ORIGINAL: bluebird2
Dead fawns don’t result in increasing deer numbers no matter how you wish they did. Herd health is not based on fawn recruitment. It probably should be, but there presently is no way of accurately measuring the recruitment from year to year, so they have to use what is available. Fawn recruitment is the important factor and herd health is not based on recruitment and only looks at the number of embryos. That is why you can have data that indicates excellent herd health and still have almost no surviving fawns for the ye
Once again it appears that you are intentionally trying to mislead hunters to believe that the PGC has no way to estimate fawn recruitment. I know you qualified your claim by saying the PGC doesn't have an accurate way of measuring recruitment, but they do have a way of estimating recruitment ,just like they estimate , population densities and harvests. The PGC uses the SAK computer model ,modified for the effects of ARs, to estimate recruitment.
If the PGC couldn't estimate recruitment ,they couldn't tell if the herd was increasing or decreasing and they would have no idea how many antlerless tags to issue each year. WMU 2g is a prime example of how it works. After the 2006 the PGC said the herd in 2G increased by 42% so the PGC increased the antlerless allocation from 19,000 in 2006 to 26,000 in 2007.
Here is a quote from the 2005-2006 AWR which explains how they use the SAK model to calculate fawn recruitment rates.
The modified SAK procedure began by estimating males 2.5 years of age and
older from harvest estimates and adult male harvest rates. Once the population of
males 2.5 years of age and older were estimated, we determined the 1.5-year-old
male population. Because protection levels of 1.5-year-old males varied among
WMUs and harvest rates could also vary, we worked back in time to generate
harvest rates for 1.5-year-old males. First, we determined the pre-hunt
population of 1.5-year-old males in the preceding year using current year
population estimate of 2.5-year-old males, survival rate from 1.5 to 2.5 years of
age, and estimated harvest of 1.5-year-old males in the preceding year. Harvest
rate of 1.5-year-old males from the preceding year was then calculated using the
pre-hunt population and estimated harvest of 1.5-year-old males. Current year
population of 1.5-year-old males was determined using a 3-year running average of
harvest rates of 1.5-year-old males from the 3 previous years. Following
determination of the 1.5-year-old males and males 2.5 years of age and older,
calculation of female, fawn, and the total populations followed procedures
similar to Skalski and Millspaugh (2002
Why thank you for providing the methods that support the fact that there presently is no good way of determining fawn recruitment in this state.
Anyone that takes the time to read the quote form the link you provided should be able to see that the first look at fawn recruitment doesn’t occur until the bucks that are harvested as 1 ½ years old. That is 1 ½ years after they were born. Then the second look is at the 2 ½ year old bucks so that is 2 ½ years after they were born. Then to make it all even less significant or reliable is that the recruitment estimate for those two years gets added to the previous year (which was 3 ½ years from when they were born) and the average of those three years are used as an estimate of what happened during the current year.
Anyone with even half a functioning brain cell should be able to figure out from these methods that NO we don’t have a good handle on fawn recruitment.
To have a good handle on fawn recruitment we would need to do ongoing annual fawn mortality studies while also monitoring the food and winter index for each year so the fawn recruitment per doe could be measured based on the numerous variables. But, the agency doesn’t have the funding to conduct those studies because the Legislature doesn’t keep the Game Commission adequately funded. Of course having you and your cohorts wasting what little money there is on stupid law suits doesn’t help the wildlife management cause much either.
If we had the money being wasted to defend your goofy misguided law suits maybe we could do the research that would be needed to provide a better handle on the annual fawn recruitment, instead of having to work with estimates based on three year averages that don’t even start until a year and a half after the fawns were born.
R.S.Bodenhorn