RE: Pa Game Comm. Overhaul
Your entire argument is misleading and lacking in understanding of the realities of how hunter harvests, natural population control and future deer population are all tied to together. You seem to have a failure in understanding the predator prey relationship as well.
I know you will not accept the facts because they have been explained to you many times before but I also know that some of the other readers will get it and realize just how far out in left field you and your following are.
First of all I will fully agree that when populations decline it is because the mortality, whether it be from hunting, predation, or other natural causes, exceeds the fawn recruitment the deer population for that year will decline. Likewise any time the fawn recruitment is higher then the total of all mortality the deer population will increase.
The factors that affect fawn recruitment are of course the number of bred does in the population, the reproductive rate of those does and then the survival rate of the fawns after they are born. The habitat conditions affect all of those factors while hunting only affects one of them. Hunting only directly affects for any given year the total doe population left after the season, while nature affects all of the remaining fawn recruitment factors.
Therefore, hunter harvests is but one small part of the total deer population equation. To help put that in perspective I think it is kind of important to take a look at the antler less deer harvests between some of the management units on an equal level. To put the management units into an equal level of comparison we need to look at each one in antler less deer harvest per square mile.
I am going to post the annual antler less deer harvests since 2003 (the first year of the current wildlife management units) in harvests per square mile of land mass for the unit with the lowest harvest, the second lowest harvest, the statewide average and the unit with the highest harvest.
After I do that I will point out the significance of what that data means as it relates to the carrying capacity of the habitat and how it affects the fawn recruitment in the various units based on that habitat.
Year……lowest harvest……second lowest harvest…….average statewide harvest………highest harvest
2003.………4.95(2G)……………5.18(5D)…†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦7.12.……………………….. 9.40(2D)
2004.………2.58(2G)……………4.49(3D)…†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦6.29.……………………….1 1.74(2B)
2005.………1.51(2G)……………3.06(4D)…†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦5.16.……………………….1 0.82(2A)
2006.………1.12(2G)……………3.32(2F)…†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.4.99.………………………. 12.11(2B)
2007.………1.60(2G)……………2.83(4B)…†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.4.72.………………………. 11.23(2B)
5 yr. aver….2.35(2G)……………4.03(4D)………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.5.66.……………………….10.70( 2B)
The reason this data has significance in dealing with the management and population question is by going back to what Bluebird said was actually correct when he pointed out that when we harvest more then we recruit the population declines. So the question has to be how do the units that are harvesting as many as ten times the annual antler less deer numbers per square mile (city streets and all included) as unit 2G have recruitment high enough to sustain those high harvests. Even the five year average from highest to lowest harvests indicates a 4.55:1 difference in the sustainable harvests. Why can’t the population in 2G stay stable with such comparatively low antler less harvests since it is relative to fawn recruitment? That answer should be very obvious for anyone that is willing to look at all of the factors with an objective view. Obviously the fawn recruitment is the limiting factor and that is what is really is what is controlling the deer numbers. Obviously even if we were to stop harvesting any does in units like 2G the deer populations couldn’t increase to normal levels unless you believe each of those does harvested was going to not only produce four fawns each but then keep them alive.
Recruitment is influenced primarily by the environment conditions being combined with the existing habitat conditions. Research ahs shown that where does have poor food through both the winter and spring they will lose up to 92.9% of their fawns from nutritional factors even before any predation. The fawns die within days of being born because their mothers hadn’t received enough food to nourish them to the correct weight before the were born or to produce enough milk to sustain them after they were born. That is a very common problem in parts of the both unit 2G and 2F and probably some other northern units as well. The health of a deer can be monitored by checking the amount of fat in the bone marrow. I have checked the bone marrow in adult does in both unit 2G and 2F that was pink in November. That is a clear indication that those deer were not even able to find enough quality food to be healthy through the summer and fall. In November the deer should be at the peek condition of the year, yet the deer in some areas were stressed from malnutrition all year.
Then you have to put normal predation in on top of the nutritional looses. The fawn mortality study showed that in the poor habitat areas where there is little good ground cover about 50% of all fawns marked that did die of other causes became a victim of predation. In areas where there was good ground cover, that is habitat, fawn predation was not a limiting factor. What is also interesting is that this study was done entirely during a time period when we were experiencing good mast crops combined with virtually no winter deep winter snows. It would have been interesting to track fawn mortality through adverse winter years to see how that affected survival rates for both juvenile deer and new born fawns.
The bottom line though comes back to the fact that in the areas where they hammer their deer populations they can sustain much high deer harvests annually then we can were we have always harvested very few antler less deer. Remember they are sustaining five year average harvests that are 4.55 times as high per square mile in the unit that is made up largely of city streets, shopping malls and housing developments as we are in a unit that is 90% with almost no roads let alone streets and malls.
Anyone that doesn’t recognize that disparity as being an environmental issue, instead of a hunter harvest issue, simply isn’t being rational or reasonable.
R.S. Bodenhorn