Apparently you don’t understand that with the present deer management objectives and program all habitat available to the deer is taken into consideration. Obviously from his comments Bluebird either doesn’t understand it or wants to misrepresent it too. So I will once again explain how it works so people can see that you guys are mistaken in your opinions and your comments.

Under the old system of managing deer based on the over winter deer per square mile densities on forest land your argument that only forested habitat was considered would have been correct but that is not how it is done today.

Now all habitat available to the deer is being considered because the health of the deer is part of the management direction. Since deer herd health is determined by the adult doe reproductive rates obviously all of the habitat available to the doe being examined is being considered. If that doe had good enough food, whether it was forest habitat, farm crop habitat or someone’s garden or shrubs it was all considered as food eaten by that doe and used by her to either be healthy enough or not healthy enough to produce the number fawns she was carrying.

So deer herd health is presently being evaluated for ALL existing habitat all over the state. At least that is true on the surface though there is still more to it that the deer might not be able to tell us with just that reproductive rate data. Since the reproductive rate data only counts the number of fawns that dead doe was carrying at the time she died it doesn’t really tell us if those fawns were going to be born at the required weight to have survived after they were born. It doesn’t matter how many were born if the majority of them die within days of being born, When that happens they are just as none existent as if they had never been born. That is why other factors, such as forest health, also need to be factored into that same equation when determining if all is well or if things are still too tentative to allow the herd to increase.

But the fact is that all deer habitat and food is now part of the total deer management equation and not just forested habitat as a few of you are advocating.

You also seem to place a lot more credence to the word “acceptable” deer herd health then I do. What is acceptable to man might very well not be so acceptable to the deer this year should we have a bad winter with deep prolonged periods of snow cover. All that acceptable means is that the adult does were within a mid range level of reproductive rates. What those reproductive rates don’t tell you though is if those fawns are at the correct birth weight to survive after they are born. If they die a day or two after they are born, as often happens in marginal habitat, then having that “acceptable” rating didn’t help the deer population at all.

It is also concerning that the deer that get sampled are the ones living in the best habitat areas along the roads running through the farmlands and areas where hunters have always had the best access for keeping the deer numbers within the closest balance to the existing habitat. The deer that live far back in the remote areas, that never get their reproductive data sampled, might tell a very different story about just how acceptable their health and reproductive rates are.

“Acceptable” is a human definition and in this case simply based on a reproductive rate that is less then good even though it came from the deer sampled in the best areas. It might very well be that a high percentage of the deer living in the unit where the habitat isn’t as good wouldn’t agree with the acceptable rating if don’t find the habitat as acceptable as you do.

R.S. Bodenhorn