ORIGINAL: bluebird2
The deer numbers in much of the northern tier have been controlled by the various environmental conditions, instead of the low harvests, for a long time. That isn’t good management it is horrible management because it really isn’t management at all. That is what the hunters and politicians demanded and that is what they got.
I have no idea how you could possibly come to such a convoluted and irrational decision. But, just for laughs,let's see if you can come up with a reason why,according to you, the PGC managed the southern tier counties so well and let the herd in the northern tier counties were totally mismanaged according to you ? You can't blame the hunters and politicians because the PGC increased and decreased allocations at will during that period and they also implemented bonus tags in 1988.
No the professional deer managers did not increase or decrease the allocations and deer harvests of the northern tier at will. They haven’t been able to do that for pay more then three decades.
The politicians demanded they be lowered every single time the professionals got deer management headed the right direction of a deer herd in balance with their food supply. I know that for an absolute fact because I stood there and heard a very high powered one tell everyone at a meeting that if the Game Commission didn’t lower the antler less allocations they would strip the agency of their regulatory powers and they would decide how many license to issue. The Game Commission responded and lowered the allocations. That didn’t just happen once, but every single time the northern tier deer herds were attempted to be brought into the correct biological balance.
It didn’t result in having more deer, it resulted in fewer deer. But, it got them the votes they wanted. The deer habitat, deer numbers and hunters are now paying for that horrific mistake. The present Commission has done everything they could not see that same stupid mistake repeated again and over even more areas of this state. It just a shame more hunters can’t open their eyes to the facts of reality and the past before more areas of this state are destroyed.
But, the reason those good habitat areas have such high fawn recruitment is because they have been harvesting enough deer to protect the habitat. And, conversely the reason the poor habitat areas have such low fawn recruitment is simply because there isn’t food to keep the does healthy enough to produce and feed the fawns they carried through the winter and spring.
That simply is not true. The southern tier counties have high recruitment because they have much higher OWDDs than the northern tier counties. A simple analysis of the reproductive rates proves that is the case.
Well of course they have higher over winter deer densities in the southern tier. They have them partly because of the better soil and environmental conditions, but that is only part of the complete reason they have and sustain more over winter deer.
But, the only reason they can sustain those higher deer densities is because they allow hunters to harvest as many deer as they can find and thus protect the deer food supply year after year.
That is also what allows those high fawn recruitment rates too.
The same thing would happen, though perhaps to a lesser degree, if they allowed hunters to harvest as many deer as they could in the other parts of the state too. Hunters just will not allow that to work in more areas of the state though because they don’t know enough about deer management to know it really works the way it does.