ORIGINAL: cardeeer
Who cares how many licenses are sold. I Want a bigger deer herd. Cut out the stinkin doe slaughter. Hunters must stop taking from the system and not give something back. Build the deer herd,Give up our mulitble deer kill ego. And open your pockets and build habitate and feed the deer. But you all might have to skip your beer, all your non-hunting toys and vacations around the world. Just think if all the hunters would buy land and manage it themselves. Stop depending on the Government to take care of your needs.What we dont need is socialism in the hunting world. I bought my on land. My deer, my decision what to kill. And yes they are eating 500 lbs of food a month in the winter time. I have 30 to 40 deer on the 105 acres and they are doing just fine. In the 60's Are farm had 40 deer on it and was 112 acres in pa.Same farm today same 112 acres and it has 3 deer.Why ?the property borders gamelands.People just wont stop shooting everything they see. And they are proud of their 25 lb hambuger fawn.
Most people including me would like to have a bigger deer herd, at least when I am hunting for them.
But, people simply have to accept the fact that deer are a living organism and as such have to fit into the first and most basic laws of nature.
The first and most basic law of nature is that, “No living organism can exist in populations higher then it’s food supply for more then short term periods of ideal conditions.” That is nature’s rule not the Game Commission’s, deer manager’s or forester manager’s rule. Nature simply will not allow more deer then the habitat can support, for the long term. Since deer eat their habitat it is simply impossible to keep more deer for long term periods.
Planting food plots and crops is great and the best possible way to increase deer populations within an area. In some cases you can even sustain higher deer numbers over a pretty large area by creating habitat that provides food. In some area though it isn’t enough just to plant and create habitat unless it is all in the right places too.
Here in the northern tier mountainous regions of the state it simply doesn’t matter how much great habitat is on the ridges and plateaus because we get years when the snows get to deep on the high ground the deer can’t live their in the winter. When that happens the deer ALL get forced to the valleys and wintering grounds. If their isn’t enough habitat and food in those wintering grounds to sustain those deer in a healthy conditions all winter, sometime for three months or more, then some of those deer will most likely die. When the deer are forced into the wintering grounds even the deer that didn’t die have much lower fawn recruitment rates the next year. If you lose your fawn crop for a year that hurts future deer numbers even more then having some winter mortality. The bottom line is that it simply doesn’t matte how food there is on the ridges or plateaus during those years of deep snows because it is just as inaccessible to the deer as if it were on the moon.
As for you feeder and artificial feeding program you are making a big mistake. You are not benefiting the long term future and health of the deer. The professionals have a saying, “Fed wildlife is dead wildlife” and that is pretty much correct too. You will increase their numbers for a while but eventually you end up with more then the surrounding habitat can sustain and the then either they leave, end up with a disease that brings the population back down to an acceptable level or predators, including the human kind, move in and reduce their populations. Feeding programs are never a good thing for the wildlife and only benefit the people watching them or trying to kill them, and even then frequently for only relatively short time periods.
R.S. Bodenhorn