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Confusion about ARs

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Confusion about ARs

Old 12-12-2006, 09:33 AM
  #11  
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Default RE: Confusion about ARs

Lost Horn,
This demonstrates what I said about people confusing ARs with the over harvesting of Doe.
They should not be treated as the same law, because they are not. The ARs alone would actually make ther be more deer in the woods. If the deer doe population would not have droped in the past few years we would be seeing more bucks, and many of them would be larger.
ARs to are not resposible for the overharvesting of doe. Its the number of doe that are killed each year (and environmental factors) that has reduce our deer population. If there are few doe to breed the obviously there wil be few bucks born each spring to replace the ones that die.
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Old 12-12-2006, 09:46 AM
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Default RE: Confusion about ARs

ORIGINAL: Sport 2

Lost Horn,
This demonstrates what I said about people confusing ARs with the over harvesting of Doe.
They should not be treated as the same law, because they are not. The ARs alone would actually make ther be more deer in the woods. If the deer doe population would not have droped in the past few years we would be seeing more bucks, and many of them would be larger.
ARs to are not resposible for the overharvesting of doe. Its the number of doe that are killed each year (and environmental factors) that has reduce our deer population. If there are few doe to breed the obviously there wil be few bucks born each spring to replace the ones that die.
I disagree with you.To get bigger bucks you must have a good supply of food.Less deer means more abundant food supply to grow these bucks.Yes,this does go hand in hand.Don't bullSh us.The PGC is intentionally killing off the does to breed for bigger bucks.
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Old 12-12-2006, 10:21 AM
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Default RE: Confusion about ARs

More interesting stuff here. And more confusion than ever, I' afraid.

Originally, the practice of deer management was geared to allow the herds to grow. The only way you allow a herd to grow is to leave the reproductive part of the herd alone, focusing on buck harvest.

Deer numbers over the years have grown steadily, and as these numbers grow, deer management efforts shifted the focus from "grow the herd" to maintain the herd. Obviously, the top priority is to make certain deer numbers are in line with what the habitat can comfortably sustain. Even this task is difficult at best to accomplish, but this strategy requires doe harvest, at a rate which will account for next year's new recruits. This gets tricky in that more information is needed concerning deer population, and more importantly, specific numbers of the reproductive part of the herd, and setting harvest goals based on this critical insight. This is typically done DMU to DMU due to variations in habitat quality from one area to the next.

Bucks also eat food, and place pressures on habitat, just like a doe will. However, what is interesting is now, by INCREASING THE AR from one tine at least 3" long to one beam, with either 3 or 4 measureable points, the metrics used for determining harvest goals and the like change dramatically. Let's also understand that these more restrictive AR regulations is in response to hunters wanting to see more big bucks afield, and really has no significant benefit to the deer herds, biologically. Its a mind game meant to appease a few hunters who were vocal enough to get a law passed.

From what I understand, PA has suffered some serious hunter number losses. PA, in 2001, had nearly 1 deer on licensed hunters afield (over 1 million total hunting licenses) based on the USF&W 2001 Survey on Hunting, Fishing and Widlife Watching, PA specific. Now PA has close to 100,000 fewer hunters afield. This decline is indisputable, and is the primary reason PAF&G needed to increase license fees, as that department is funded solely by the PA Conservation Fund, receiving not one penny from the PA State General Budget. This AR has been in place for what, 2 years,3years? What has happened to hunter numbers during that time? Dropped like a rock.

The harvest figures accurately reflect this. Success rates for antlered deer certainly have declined, nearly in half. Although the majority of this is due to the higher AR, some of this is also due to fewer hunters afield pushing and shooting. The loss of opportunity does one thing, drives hunters away. To account for this, does were opened up season long during firearms (or close to it) which "replaced" the perceived lost opportunity, but it is entirely possible that overharvesting of does has happened. We have been enduring this similar scenario in NYS, with populations being high for a couple years, lots of doe tags get issued, lots of does get quaffed, then a bad winter produces a larger than normal seasonal kill, population numbers plummet, DMPs are pulled back, and the seesaw continues. A healthy herd is maintained through maintaining a relatively consistent population balance. Ups and downs do not benefit deer, or hunters, and emotional knee-jerks are the result, which sometimes results in bad legislation in response.

Most of these challenges/ problems we see are directly related to added complexity of deer management strategies, without addressing the required information collection and reporting requirements. The more granular we make our deer management practices, the more granular information reporting is needed. With F&Gs, DECs and DNRs having challenge enough in determining a very accurate harvest (easier to count the dead than the living), how the heck can we reasonably expect the more complex paths some scream for to actually work?

FUBAR.
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Old 12-12-2006, 10:37 AM
  #14  
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Default RE: Confusion about ARs

and you assumed that every fawn would be born as a doe (which we know does not happen)
Nope, I didn't assume that at all, ya need to go back and look at the math my friend. I started with 1,000,000 deer, and pretended half were bucks, or 500,000 bucks. Had I assumed the remaining 500,000 doe had twin does then my next set of numbers would have read, 500,000 bucks and 1.5 million does resulting in 5,000,000 deer which I did not, I said 2,000,000 turned into 4,000,000 because of 1,000,000 doe which is half of 2,000,000 had 2 fawns, not 1.5 million having 2 fawns, confused. I thought so.

