ORIGINAL: TWOWITHONE
So R.S.B. what your telling me is douge went on a lot of your habitat tours where the habitat is bad. Well it aint bad down in the SW and it,s been in magazines and whatever else the habitat is great down in 2-A. even a wanna-be B.O.C. said this too hunters down there I beleive in the 07 season. You know what you folk,s did it,s called the blanket approach and you used it across the state instead of doing studies like in 2-G that started this yr and will continue for 3 more yrs. Do you call having 4 points to a side in a WMU 2-B a deer management plan even though NOW the GC. KNOWS that the superior buck DOES NOT do all the breeding like once thought and your lil dinks are getting some is this what you call the plan. Lord help us all.
First of all I am sure if you really knew the facts you would also know that DougE has done a lot more to become educated on the deer/habitat relationships then attend a couple of tours.
Next it is obvious that you, like many others, aren’t wise enough to understand how important it is to keep harvesting a lot of deer in those southern management units, unless you want damaged habitat that supports a lot fewer deer then you have now in your future. That is correct, even the habitat in those southern areas could be over browsed in the future to the point it will not support nearly as many deer. The only reason you have so many deer today is because the Game Commission was smart enough, partly based on the mistakes previously made in the northern tier, to keep harvesting more and more does in those southern areas as the deer population increased.
So, basically the habitat in many of those southern tier areas is pretty good today, but only because of the wise management of the professionals you and others work so hard to discredit. The reason it is pretty good is because the professionals were smart enough not to listen to the hunters and instead did the right thing of protected the habitat instead of over protecting the deer as many under educated hunters keep demanding.
If you don’t think that is true I can most certainly support it with the history of the harvest data for those southern units.
Next your comments concerning the four point restriction areas prove that you don’t know why we even have antler restrictions let alone why various areas have different restrictions.
Antler restrictions are simply to protect about half of the 1 ½ year olds so those bucks are available the next year to help with getting the does bred during the correct time. The separate point restrictions, for the two different areas simply reflect the amount of restriction needed to protect 50% of the 1 ½ year old bucks. The professionals, nor the does, care if it is a 1 ½ year, a 2 ½ year old one of the few older bucks doing that breeding, as long as it is getting done during the does first estrus cycle. That was NOT occurring in any of the units prior to antler restrictions so some method of keeping more bucks in the population was necessary. Antler restrictions was the method of reaching that management objective and it was for the benefit of the resource, not the hunter, though many hunters are finding that they like the fact there are some older bucks out there for them to hunt.
R.S.Bodenhorn