ORIGINAL: RSB
ORIGINAL: Screamin Steel
Now we have covered the species prevalent in densely forested regions, lets discuss edge habitat, and agricultural land, and the difference in CC between forested landscape, and mixed agricultural lands. PA, after all, isn't one contiguous forest. Much of it is fragmented and mixed ag. land and very capable of supporting much higher DD than the current plan allows. Elk county for starters, as you should know that area quite well. And let's set aside the issues of regeneration, and reasons for HRfor a while, and simply discuss what you believe the CC of the habitat to be in agricultural portions of Elk county. we'll get to the rest later.
Edges are highly preferred habitat for not only the white-tail deer but many other species of wildlife as well. Where their existence is of quality browse species the edges benefit deer by providing good foods that both sustain a higher deer population and a higher fawn recruitment rate. Those factors can be influential in the improvement of the current deer herd health rates where they exist in sufficient quantity and quality.
I not only believe but know that active farmland, provided it is maintained as such, is of great value to the deer during the spring and summer months. I also know that those same lands have little to no value to the deer when they are covered with two of snow for extended periods of time. That is why we have to healthy forest habitats mixed with that farmland to support high deer populations on a year round bases year after year.
It doesn’t matter how mush farmland food is available during the nine or ten months of the spring through fall. If deer don’t have food that other two or three months they die before they can produce the next year’s fawns. Even if they do marginally survive with little food they don’t produce surviving fawns that year.
So the bottom line is that without healthy forests you will not have many deer, for the long term though you might during short term periods of ideal conditions, no matter how much farmland is available.
R.S Bodenhorn
PS: I’ll address some of the other comments in this thread tomorrow or when ever I get time over the next few days, if time happens to be something that is available.
And ouragricultural areasare covered with two feetof snow for extended periods of time, how often? More often than western New York? More often than Ohio? More often than Nebraska, or Illinois, or lower Michigan? None of these states are setting management goals of 5 or 6 dpsm, as was the case inparts ofPA. Why? Are their deer suffering extensive winter kills? Were ours?