Deer Tour Study 2002
08-19-2002, 09:42 AM
#21
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Industry Pa. USA
Posts: 242
RE: Deer Tour Study 2002
This is coming together well. A local land owner is planning on speaking to us about the deer management program he is using with success on his nearby property.
Is everyone making their camp site reservations okay?
Is everyone making their camp site reservations okay?
08-30-2002, 06:53 PM
#22
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Industry Pa. USA
Posts: 242
RE: Deer Tour Study 2002
Fellow outdoors enthusiasts,
I wanted to update you on the Deer Study Tour 2002. It’s coming together very well. Only two more weeks and you need to free up your calendar for this event! Hills Creek State Park is worth the time alone. We will be very close to the Grand Canyon of Pa. Make you camp site reservations real soon. Here’s a link to the original post on it with some more details on what it is about:
http://www.ubofpa.org/deertour2002.html
We will be meeting at the Visitor Center Pavilion at 8 PM on 9/13/02 to meet and do the spotlighting portion of the tour. Some of the people have told me they will not be to the park in time for this. That is fine as we plan to discuss the results of the spotlighting the following morning.
The next day we will meet again at 9AM, again at the Visitor Center Pavilion, and drive to a nearby state forest to examine a few sites for deer impact. We hope to determine what to look for when looking for browse damage and whether these areas show a correct density.
Please bring a sandwich or snack, as we may not return to the state park until around 3 PM. We plan to have a local landowner that has been practicing QDM tell us about his results, what habitat work he’s done, and about data collection in a program like his. He has been doing it for five years and it should be very interesting.
Finally we plan to re-meet at the pavilion for a picnic. There are no charcoal grills there, so bring them if you can. One of the attendees is making up a batch of kielbasa for us. Bring some meat and a dish if you can.
I’d like to get an idea of the number of people that are attending, so please shoot me an email with the number of people you hope to bring.
Please feel free to bring family and invite interested friends. This should be educational and a lot of fun. Be there or be square. Remember when you decided not to go to that stupid little Woodstock? Don't make the same mistake again!
Peace, love and beads,
Mark S. Hogan- Email: [email protected]
I wanted to update you on the Deer Study Tour 2002. It’s coming together very well. Only two more weeks and you need to free up your calendar for this event! Hills Creek State Park is worth the time alone. We will be very close to the Grand Canyon of Pa. Make you camp site reservations real soon. Here’s a link to the original post on it with some more details on what it is about:
http://www.ubofpa.org/deertour2002.html
We will be meeting at the Visitor Center Pavilion at 8 PM on 9/13/02 to meet and do the spotlighting portion of the tour. Some of the people have told me they will not be to the park in time for this. That is fine as we plan to discuss the results of the spotlighting the following morning.
The next day we will meet again at 9AM, again at the Visitor Center Pavilion, and drive to a nearby state forest to examine a few sites for deer impact. We hope to determine what to look for when looking for browse damage and whether these areas show a correct density.
Please bring a sandwich or snack, as we may not return to the state park until around 3 PM. We plan to have a local landowner that has been practicing QDM tell us about his results, what habitat work he’s done, and about data collection in a program like his. He has been doing it for five years and it should be very interesting.
Finally we plan to re-meet at the pavilion for a picnic. There are no charcoal grills there, so bring them if you can. One of the attendees is making up a batch of kielbasa for us. Bring some meat and a dish if you can.
I’d like to get an idea of the number of people that are attending, so please shoot me an email with the number of people you hope to bring.
Please feel free to bring family and invite interested friends. This should be educational and a lot of fun. Be there or be square. Remember when you decided not to go to that stupid little Woodstock? Don't make the same mistake again!
Peace, love and beads,
Mark S. Hogan- Email: [email protected]
09-16-2002, 05:53 PM
#23
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Industry Pa. USA
Posts: 242
RE: Deer Tour Study 2002
On September 13th we met at 8 PM for the first part of the tour. Fifteen of us split into two groups and record the number of deer we saw by spotlighting. We each travel approximately fifteen miles and the second group took a little over my group’s one hour in duration. The three separate number recorders in my group, Group A recorded 58, 60 and 61 deer. That’s pretty close considering many were bedded and only the eyes visible. We recorded the 60 total deer in my car. That included 26 does, 19 unknown, 13 fawns, and two small bucks. The deer appeared fairly healthy and we suspect many more deer were not visible because they were bedding in the high fields. Group B faired better with 88 deer observed. They consisted of 60 does, 14 bucks and 14 fawns.
Twenty-seven of us met the following morning at 9 AM in the Pavilion at the Hills Creek State Park. Mr. Benner had brought many items to look at and discuss and they were laid out on the tables. He first told us how surveys like we did last night are good population and health measurements if done consistently and over long periods of time. He had also brought John who had bought 500 acres in 1995 and had practiced Quality Deer Management on it ever since. He learned as he went, like many of us, and now is seeing the rewards from the heavy doe harvest and protection of young bucks. Many of the pictures on the table were his and one was a group of five nice bucks in a bachelor group from this summer. He does not believe you can over-harvest the doe and has brought non-members onto the land to increase doe harvests to bring the land in balance with the habitat. He stated that the desired regeneration is now taking place and the improved health of the herd can be easily seen.
Mr. Benner brought his last roll of film from a trail camera and we got to see how large of a buck the mountains can grow if they are allowed to live a few years and the food is available. The handouts included a deer stomach contents study (to determine what deer eat across Pennsylvania), a brochure on pruning wild apple trees and one on aging deer by observing the wear on the enamel of their teeth.
