R.S.B.

I’m not sure what questions you are referring to unless they are the ones I already answered. I didn’t really talk much about the variables of the environmental factors though so I will do that now.

The annual post season deer populations are greatly influenced by the previous year’s food and winter conditions. When you have a fall with little or no mast crop the deer don’t put on as much weight before the winter sets in. So that alone can be an environmental influence that can and will affect the next year’s deer population. I will explain more about how that actually affects deer populations a bit later in this post.

The next environmental factor that has a serious impact is the depth of the snow cover and the length of any adverse winter snows. In the northern tier and mountainous regions elsewhere across the state once the snow gets deep in the winter the deer are forced off of the ridges and plateaus and into the river and creek valleys to what are typically referred to as wintering grounds. At this point there can be all kinds of good browse or food on the higher ground but it isn’t of any value to the deer because they can’t get to it.

When that happens and deep snow cover locks the deer into primary wintering grounds the deer will seriously impact the available food supply. While that is happening the deer are all losing weight and sometimes that weight lose is significant. If a deer loses over about 1/3 of its body weight it is probably going to die even if the snows disappear and the deer can now find all the food it wants.

But, the real problem is not with winter mortality of the deer, which generally doesn’t happen in great numbers. The real problem comes from reduced fawn survival rates the next spring. When the doe doesn’t have enough high quality food through the winter and the spring she produces an under weight fawn and that fawn then has little chance of surviving after it is born.

To show how much of a factor the poor winter food conditions can have fawn survival I am going to provide some data from a research project in Michigan that was designed to measure the affects that the nutrition of the doe would have on fawn survival rates. To do that they provided various amounts of natural food supply to captive deer and I am going to show the fawn mortality percentages for each group of deer.

Food value……………………………………… ………….fawn mortality
Good winter to good & moderate in spring……………………….12.2 %
Poor winter & good spring……………………………………� �...35.1 %
Poor winter & moderate spring……………………………………53 .7 %
Poor winter & poor spring……………………………………� �…92.9 %

These fawn mortality figures are only including loses from nutritional factors and don’t even include any predation. So through in some normal predation and it isn’t too hard to see how much of an affect the length and severity of the winter can have on the next year’s fawn population. If you have two or three years of these harsh environmental years in a row you start getting into a compounding factor and the deer populations drop very rapidly.

I believe that is exactly what we just experienced here in the northern tier and across our more mountainous regions of the southern tier. We just had a year with a good mast crop followed by a more mild winter so I suspect we will also see some deer population improvement this year, but we also have to remember that it was compounding of bad years that got us to the low level and it will take a compounding of years to fully recover from the lean year.

Think of it this way; half of those fawns that died within a few days of being born during the previous three years were button bucks. You will never see nor harvest one of them though because they died soon after being born. The other half were doe fawns and they will never be seen or produce a fawn because they died soon after they were born. The bottom line is that you have to have good fawn recruitment if you want good deer numbers in the future. To have good fawn recruitment you have to have good habitat, but it isn’t even enough to have good habitat unless it is also where the deer need it during the harshest of winter conditions.

Most of those environmental factors we can’t control so all we can do is understand that there will always be some major fluctuations in deer populations resulting from the variables of the environmental factors.

Some things in both life, as in nature, we just have to accept while trying to make the best of them by learning to understand and expect them.

yano

Since we’re in the data sharing mode, here is some data of mine (no direct link available), but it is based directly on PGC website data. I would tend to question the 2005 results, as the PGC Buck Harvest number of 120,500 is too much of a “round number” to suit my taste.

Year ….... Buck Harvest success / general tag
1998 …... 16.9%
1999 ……. 18.8%
2000 ……. 19.5%
2001 ……. 19.3%
2002 ……. 16.2%
2003 ……. 13.9%
2004 ……. 12.2%
2005 ……. 12.4%

patrkyhntr

Do you have better numbers, Yano? If so, what is the source?

UNtil someone comes up with a better system for estimating the deer kill for Pennsylvania, I guess we have to accept the PAGC numbers as the best available.

Actually, there is a better system available to us. It would be for all hunters to obey the law and send in their report cards when they harvest a deer. That nearly 60% of us are too lazy to do so, or refuse to do so for whatever stupid reason they have, speaks volumes about us as a group. What should the public perceive about us? That we refuse to help make the system work, but gripe about it anyway?

BTBowhunter

Better reporting ratios would definitely help the PGc's credibiliyi if nothing else

I would say that the penalty for not isnt severe enough but, afterhaving my son accused of not reporting on a DMAP when I personally sent the thing along with mine and my other son tells me that there is more than one problem. (They had mine and the other son)

I also had a friend get a fine a few years back for not sending his card in and he swears that he did.

It seems that we ought to have an online reporting system (with a printable receipt for the hunter)

DennyF

"That nearly 60% of us are too lazy to do so, or refuse to do so for whatever stupid reason they have, speaks volumes about us as a group."

Yup and amen. I've suspected for some time, that themany ofthose that sneer about sending in reports as required and refuse to do so, are the very same people who tend to grumble incessantly about the game commission, blaming them for anything under the sun.

The PGC isn't close to being perfect, but neither are they the incompetent stumble bums that many like to make them out to be. Sorry, no data or links to prove my point, just a hunch after having spent many years listening to hunters flap their gums.