Now you are correct that I didn't take in account of predation nor still births or vehicle encounters, all that esculates as the numbers grow however, it was for the sake of the numbers.

The rest of your numbers don't add up because this was a response when you said virtually eliminate doe season, so in your numbers you won't have hunters taking any doe, now mind you, I didn't take bucks out of the equation, I realize that, it was for demostration purposes only.

I am impressed with your numbers now run them for another year for us.
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Old 12-12-2006, 11:22 AM
  #15  
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Default RE: Confusion about ARs

Lead poisoner
[/quote]
I disagree with you.To get bigger bucks you must have a good supply of food.Less deer means more abundant food supply to grow these bucks.Yes,this does go hand in hand.Don't bullSh us.The PGC is intentionally killing off the does to breed for bigger bucks.
[/quote]

L/P,
I agree bucks need food as well. And I agree that the PGC has combined the ARs and the heavy harvestinfg of doe.
But It is my thought that this is incorrect. And should not be done for proper deer management. I agree that the ARs have been used as a scape goat to reduce the deer population. What I ment in my original statement is that the ARs are not the cause of the deer population to decline, It is becuas ethe doe numbers have declined.
I agree that to maintain a healthy deer herd the population must be kept in check. This is done by harvesting doe (at a sustainable rate). I feel that at this point the does have been ovr harvested, and we need to change that.
There will be big bucks with or without ARs, there will just be more of them with ARs. There can be a balance between having big bucks and a decent deer population. You need do to support the herd.

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Old 12-12-2006, 11:33 AM
  #16  
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Default RE: Confusion about ARs

Rob,

Predation and other natural causes typically take about 50% of the yearly offspring.
The numbers I ran were for 2 years. In my original statement, I recomended A 2 year hold on doe season. And then the having doe season start again (but having it not run the full 2 weeks of regular season, I would suggest a 3 day season (possibly the last three days of rifle). My suggestion for the 2 year hold was to rebound the deer population only. After that I agree that it would need to be managed by harvesting doe.
But I realize that it will never happen. So I also made a suggestion of greatly reducing th number of tags and reducing the season lenght. This could also work to help restore the deer numbers.
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Old 12-12-2006, 12:42 PM
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Default RE: Confusion about ARs

ORIGINAL: Sport 2

Rob,

Predation and other natural causes typically take about 50% of the yearly offspring.
The numbers I ran were for 2 years. In my original statement, I recomended A 2 year hold on doe season. And then the having doe season start again (but having it not run the full 2 weeks of regular season, I would suggest a 3 day season (possibly the last three days of rifle). My suggestion for the 2 year hold was to rebound the deer population only. After that I agree that it would need to be managed by harvesting doe.
But I realize that it will never happen. So I also made a suggestion of greatly reducing th number of tags and reducing the season lenght. This could also work to help restore the deer numbers.
Half of the yearly offspring? Wow. Any numbers supporting this? Is hunting lumped into this, under predation? Just trying to get a better understanding of that statement...

I've really never looked at it that way. We tend to examine the hunter harvest, nuisance permit (both DDP and DMAP) harvest, estimated deer-car collisions, and estimated deaths due to winter and other natural predation, as awhole, but not focused down to the age class level.


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Old 12-12-2006, 01:06 PM
  #18  
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Default RE: Confusion about ARs

Its been a while sinse I have reviewed the statistics so in my conversations I was using round numbers. But Here is what I can refer you to:

The Population Management Plan for whitetail deer 2003-2007 for PA (on the PGC website. It noted that 20% of fawns were killed by predators, It did not mention still births, disease, or cars. Which I'm sure would easily add another 20% to that probably more. It seems to me that 50% mortality roughly sticks in my mind from school.
The same plan also says that says that accross the state the average birth rate is 1 doe - 1 fawn per year.
Another study of tagged fawns on the PGC website ended up with mortality rates of fawns ranging between 16% - 58% across the state.
My thought are that it probably is roughly 50%, but I'm sure this changes greatly from year to year.
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Old 12-12-2006, 01:16 PM
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Default RE: Confusion about ARs

ORIGINAL: Sport 2

Its been a while sinse I have reviewed the statistics so in my conversations I was using round numbers. But Here is what I can refer you to:

The Population Management Plan for whitetail deer 2003-2007 for PA (on the PGC website. It noted that 20% of fawns were killed by predators, It did not mention still births, disease, or cars. Which I'm sure would easily add another 20% to that probably more. It seems to me that 50% mortality roughly sticks in my mind from school.
The same plan also says that says that accross the state the average birth rate is 1 doe - 1 fawn per year.
Another study of tagged fawns on the PGC website ended up with mortality rates of fawns ranging between 16% - 58% across the state.
My thought are that it probably is roughly 50%, but I'm sure this changes greatly from year to year.
Thanks much.... Yes, the mortality rates for fawns does indeed vary from year to year. So many factors including weather, wild food crops, increased competition from other critters, displacement/ habitat lossdue to development, etc, etc, etc. Makes the game of deer management challenging enough. Now inject a higher degree of complexity into the game, as to manage to a specific "class of deer", rather than healthy deer as a whole. Infinitely more difficult to succeed considering all the variables, which change year to year, and we never really can be sure what nature will bring, can we?
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