Approximately 20 of us continued on for phase three of the trip. The drive of 30 miles to Blackwell and the Tioga State Forest was broken with a pit stop at a bike trail entry point on the Pine Creek and the use of their rest facilities. This bike trail is said to be 42 miles long and a mental note was made to re-visit this stop again soon. This is beautiful land and the mountains and views are breath taking.
We visited two sites on foot and also observed a lot of forest from our vehicles. The forest had areas of severe browsing damage and also areas where clear cutting was producing vegetation for the deer to eat.
The first site was a 40-acre clear cut that had an electric fence installed to keep out deer. Many deer have figured out how to gain entry and full bellies are the reward. Mr. Benner said that about ten years ago the damage was so severe that the herds could no longer survive in this area. The population dropped to less than 5 deer per square mile in many areas. Hunter success fell and they no longer see the hunter pressure. The regeneration improved, and the density in that area was now around 12 deer per square mile. The reduced pressure has allowed the bucks to age, as evidenced by the pictures from his trail camera. We discussed the large acorn crop of last fall and the mild winter and how large fawn croups and healthier deer had resulted. Merlin did not want to discuss the exact location of the two large bucks in that film. Seems he is a hunter also.
Mr. Benner expressed how grateful he was that the Pennsylvania Game Commission was now aggressively trying to balance the deer herds with the habitat. He hopes that they will soon give his agency the necessary tags and tools to properly manage the state forests under their control. They will then be able to direct hunting pressure where hunters can expect higher than normal success and in turn they will be able to curb the damage these overly large herds are doing. A clear win-win situation. The last area we visited had a population of 54 deer per square mile based on a recent pellet count.
Both of the logging roads we walking had been planted with clover and trefoil to try to take some feeding pressure from the natural regeneration. Nevertheless, we observed browse damage of the natural vegetation right next to these roads.
Mr. Benner spoke of habitat measurements that may one day be used to determine the number of doe tags that need to be issued. They know the whitetails preference foods and also the ones they will only feed on when there is little or nothing else. This information coupled with habitat surveys will be a much better system than the older methods of trying to determine deer densities/forest types and then, based on these difficult to do measurements, trying to set doe tag allotments.
We finished with questions we had on the site visits. And Mr. Benner fielded them all with skill. We thanked him for his efforts and willingness to donate most of his weekend to people he really didn’t even know. Without him, none of this would have been possible. It really is greatly appreciated.
Twenty-seven of us met the following morning at 9 AM in the Pavilion at the Hills Creek State Park. Mr. Benner had brought many items to look at and discuss and they were laid out on the tables. He first told us how surveys like we did last night are good population and health measurements if done consistently and over long periods of time. He had also brought John who had bought 500 acres in 1995 and had practiced Quality Deer Management on it ever since. He learned as he went, like many of us, and now is seeing the rewards from the heavy doe harvest and protection of young bucks. Many of the pictures on the table were his and one was a group of five nice bucks in a bachelor group from this summer. He does not believe you can over-harvest the doe and has brought non-members onto the land to increase doe harvests to bring the land in balance with the habitat. He stated that the desired regeneration is now taking place and the improved health of the herd can be easily seen.
Mr. Benner brought his last roll of film from a trail camera and we got to see how large of a buck the mountains can grow if they are allowed to live a few years and the food is available. The handouts included a deer stomach contents study (to determine what deer eat across Pennsylvania), a brochure on pruning wild apple trees and one on aging deer by observing the wear on the enamel of their teeth.
Approximately 20 of us continued on for phase three of the trip. The drive of 30 miles to Blackwell and the Tioga State Forest was broken with a pit stop at a bike trail entry point on the Pine Creek and the use of their rest facilities. This bike trail is said to be 42 miles long and a mental note was made to re-visit this stop again soon. This is beautiful land and the mountains and views are breath taking.
We visited two sites on foot and also observed a lot of forest from our vehicles. The forest had areas of severe browsing damage and also areas where clear cutting was producing vegetation for the deer to eat.
The first site was a 40-acre clear cut that had an electric fence installed to keep out deer. Many deer have figured out how to gain entry and full bellies are the reward. Mr. Benner said that about ten years ago the damage was so severe that the herds could no longer survive in this area. The population dropped to less than 5 deer per square mile in many areas. Hunter success fell and they no longer see the hunter pressure. The regeneration improved, and the density in that area was now around 12 deer per square mile. The reduced pressure has allowed the bucks to age, as evidenced by the pictures from his trail camera. We discussed the large acorn crop of last fall and the mild winter and how large fawn croups and healthier deer had resulted. Merlin did not want to discuss the exact location of the two large bucks in that film. Seems he is a hunter also.
Mr. Benner expressed how grateful he was that the Pennsylvania Game Commission was now aggressively trying to balance the deer herds with the habitat. He hopes that they will soon give his agency the necessary tags and tools to properly manage the state forests under their control. They will then be able to direct hunting pressure where hunters can expect higher than normal success and in turn they will be able to curb the damage these overly large herds are doing. A clear win-win situation. The last area we visited had a population of 54 deer per square mile based on a recent pellet count.
Both of the logging roads we walking had been planted with clover and trefoil to try to take some feeding pressure from the natural regeneration. Nevertheless, we observed browse damage of the natural vegetation right next to these roads.
Mr. Benner spoke of habitat measurements that may one day be used to determine the number of doe tags that need to be issued. They know the whitetails preference foods and also the ones they will only feed on when there is little or nothing else. This information coupled with habitat surveys will be a much better system than the older methods of trying to determine deer densities/forest types and then, based on these difficult to do measurements, trying to set doe tag allotments.
We finished with questions we had on the site visits. And Mr. Benner fielded them all with skill. We thanked him for his efforts and willingness to donate most of his weekend to people he really didn’t even know. Without him, none of this would have been possible. It really is greatly appreciated.
