Originally Posted by
bluebird2
Because the professional deer managers,who are a lot smarter than you clearly stated results from the study did not accurately reflect the actual harvest rates. The experts also stated that the harvests in 2G reduced the herd by 11% in 2004, 5% in 2005 and 23% in 2007. That makes the score on your theories and prediction zero for 15.
There is no question that those low doe harvest percentages don’t reflect the harvests all across the state but they most certainly do reflect the doe harvests for those study areas. What isn’t known yet is if hunters might have been passing on some of the marked does when they could see the ear tags. That question will be answered with the changes in the tags on the deer more recently marked.
But even if hunters could have doubled that harvest rate, which they most certainly couldn’t have done, they still wouldn’t have been reaching a harvest level that would be reducing a deer herd that wasn’t already suffering from extremely low recruitment rates per doe. In a normally productive deer herd you have to harvest over 30% of your doe to be even touching normal recruitment rates. When you are harvesting less then 25% of the available does and still have a declining deer herd it is because you have a habitat problem that is severally limiting normal fawn recruitment rates.
Originally Posted by
bluebird2
If forest health was increasing in some areas, then the average forest health in 2G would have increased instead of decreasing. Apparently you are just making things up because the PGC data does not support your claims and opinions.
What is apparent is that you don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
Since the same plots are not evaluated every year and only evaluated once in about five years the present yearly changes in the percentage of adequate regeneration is only comparing various areas against one another. The present data can not be used in any way shape or form to determine if the total habitat for a unit, or even an area of a unit, is increasing or decreasing.
Some areas of every unit had more regeneration then other areas from the very bigging of the studies so all the data available so far has done nothing more then collect the regeneration data over a larger range of the entire unit. It will be a few more years yet before any comparisons of the same sample plots can be evaluated or compared to see if the total habitat is improving or decreasing.
At this point all that can be evaluated is the sample of the plots visited for that year which is about one fifth of all survey plots. That provides a snapshot view of the habitat as poor, fair or good but it can’t be compared as an annual comparison like you are trying to do.
R.S. Bodenhorn