BTBowhunter

I'd bet that the majority out there views the PGC as "about average" for a government agency. That's not a condemnation but unfortunately, it's not exactly a compliment either. The few occasions that I've had to interact directly with agency personell has been mixed about 50/50. Some were indifferent beaureacrats and some were helpful, caring and courteous.

Overall, based on my experience for a government agency, I'd call them remarkably average.

Gr8ful Deer

"I believe that is exactly what we just experienced here in the northern tier and across our more mountainous regions of the southern tier. We just had a year with a good mast crop followed by a more mild winter so I suspect we will also see some deer population improvement this year, but we also have to remember that it was compounding of bad years that got us to the low level and it will take a compounding of years to fully recover from the lean year."

I understand fully what RSB is saying here, but there is one issue I see that is being totally missed:What happens when the PGC keeps adding more and more days, seasons, DMAP programs, combined buck/doe seasons, and more liberal bag limits EVERY YEAR over the course of a long term period WITHOUTtaking into account fawn recruitment or winter severity EVERY YEAR?

Does thePGC eversay "well we had bad fawn recrutiment this spring, so we will cut out the early muzzleloader season", or "we had alot of deep snow and ice this winter, so we aren't going toallow kids/seniors to kill either bucks or does this year?" No they do not! Instead, every year, they come up with some new fangled method/season of killing more deer ... especially does. [:@]

Consequently, there really is no opportunity for a "compounding of years to fully recover from the lean year." Instead, any slight improvement in the population in the short term is immediately negated by increased harvest pressure due to theincreased availability of opportunities for hunters to fill their tags in the short term.

Also, the claim that it will take the compounding of several good years to overcome the lean one takes a very "optimistic" stance that the following years will be good ones as well. The next few years could just as easily be the worst ever just as it easily as they could be good. it seems to me that it would be best to have the deer population At or NEARits carrying cpacity NOT WELL BELOW it in order to maintain some insurance that the population would not be subject to a total crash in the event of a widespread environmental disaster.

I just wish someone could explain to me how all the available browse and habitat for deer in the NC part of the state deteriorated to the point that it could no longer support a healthy deer herd when it was able to supportlarger herds for decades with only a 2-day anterless season and 2 weeks of buck.Shouldn't the regeneration of food and browse been able to take advantage of the reduced pressure by deer IMMEDIATELY after the removal of more deer, sincemost browse and low level food sources do not take decades to mature?

In most of my ecology and biology studies, Ilearned that population dynamics were directly related to the carrying capacity of the land. (i.e. the population is controlled by its available food sources.) If the deer were truly eating themselves out of house and home like the PGC claims, wouldn't their numbers have been shrinking on their own rather than burgeoning even without any hunter predation at all?

I say get rid of early muzzleloader, get rid of DMAP, get rid of seniors/youths having the opportunity to shoot either sex, get rid of late muzzleloader/bow & go back to an early archery, 2 weeks of AR buck and 2 days of doe.Almost like it was when very few hunters were _itching, deer were plentiful, and PA was one of the premier deer hunting states in the entire country (albeit without the spike and forkhorn harvest.)


I truly belivethat the AR program is a great wayto allow bucks to live longer. However, the effectiveness of AR is being negated by the increased anterless harvests and increased hutner participation opportunites. After all,they aren't getting a chance to grow larger racks if they are being killed as button bucks, killed in late muzzleloader afterthey drop their antlers,etc.

Havinglived and hunted my entire life on PA public lands, and recently moving from PA to NJ, I know that I am on the fence about purchasing an expensive out-of-state license this year after seeing so few deer during the past 2 seasons. I am sure that there are multitudes of others that have already thrown in the towel. Unfortunatley,PA will continue to loserevenue sources if they can't provide a decent enough population of animals for hunters tofeel it is worththe money and effort to pursue them.

Now, if anyone wants to try to tell me that "I don't see as many deer becasue I don't hunt hard enough" I will extend you an invitation to go hunting with me for the entire first week of buck in 3B this year.I am sure you will find out that many of us are not lazy "stump sitters" that keep planting their butts in the same stand loctaions every year, and we are definitely not seeing many deer at all anymore.

Also, does anyone know whether the PGChas any factorsto increase the harvest rate to account for illegal poaching,animals killed by vehicles that are able to limp off of the orad before they perish, or the # of young and adult animals that are being killed by the SIGNIFICANTLY increased coyote population?

- Gr8ful

chr103yod

Since the report cards are pretty much meaningless maybe we should all send one in whether we shot something or not. When the deer killed jumps 60% they won't know what to do.

DougE

I got a better idea.How bout we all just comply with a simple request and start sending in the self-adressed postage paid card every time we kill a deer.That would solve all the issues.

livbucks

I've got even a better idea. ALL license holders must return a kill report by a certain date, regardless of success or failure to be eligible to hunt the next year.


R.S.B...How are numbers doing in the ANF? How about Highland TWP, Elk County? This would be WMU 2F I believe. We didn't hunt there last year because we all tagged out in archery at home. We hunted there for 2 days the year before last and all we saw was lots of coyotes and 1 doe and 1 fawn between five hunters. As I said, I wouldn't personally shoot does there in 2F from my observations from 2 years ago. But then again, things can change quickly with deer reproduction.