RE: Confusion about ARs
More interesting stuff here. And more confusion than ever, I' afraid.
Originally, the practice of deer management was geared to allow the herds to grow. The only way you allow a herd to grow is to leave the reproductive part of the herd alone, focusing on buck harvest.
Deer numbers over the years have grown steadily, and as these numbers grow, deer management efforts shifted the focus from "grow the herd" to maintain the herd. Obviously, the top priority is to make certain deer numbers are in line with what the habitat can comfortably sustain. Even this task is difficult at best to accomplish, but this strategy requires doe harvest, at a rate which will account for next year's new recruits. This gets tricky in that more information is needed concerning deer population, and more importantly, specific numbers of the reproductive part of the herd, and setting harvest goals based on this critical insight. This is typically done DMU to DMU due to variations in habitat quality from one area to the next.
Bucks also eat food, and place pressures on habitat, just like a doe will. However, what is interesting is now, by INCREASING THE AR from one tine at least 3" long to one beam, with either 3 or 4 measureable points, the metrics used for determining harvest goals and the like change dramatically. Let's also understand that these more restrictive AR regulations is in response to hunters wanting to see more big bucks afield, and really has no significant benefit to the deer herds, biologically. Its a mind game meant to appease a few hunters who were vocal enough to get a law passed.
From what I understand, PA has suffered some serious hunter number losses. PA, in 2001, had nearly 1 deer on licensed hunters afield (over 1 million total hunting licenses) based on the USF&W 2001 Survey on Hunting, Fishing and Widlife Watching, PA specific. Now PA has close to 100,000 fewer hunters afield. This decline is indisputable, and is the primary reason PAF&G needed to increase license fees, as that department is funded solely by the PA Conservation Fund, receiving not one penny from the PA State General Budget. This AR has been in place for what, 2 years,3years? What has happened to hunter numbers during that time? Dropped like a rock.
The harvest figures accurately reflect this. Success rates for antlered deer certainly have declined, nearly in half. Although the majority of this is due to the higher AR, some of this is also due to fewer hunters afield pushing and shooting. The loss of opportunity does one thing, drives hunters away. To account for this, does were opened up season long during firearms (or close to it) which "replaced" the perceived lost opportunity, but it is entirely possible that overharvesting of does has happened. We have been enduring this similar scenario in NYS, with populations being high for a couple years, lots of doe tags get issued, lots of does get quaffed, then a bad winter produces a larger than normal seasonal kill, population numbers plummet, DMPs are pulled back, and the seesaw continues. A healthy herd is maintained through maintaining a relatively consistent population balance. Ups and downs do not benefit deer, or hunters, and emotional knee-jerks are the result, which sometimes results in bad legislation in response.
Most of these challenges/ problems we see are directly related to added complexity of deer management strategies, without addressing the required information collection and reporting requirements. The more granular we make our deer management practices, the more granular information reporting is needed. With F&Gs, DECs and DNRs having challenge enough in determining a very accurate harvest (easier to count the dead than the living), how the heck can we reasonably expect the more complex paths some scream for to actually work?
FUBAR.