Now all habitat available to the deer is being considered because the health of the deer is part of the management direction. Since deer herd health is determined by the adult doe reproductive rates obviously all of the habitat available to the doe being examined is being considered. If that doe had good enough food, whether it was forest habitat, farm crop habitat or someone’s garden or shrubs it was all considered as food eaten by that doe and used by her to either be healthy enough or not healthy enough to produce the number fawns she was carrying.

Since the reproductive rate data only counts the number of fawns that dead doe was carrying at the time she died it doesn’t really tell us if those fawns were going to be born at the required weight to have survived after they were born. It doesn’t matter how many were born if the majority of them die within days of being born, When that happens they are just as none existent as if they had never been born. That is why other factors, such as forest health, also need to be factored into that same equation when determining if all is well or if things are still too tentative to allow the herd to increase.

As RSB has pointed out, mother nature will balance populations with habitat if we don't. In 2G, We didn't and so eventually she did.

ORIGINAL: bluebird2

Nature had absolutely nothing to do with the decrease in deer density in 2G. The herd in 2003 and 2004 to produced enough fawns to produce a significant increase in the population and the only reason the herd didn't increase significantly is because hunters harvested as many if not more deer than were recruited each year. For you and RSB to claim that nature is controlling the herd in 2G is just plain silly when we are harvesting over 11,000 deer annually. If those deer were allowed to survive the herd would increased by over 20,000 deer in just two years.

Furthermore, the very agency RSB works for claimed the herd in 2G increased by 40% in just one year in 2006. Can you or RSB explain how that happened?

How do you square that with the fact that 2G has a predator mortality for fawns that is 4 times higher than the fawns studied outside 2G ?.

Hunting is not the problem. A deer population that exceeds the carrying capacity of the land is the problem. A drive through the Sproul Sate Forest reveals virtually no understory and almost nothing but pole timber. A RSB said, deer don't eat rocks in spit of their mineral content.

ORIGINAL: bluebird2

The higher predation mortality does not negate the fact that it still took a harvest of 11,000 deer to keep the herd stable and the same applies to the fawn mortality due to hunting.
I didn't say hunting was the problem . What I said was that the harvest of 11,000 deer yearly clearly shows that the habitat was not the factor that prevented the herd from increasing. When the habitat is controlling the population ,non-hunting mortality equals recruitment. I understand why you don't comprehend that ,but I find it hard to believe RSB doesn't understand that simple concept.

Hunting is only helping maginally to control the herd in 2G. Hunting has fallen short of controlling the herd so mother nature has taken over with predation being the dominant factor. It's a simple enough concept. Studies of coyotes have repeatedly shown that they have an amazing capacity to self limit their litter size according to food supply.

ORIGINAL: BTBowhunter

Hunting is only helping maginally to control the herd in 2G. Hunting has fallen short of controlling the herd so mother nature has taken over with predation being the dominant factor. It's a simple enough concept. Studies of coyotes have repeatedly shown that they have an amazing capacity to self limit their litter size according to food supply.

Everyone from the PGC to the insurance companies have been blamed for planting coyotes. The cause ofthe coyote population explosion in PA has been the past failures of the PGCandhunting tocontrol the herd for decades. BTW, make no mistake when I say the PGC has failed. I mean to say that the PGC failed in the past to stand up to the likes of the USP, a few idiot legislators, and the rest of the "deer behind every tree" crowdand do the right thing by getting the herd under control decades ago