast majority of the deer safe.

You really can't base harvest trends on what the actual harvest is in here either.The property has only been hunted for three years so the efficiency and kill rate should increase for several years as guys get to know the property.The vast majority of the guys hunting here aren't residents so they went at it almost blind the first couple of years.

Cornelius08

That sounds about like pgc assessing our statewide herd. lol.

DougE

Getting an accurate estimate of a wild free-ranging herd ain't easy.

bluebird2

So the over browsed habitat in TL can still support 70 OWDPSM by planting a few shrubs and a little supplemental feeding. Maybe the PGC should adopt the TL DMP.

Cornelius08

I have no doubt that it aint.

DougE

Like I've stated a million times,there isn't a few shrubs.There's over 1800 houses and a huge logging operation going on right now.It's not a contiguous forest.Regardless,there's no preferred regeneration.Once the logging is done,TL will turn into a beech and striped maple forest because the trees are being cut in a non-sustainable manner and the deer are eating every single preferred seedling.I sure as heck don't see the value in that and I can see why the PGC doesn't as well.In less than 20 years,the entire undeveloped area will be worthless pole timber made up of beech and the area will not have anywhere near that number of deer.Yep that a great plan that should be adopted by the PGC.