HuntingNet.com Forums - View Single Post

12-12-2006, 09:23 AM

#10

Sport 2

Join Date: Aug 2006

Location: NW. PA

Posts: 135

RE: Confusion about ARs

Quote:

ORIGINAL: Rob/PA Bowyer

Quote:

ORIGINAL: Sport 2

As for Car accidents and winter starvation - I don't think that the deer population would jump enough in 2 years majorly affect these concerns.

Are you serious?

Let's just take the 1,000,000 estimated deer pop in PA. Now let's pretend half is made up of breeding does, probably more but let's for this argument say half.

Now, 500,000 doe have 2 fawns, some have 3 or more, some have one, some none so on average lets say 2. So , 500,000 doe have 1,000,000 offspring, in one year you just doubled your population from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 deer. Now let's do it another year and you have 4,000,000 deer.

Now some of those numbers are a little outrages, perhaps not, but I think there is a point here, deer do 2 things, they eat, they breed. Eliminating doe season for just one year would have a huge affect on the herd in a negative way.

Rob,

I agree that the population would grow very quickly. But in your demonstration of numbers you did not account for predators, and you assumed that every fawn would be born as a doe (which we know does not happen) you assumed a starting heard population of 1,000,000. We’ll assume 500,000 doe, and 500,000 bucks. Now accounting for hunting season reduce the doe population by 200,000 (which I’m sure is low) and 100,000 bucks. We’ll also assume no winter kill (which is unrealistic).
That gives us 300,000 doe. If each of these doe have 2 fawns 50% of which survive to the next fall (due to natural causes) we end up with 300,000 yearling deer 50% of which would be bucks giving us 450,000 total doe. Repeat the process for the 2nd year would give us 675,000 total doe. Add to this the bucks (400,000 starting #) + (150,000 1st year) + (225,000 2nd year bucks) – (200,000 buck kill in 2 years) = 1,250,000 deer population at the end of 2 years. Using 46,055 square miles in PA this works out to roughly 27 deer per square mile (which I agree is very high). But then you take the average years harvest for hunting of 450,000 deer. The total population is reduced to 775,000 this equates to roughly 17 deer per square mile, and I would be hard pressed to believe that our environment cannot support that on an average. And from that point on with proper doe management the population could be maintained at proper levels.
But as I mentioned previously, I realize this idea will never happen. And I greatly appreciate your thoughts on it. We all have our own ideas that we think would help, and I’m sure the correct solution is a combination of all our ideas. We just need to work as a team to get the PGC to put together a management plan that will work for everyone.

Reply