ORIGINAL: bluebird2
Year……………….1 ½ year old buck harvest……………….2 ½ and older bucks harvested
1998.……………………146,700.………… ……………….......34,749
1999.……………………155,429.………… ……………….......38,942
2000.……………………165,960.………… ……………….......37,261
2001.……………………159,392.………… ……………….......43,855
2002.……………………112,809.………… ……………….......52,607
2003.…………………….80,276.………… ………………........61,994
2004.…………………….62,011.………… ………………........62,399
2005.…………………….62,540.………… ………………........57,961
2006.…………………….75,762.………… ………………........59,528
2007.…………………….61,152.………… ………………........48,048
As anyone being objective can see from the comparison of the number of 1 ½ year old bucks being harvested in the years prior to 2002 and those harvested during the 2002 season it is simply not realistic to believe that 50% of the 1 ½ year old bucks were protected from harvest in that 2002 season.
We harvested 52.6K 2.5+ buck in 2002 so at least 65K buck had to be carried over from 2001. If you add the 65K buck carried over to the 1.5 buck harvested of 159K you get a PS 1.5 buck population of 224K 1.5 buck. if we had the same number of PS 1.5 buck in 2002 as in 2001 then the 2002 harvest did in fact protect 50% of the 1.5 buck.
One other thing that any objective person should be able to see is just how Bluebird cherry picks data and misrepresents it in order to make it seem like it supports his misguided agenda when in reality it doesn’t support his point if you fully evaluate and understand the real facts and the rest of the story along with the data.
Any objective person would also note how RSB tries to use data from 2G with the lowest harvest rates in the state as representative of the entire state. The simple fact is that the NC counties of 2G constitute a small percentage of the buck killed statewide and the conditions that effect the buck harvest in 2G are not representative of the rest of the state.
You use far to many if’s in your thinking and your speculations of what might have been. The way you use the word “if” is pretty much as Roger Whittaker used the word “if’ in one of his songs.
In the song he says “IF” is for children building day dreams. That is about as far as “IF” will take a person in the world of calculating deer populations too.
There is nothing in the harvest data from 2002 that comes even marginally close to suggesting half of the existing 1 ½ year old bucks had been protected, unless you are goofy enough to believe that for some strange reason the number of 1 ½ year old bucks would suddenly increased by an astronomically large number for just that one year. Take a look at the 1 ½ year old bucks harvests from the 1998 to 2001 when we weren’t protecting any 1 ½ year old bucks with anything more then a three inch spike and we were harvesting between 80 and 90% of them each year. Then explain why they would have been so low as compared to the harvest of 2002 if we had indeed come close to harvesting 50% of the 1 ½ year old bucks in the population that year. Why would the number of 1 ½ year old bucks have jumped to such a high number being available for just that one year?
The fact is the number of 1 ½ year old bucks didn’t make any large increase for just that one year and therefore your mathematical wizardry is just another bunch of horse pucky make believe.
Furthermore, there is not one thing in my post that said anything about unit 2G. You make far to many assumptions while you obviously don’t know much about the geography of Elk County as it related to the WMU lines. If you paid a bit of attention to the WMU lines you might eventually figure out that you really don’t know what you are talking about concerning where the data I used from Elk County came from.
R.S. Bodenhorn