NJ_Bowhntr Have you been to one of Dr. Alt's presentations?

It was brought up about why didn't they try this in specific areas as a test instead of state wide. He said that was the original idea. However when they went to these two counties that they had chosen because of the poor quality of their habitat, they were met with overwellming oposition. He said they wanted to run them out of town. These 2 counties were Center and Armstrong. The argument that they got there was if they do that in just those two counties then everyone there would go else where to hunt and kill small bucks out of spite. Then they were concerned that in a few years when they did have larger bucks because of the point restiction that there would be a large influx of hunters into there counties to hunt these bucks. Which would result in an over kill of bucks.

You say that Pa. hasn't done any research on this. Wrong! Obviously you haven't done any research. They have been gathering data for this program for the last 2.5 years. They have been visiting meat lockers all accross the state to gather information on the health of the deer herd,age, body weight fat content etc. They have also been doing things like picking up road kill does to examine the fetusis to determine when they were being concieved. What this tells them is the time span in which the breeding period runs. Which they found it varied from as early as Sept. 9th to as late Feb. This study is important in that it tells them that there are to many does for the mature bucks to breed in the time span of what should be "the rut". Therefore leaving some does to be bred by younger bucks or so late that the fawns are born to late in the year to survive a bad winter. Also by the birthing period being streched out for a longer time the fawns are more subject to predation.

Their research is an on going proccess, they are radio collaring bucks and fawns right now and plan to radio collar does in the future.

They also explored the possibility of check stations to gather info. but took into consideration that their already mandatory harvest report card system is only 46 percent accurate. Meaning that only 46% of the deer taken get reported. How did they come up with this? While they were visiting meat lockers they took down information such as back tag numbers and cross referenced them to harvest report cards. So when hunters arn't doing something thats mandatory what makes you think they will do somthing thats voluntary.

Again I feel that before someone bashes the ideas of someone thats trying to help you should do your homework and know the facts.

God Bless & Good Hunting
LM/NAHC
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