ORIGINAL: bluebird2
After telling hunters to take a flying leap for preventing the PGC from managing the deer, guess who said this on another MB?
Winter deer mortality isn’t the biggest deer reduction factor of concern any more though. With the deer management programs of the past several decades we have managed to keep deer numbers close enough to the over carrying capacity as to avoid major winter mortality. Now the real and most factor that limits future deer numbers following hard winters is the reduced fawn survival rates that occur when the does don’t get enough both winter and spring nutrition. When they don’t get enough food their fawns are born under weight and many of them (some studies have shown as high as nearly 93%) die within just a few days of being born.
Now that the deer in 2G have nearly twice as much food/deer as they did before, fawn recruitment should have increased dramatically over the past few years.
There is another prime example of how you twist things intogoofiness at every opportunity. I swear I don’t know if you are that far out of touch with reality or if you are just evil minded in your attempts to promoteyour misguided mission.
There is not twice as much food per deer or anything close to it. In fact the only reason there are fewer deer in unit 2G is from the fact that the food that was there through those back to back harsh winter years wouldn’t support the increased number of deer that occurred through that previous run of five or six consecutive years of better then normal mast with no winter snows. What happened in unit 2G was that the deer population just crashed to meet the level of the existing habitat and environmental conditions. The habitat did improve slightly because nature reduced the deer populations to a level that matched those harsh winters, which was actually lower then it normally needs to be. So with fewer deer the habitat has improved, but not enough for any major or long term increase in deer numbers.
The deer population will, and all indicators are that it already is, increase to meet the improved habitat as long as we have normal winters. But, in the northern tier mountainous areas of the state the deer numbers will always experience some normal, and even significant, up and down trends based on the annual environmental variables.
By the way, you should have pulled and posted those pictures of the winter starved deer in Greene County from that other site too. Must be that didn't fit into your agenda.
Cornelius needs to see those dead deer though since he believes there aren’t any habitat issues preventing more deer down that way; I guess the deer are telling a different story about the state of the habitat down there in Greene County and unit 2A though.
R.S. Bodenhorn