http://detnews.com/article/20091008/...prove-the-herd

Thursday, October 8, 2009
Dave Spratt / Special to The Detroit News

If you're a Michigan deer hunter, you've most likely heard of Quality Deer Management (QDM) or the Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA).

If you haven't, you might want to crawl out from under your rock and get caught up. Because QDM, a sometimes misunderstood practice for shaping deer herds, is about to enter Michigan's official lexicon.

Michigan will soon sign a memorandum of understanding with the QDMA. It's not much more than an agreement to agree. But it's an official recognition that our herd is way out of whack, that past deer-management practices need changing, that Michigan game officials want a healthier, smaller and better-balanced deer herd, and that the state is willing to work with QDMA to achieve those things.

"It focuses on the things that we share in common," said John Niewoonder, Michigan's acting Big Game Specialist. "Things like using sound science to manage the appropriate harvest of antlerless deer. It certainly doesn't go down the road of antler-point restrictions or any of that stuff that (QDMA) sometimes are associated with."

To understand what QDM is, it's important to understand what it is not. It is not Monster Buck Management, even though the end result is that bigger bucks walk the landscape. In its simplest form, QDM means shooting plenty of does and not shooting yearling bucks -- so they live to grow older. When properly applied, QDM results in a smaller deer population that has plenty to eat and behaves more naturally. It does have the fawns.

Dominant bucks sire them. They're born at the right time of year.
The guy in the deer blind may see fewer deer overall, but he's also a lot more likely to see the wall-hanger buck of his dreams.
Russ Mason, the chief of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division, is in Ontonagon today to explain to the Natural Resources Commission -- which sets game policies -- why QDM is right for Michigan.

"Whether it's habitat management, balancing herds with the available habitat, reducing the number of does in a herd to synchronize the rut and promoting other things that are favorable," Mason said. "Yeah, we believe in all those things."

Mason, who has been Michigan's wildlife chief for a little over a year, said he sees the QDMA's role as educating Michigan hunters on the value of QDM so they ultimately join the fold by choice. In other words, don't expect mandatory QDM-based rules any time soon. Mason said states that tried to force-feed QDM to hunters have had little success.

"We could go down the QDM path, and it's entirely possible that we will," he said. "I would prefer it be hunters choosing this path if they want to. Our strongest suit is when we're not regulators. And I'm not sure mandating things is where people want to go."

Quality Deer Management has steadily gained traction among Michigan hunters and landowners over the past few years. The QDMA has a state chapter with 17 different branches across Michigan and hundreds of small QDM co-ops where neighbors pool their land together, set mutually agreeable rules and follow them.

"That definitely is occurring in many places throughout the state, where deer management co-ops are forming," Niewoonder said. "There are many of them. Some are small and some are quite large. It's a grassroots deal where neighbors are talking to neighbors. It definitely is a growing thing at a grass-roots level."

Michigan already has taken some steps toward QDM practices, including allowing more than 20 deer-management units to try various antler-point restrictions on an experimental basis earlier this decade. Leaders of the Leelanau County QDM unit, one of five remaining, are so pleased with the result they want to expand into Benzie and Grand Traverse counties. A moratorium on adding QDM units ended in April 2008, and Mason said some members of the NRC seem amenable to expanding QDM areas.

That's not all. Last year, Michigan started an early antlerless season that began in September 2008 and continued this year, and the antler-restriction option that started for Upper Peninsula deer hunters last year. In the U.P., hunters can choose a single tag for any buck, or two tags for bucks with more antler points. That allows QDM supporters and opponents a chance to hunt deer the way they please.

"It's pretty neat how they have that where you have a one-buck tag or a two-buck tag," said Kip Adams, the QDMA's director of education and outreach for the northern United States. "I think that's a pretty unique way to please both ends of the hunters and to protect the young deer and have a better deer herd."

According to QDMA, Michigan hunters typically rank right at the top of all 50 states for the number of yearling bucks killed. In 2005, the last year for which there are national statistics, Michigan hunters killed the second-highest number of bucks, 63 percent of which were yearlings.

That's the exact practice QDM principles oppose. And more recently, Michigan hunters seem to be hearing the message. Last year, Michigan's antlerless harvest went up 12 percent, at the same time its buck harvest went down 7 percent.

But there's still one very important reality facing Michigan's game managers. The shoot-a-buck, pass-on-a-doe mentality that grew Michigan's deer herd for so many years is deeply ingrained in many Michigan hunters. Mason knows that isn't going away soon, but he figures you might as well start somewhere.

"To use too broad a sociological brush, we spent 120 years telling people they shouldn't shoot does," he said. "Now we tell people, 'Wait a minute. If you see a doe, shoot it, and if it has a fawn, shoot that too.' It's going to be a gradual thing, an erosion of the former truth for the present truth. But I'm pleased to see the doe harvest is going up, if for no other reason than they taste better."

Dave Spratt is a freelance writer and editor of http://www.greatnorthernoutdoors.net. You can reach him at [email protected].