ORIGINAL: R.S.B.
I know there is atleast 10 times less deer than there was 8 years ago.
Really! Don’t you think that is a rather unlikely claim in view of the facts of buck harvest history?
Buck harvest trends are typically a pretty good indicter of the total deer population. Eight years ago the hunters harvested 194,371 bucks, which still included 80% of the 1 ½ year old bucks. Last year hunters harvests 109,200 bucks while not harvesting about 50% of the 1 ½ year old bucks in the population.
For your claim of ten times as many deer eight years ago to have any logical validity the hunters back in 1999 should have been harvesting well over a million bucks.
One could drive down the road and see 100s of deer on the side of the roads or in a field. Now you might be lucky to see 5 deer along that same road and in those fields. Thats a fact. Do you agree or not agree? Now let's bring the doe numbers in from those years also RSB and not just the buck numbers. Ask any hunter on here if they seen that much of a decline of deer sightings. So about your numbers and bucks harvested, That data doesn't mean squat as to my statement. Mine is true and you know it is. RSB, Do you still see 100s of deer where you once did before on the side of roads or in the fields? No you don't. Some times data doesn't mean squat as you have posted. They can't prove facts some times.
I know you have no idea what you are talking about when you say.
"There are some rather reliable estimates, but it really doesn’t matter if anyone knows how many there are. The deer and their food tell the professionals, monitoring what the deer and food supply tell them, as far is if that area can feed that number of deer, more deer or if there will have to be fewer deer. "
Really again!
Why Don’t you go ahead and enlighten us with how it really is then.
If you don't know how many deer there is how are you going to tell by their food supply? Now that is just funny as hell? What areas do you check for this? Seriously, every square inch of the forests? I got deer eating this browse here so there are to many deer in 2G. So lets kill them all till they don't eat any more browse in this part of 2G. It doesn't matter how many predators also you said we have if you remember. Now what kinda accurate data can anyone get on deer numbers without taking all factors into play when doing wildlife management and study? You all take the Gary Alt management seminar class? Never mind, You all did.
I also know that you been around animals to long and becomming an anti from your view of animals and about nature being cruel and you can't handle it any more. So you think it is better for us to interfere with nature to save the cruelity from nature.
That one is a real Hoot!
I assure you that even with the very limited time I have to hunt each year I not only a very active and avid hunter but I still harvest more game every year then the vast majority of the hunters in this state and I suspect that includes you as well.
I do far more to defeat the anti-hunter movement with my promotion of the need for increasing deer harvests then you and you USP do with screaming that we should harvest fewer.
I guess you didn’t think that comment through at all before posting it did you?
Read my comment again.Then post something that is even close to answering it. It was about animal cruelity and not about killing numbers of animals. It was about how nature takes care of her own.
I would like to see these bone piles you talk about as one walks thru the woods. From your description, No one can walk thru the woods in spring without seeing bones of dead deer that starved to death scattered all across our state.
When I get time I will go through some of the old slides and pictures. Then if I can get a good enough picture of the projected slide I will see if I can post some of them on here. So far though I have never been able to get pictures up on this site without someone else doing it after I provide the link.
But, I never said there were dead deer all over the woods now. The fact that there aren’t a lot of winter kill though is just more proof that the professional deer managers are doing a pretty good job of keeping the harvests at a level that keeps the deer pretty well balanced with their food supplies. The desire to prevent excessive winter kill is the reason we have controlled deer seasons and deer harvests though in case you didn’t realize that.
I bet you have the only documented deer bone yard from starvation in PA on record. This should be good. I expect to see atleast 20 deer in a 1 mile radiousalso RSB.
Mother nature has been doing a good job of taking care of herself. If you can't handle to see what she does,Which I think you over exagerated quite abit beyond belief. Then I advise you to just quit your job and join up with the antis and get it over with.
That sounds pretty much like a line from the anti-hunter handbook if you want to know the truth of the matter. It is the antis that claim nature will take care of its self. They are partly right, but only if we allow all of nature to take full course including what affects the human race. That would mean no more need for sending the fire departments out on lightning strikes, whether it be a fire on the forest floor or one that strikes and ignites one of the houses in your neighborhood that threatens to take out a whole town. If would also mean no more major medical treatments, everyone would have to go back to healing themselves with home remedies. Do you think you are up for that?
You see man’s very existence and past altering of nature has also changed the way we have to now try to manage in a manner that simulates some of the things that nature once did that man changed.
The other thing people that advocate allowing nature to take her course don’t seem to understand that since some parts of nature are not missing many populations would indeed stabilize but where they would stabilize is at the low end not the high end or even the middle because man has already removed to many natural controls for too many species and introduced way too many alien species that don’t belong here at all.
All of those past mistakes of introducing none native species and organisms being combined with allowing other native species to become out of a nature balance just created more challenges for professional resource managers to continue trying to correct those mistakes.
It is allways nature that made those claims RSB and she has allways proven it. The weak die and the strong survive. Did you forget that or what? By selecting what bucks live and what ones die makes for a weaker deer herd when the PGC decides. Mother nature knows her job and been doing it well forever.
See there is just one more example of how many people that don’t understand how nature really works have no idea and shouldn’t be trying to tell professional managers how to do their jobs.
Yes, the predators would feed on the dead animals. Of course that then allows for a higher then normal food supply for predators during that time period. That then allows their populations to grow during a time when the prey species has just been reduced. Then for the next several years that increased predator population preys more heavily of the prey species, including the new born that should be building the prey populations back up. Thus, since the predator populations had increase to higher levels it has longer reduction affect on the prey species until the predator populations once again decline due the limited availability of food supply.
Then since the predator base once again declined the prey species can increase again. If you don’t then control that prey population to the limits of its food supply, (in the case of deer their habitat since they eat their habitat), that natural boom and bust population cycling just continues. When that happens neither population is sustainable at the highest population levels both could be by managed at by better controlled harvests of the prey species.
That above example of how populations naturally cycle is pretty much exactly what has caused the low deer numbers we have in many parts of this state right now. And, make no mistake about the fact it is the result of over protecting the populations and under protecting their food supplies.
Those are some of the things that both the anti’s and many of the hunters simply don’t understand that is presently allowing the anti’s to use the hunter attitudes and objectives to become their own base for using those hunter comments as their allies.
Again RSB, You said the predators number didn't matter. But now they seem to matter? Make up your mind will you.
How about this question?
Explain why 2F is being managed at 22 DPSM and 2G is managed at 12 PS DPSM when the forest health is poorer in 2F than in 2G based on regeneration? What PGC criteria justifies that descrepency?
That is an easy one.
All across the state there are habitat variables that allow the various areas to support a different number of deer based on the differences in those habitats.
For one thing 2F has fewer steep rocky outcroppings where something can grow. Units like 2G could support more deer if things they could eat would grow on totally rock covered soil or if we could teach deer to survive by eating rocks.
Though both areas have about the maximum number of deer their individual habitats can support unit 2F inherently has better habitat types that will always support more deer then can be supported in the habitat types found in unit 2G.
There is nothing complicated about that difference, at least for those that are professionally training to manage the resources across the state.
R.S. Bodenhorn
Yes, Just becausewe use to see a 100 deer in a certain field or on the side of the road and now only see like 5 in those areas now,Doesn't mean that we have 10 times less deer in those areas from when we seen 100s of them. Good one RSB