Confusion about ARs
 

In reading post after post discussing ARs, it seems to me that some people are confused about what ARs actually are and how they work.

It been my observation that posts that start as discussions concerning whether or not ARs work, end up as posts about how the PGC is mismanaging the deer herd. And the implementation of ARs somehow ends up becoming part of this mismanagement.

‘Some’ people seem to associate the decline in deer numbers directly with the antler restrictions. When in reality, ARs alone would do nothing but increase the number of deer in the woods. I feel this misconception is due mainly to the fact that the same time the PGC implemented the antler restrictions they also changed the Doe season from lasting only 3 days, to being open for 2 weeks. It is my thoughts that ‘some’ people have not realized that ARs and the over harvesting of Doe are 2 separate entities (or at least should be). And should be discussed and implemented as such.

I feel there has been a multitude of reasons that the deer population in PA has seen a major decrease in the last few years. But heavy harvesting of the Does has defiantly played large role. And I agree with most that something needs to be changed.

I personally would like to see the Antler Restrictions stay as they are. And I would like to see the PGC close doe season for 2 years (with small areas of high deer densities offering doe tags with very tight regulations). However, I realize that this would create too much uproar to ever happen. And in the end it would not work because, some people would not follow those regulations. But in reality I would like to see the PGC cut the number of Doe tags in half and offer no bonus tags, while also changing the length back to 3 days. If this was done for a couple years, the deer herd should recover, at that point I would suggest raising the Doe permits back to a sustainable rate, while continuing the 3 day season.

In my opinion the PGC need to change the harvest of Doe. Otherwise hunting will continue to loose popularity, at the same time reducing the PGC funding. And this will continue until change is forced.

I know that many of you will not agree with my thoughts, and that’s fine. I’d like to hear yours, because the better educated we are as a group on how we feel, the stronger and more likely we are to cause change that we can all benefit from.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

If I remember correctly, sport, we discussed this before with you proposing to suspend the doe season for two years. I don't think you have any idea of the impact that would have as far as an instant massive, overpopulation. If that were to occur along with a severe winter, the die-off would be catastrophic. What about the vehicle encounters? landowner impacts and farm damage? Think of a new plan.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

I see good and bad points too what u just wrote.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

Yes, I did mension this before. and I am fully aware of the fact that harvesting virtually no doe would lead to a dramatic increase in deer population. However,if done only for 2 years I do not agree that it would be an instant overpopulation.
But I do agree that the 2 yrs of no doe harvest will not happen. As I mensioned above I think that thePGC should vastly cut the number of doe tag sales, and return to a 3 day season for doe.
From my hunting experiences I am seeing virtually no deer or deer sign in many areas that supported good populations just 5 years ago. I do agree that in some areas there are still healthy deer populations. but these areas are becoming fewer and farther between. As this happens more and more guys will find these local hot spots and before you know it these areas will be huring as well. My family owns a fair amount of property and we allow people to hunt on it. but as the deer population shrinks, so wil most landowners willingness to let you hunt on thier land.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

As for Car accidents and winter starvation - I don't think that the deer population would jump enough in 2 years majorly affect these concerns.

Land owner damage - As I mensions areas with high concentrations of deer could be managed with highly regulated doe tags.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

AR's is working as planned, the hunters was promised some big bucks if they slaughtered the doe, a few hunters are getting a fewnice bucks but most hunters dont even see a buck of any size.
Before AR's about 10% of hunters killed a buck I wonder what the % is now ???:eek:

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

Losthorn, you are correct in guessing that the buck succes rate is downsubstantially. Everything in quotes is direct from the PGC website:

"2001 total harvest of 486,014 (203,247 antlered deer)"

"2001 license sales were 1,047,820" so the bucksuccess rate was about 20%

"The 2005-06 antlerless harvest was 233,890 "
"The 2005-06 antlered deer harvest was 120,500"

"2005 license sales were 964,158" so the buck success rate was about 12%

There's no dispute that less hunters are harvesting bucks due to both AR and HR but here's theupside to that

"As a direct result of the three-point and four-point antler restrictions, almost 50 percent of harvested antlered deer were 2.5 years old or older this past season, compared to only 20 percent being that old prior to antler restrictions"

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

Are you serious?

Let's just take the 1,000,000 estimated deer pop in PA. Now let's pretend half is made up of breeding does, probably more but let's for this argument say half.

Now, 500,000 doe have 2 fawns, some have 3 or more, some have one, some none so on average lets say 2. So , 500,000 doe have 1,000,000 offspring, in one year you just doubled your population from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 deer. Now let's do it another year and you have 4,000,000 deer.

Now some of those numbers are a little outrages, perhaps not, but I think there is a point here, deer do 2 things, they eat, they breed. Eliminating doe season for just one year would have a huge affect on the herd in a negative way.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

I must sayI concur with you Rob.
Here's more.....The seasons are held in the fall for a real reason, and not because the GC doesn't want us sweatin' out there. We reduce the herd every year going into winter to allow more browse per animal to assist in the wintering survival. We call this the OW herd (overwintering). To allow a OW herd of 2 million or more would result in MASSIVE dieoffs among other things. In a hard winter, deer are driven into the low coniferous areas for shelter from deep snow, ice and so on. Can you imagine the nightmare we would experience with a herd of 3 to 4 times the size we have now? Any idea of the disease that would result from such an irresponsible act? I can tell you this: In an average winter, we would lose many more deer than the increase we were trying to achieve. Deer breed like rats. Sorry but true. We care a whole lot more for deer though and any conservationist with any brains would never let a thing like this happen. We have had hard winters in the distant past where we lost almost the entire herd and hunting was suspended for some time. Who is going to clean up the rotting mess in this state when 2 to 3 million deer are rotting come spring? If we were to foolishly goof with the carrying capacity to that extreme, old Ma' Nature would fix things eventually.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

Rob,

I agree that the population would grow very quickly. But in your demonstration of numbers you did not account for predators, and you assumed that every fawn would be born as a doe (which we know does not happen) you assumed a starting heard population of 1,000,000. We’ll assume 500,000 doe, and 500,000 bucks. Now accounting for hunting season reduce the doe population by 200,000 (which I’m sure is low) and 100,000 bucks. We’ll also assume no winter kill (which is unrealistic).
That gives us 300,000 doe. If each of these doe have 2 fawns 50% of which survive to the next fall (due to natural causes) we end up with 300,000 yearling deer 50% of which would be bucks giving us 450,000 total doe. Repeat the process for the 2nd year would give us 675,000 total doe. Add to this the bucks (400,000 starting #) + (150,000 1st year) + (225,000 2nd year bucks) – (200,000 buck kill in 2 years) = 1,250,000 deer population at the end of 2 years. Using 46,055 square miles in PA this works out to roughly 27 deer per square mile (which I agree is very high). But then you take the average years harvest for hunting of 450,000 deer. The total population is reduced to 775,000 this equates to roughly 17 deer per square mile, and I would be hard pressed to believe that our environment cannot support that on an average. And from that point on with proper doe management the population could be maintained at proper levels.
But as I mentioned previously, I realize this idea will never happen. And I greatly appreciate your thoughts on it. We all have our own ideas that we think would help, and I’m sure the correct solution is a combination of all our ideas. We just need to work as a team to get the PGC to put together a management plan that will work for everyone.

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.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

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.

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.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

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. :D

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.

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.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

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.

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.

RE: Confusion about ARs
 

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?