This question was brought to my mind by the discussion on Quality Deer Management and Antler Restrictions.

This sort of issue can really become cantankerous (sp?) because it reflects peoples' understanding of biology-based management (and possible misunderstandings and even outright falsehoods), but also reflects VALUES as to the proper use of game. Just one little example: should game be managed strictly for numbers (biomass, meat on the hoof, Deer Per Mile) or to increase the number of mature bucks for those who really want to get a shot at one. These goals are not necessarily compatable, in my mind. The way I see it is if the biologists are managing strictly for numbers, if there's plenty of deer, you have no restrictions and everyone who wants meat has a pretty good chance of getting some. You don't care if the deer are does, yearlings, mid-aged bucks or old bucks. And if you're a meat hunter, you don't care if that meat comes from a beautiful mature multi-pointed buck, a yearling doe (OK, you'd need two of those!) or a mid-aged, spindly 6 pointer. So, if the first deer you see is the 2 year old 6 pointer you shoot it because it's there and it will taste good. You don't wait for the doe or large buck. But it won't have the chance to grow into a real trophy. But the numbers stay healthy and from year to year, success stays high, so it's not a problem from the biological standpoint.

So my point? We often hear voices complaining when "politics" comes into game management. It should be strictly based on biology, they say. But I say, how can politics NOT be involved? This is a public resource. The public has to decide how that resource is used. Public decisions, are by it's very definition, politics, not biology.

Some of our fellow citizens really don't want to kill them, but want to see them alive. Like it or not, mis-guided as it may be, this is what they see as the proper role of wild animals (and as I tipped my hand in previous posts, the way I TEND -not absolutely- to look at predators). Some of us hunters feel that game should be managed simply for maximum yield (meat in the freezer). Others among us feel that it should be managed, at least in part, to improve chances of a healthy trophy population. Still others feel that wild animals are pests and should be elimitated - whether they be predators eating livestock or people, or deer eating crops, or geese $hitting on public park lawns or causing hazards at airports.

Some of these uses are compatable enough to find middle ground and compromise, but some are mutually exclusive. And that's what politics are - the public finding a public policy by either compromise or pure power, majority over minority politics. In my opinion, game management decisions are absolutley political, and the biology only should support the political decision. As hunters, we need to acknowledge that and look at it as a political excercise and get off of this "it's biology, not politics" soap box.