Cornelius08

I was just eyeing the 07-08 annual report. I'll start with the good. Pgc has said they arent SURE that the decline in harvest in 2A was due to hunters solely avoiding the ehd area, but wanted to know if it were due to smaller herd and that this year pasts harvest would give some insight into it. Well they have their insight. Basically exact same buck harvest. Should be interesting to see if "adjustments" are made now that they have that insight.

Some things I found outrageous to say the least...So heres the ugly

according to 05 annual report, 2A had 58% regeneration. That from a high herd level from 2001 to 2004 sampling.

according to 06-07 annual report 2A from sampled plots from 2001 to 2005 samples collected had 61% regeneration. That is froma somewhat lowerherd size, and showed improvement even though it wasnt "poor" anyway previously even with much higher herd levels, only 2 years removed from 69+ dpsm!!.

In the very next annual report (lmao) with a much smaller herd,according to buck harvest as well as the herd size change chart on page 18 of the 07-08 report...and samples collected from 2003-2007 the regeneration in the 07-08 annual report is listed at 46%

Now does any sane rational man woman or child have an explanation as to why the regeneration would be 15% lower when the herd was MUCH higher,during the sampling years of 2001-2005 than they were during the last samplingused on the 07/08 reportof 2003-2007 when the deer herd was lower???

The bad? ANOTHER year of declining percentage of does bred. They also redid the past pregnancy rates! Surprise surprise. So the decline didnt look quite so bad. A percentage or two was added here or there, with the footnote at bottom saying *embryo counts and pregnancy rates adjusted to account for females that were lactating when collected in the spring. As a result of this change, these results may not agree with previous reports!

The new chart:

2000-----93%
2001-----93%
2002-----93%
2003-----93% wow looking good so far eh?
2004-----91%
2005-----92%
2006-----89%
2007-----88%

They made the decline more gradual. Yet still steady decline and 07/08 was no exception a new low.

Embryo counts? Dropped AGAIN as well.

2000-----1.60
2001-----1.58
2002-----1.63
2003-----1.59
2004-----1.53
2005-----1.51
2006-----1.54
2007-----1.50

What do they need? A brick wall to fall on them to see its not working??

LINK: http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/lib/pgc/reports/2008_wildlife/21001-07z.pdf

bawanajim

Do you realize that there must be other factors at work here?

Do you not believe the heat ,the mites or any other factors need looked into?

What wmu are you referring to?

Cornelius08

As to the regeneration issue Jim, Im speaking of 2A. I would certainly hope there were some explanation for it, other than simply blaming the deer given the overall circumstances! Thats a pretty quick pretty signifcant change.

bawanajim

Let me look into that and I'll get back to you.

Give me some Idea what you think is causing the decrease in breeding rates and what effect this decrease will have.

bluebird2

Lower recruitment and lower sustainable harvests plus more unhappy hunters.

Screamin Steel

I personally think the deer are just sad because they know they are being mismanaged, and just aren't in the mood to do it. Ever just not been in the mood? Or they figure why bother? The PGC wants us all dead anyhow, might as well make it easy on them.

Seriously, though probably has more to do with the reduced herd overall, less bucks and less does, spread over a broader region means more travel time for bucks between receptive does, meaning less getting bred overall. However, since this rate never declined prior to HR we know that the herd was not to the point of nature controlling the herd, due to the stress of reduced browse affecting them nutritionally. The deer were healthy and fine in the majority of the state. The fact that the breeding rates did not decline till post HR proves that. The real mystery is in embryo counts and why that declined as the herd was reduced. Science tells us that the embryo count should have increased as the herd was reduced IF the herd was nutritionally stressed. More food, less deer = healthier deer, right?

Cornelius08

Jim, I would imagine, just a guestimation on my part, that the continuing lowering breeding rates would be due to an overall younger doe age structure. Im not certain that would show a continued decline though, unless as many of us think, the reduction is also continuing. Less does as 3, 4 year olds and over can have a big effect on recruitment. And with reduction you are gonna have less and less of them percentagewise in the herd. Just as with the buck, if you increase the harvest rate, there are less older buck.

As to the effect, I think them obvious. Less deer. Less deer harvested. But not so much is that my concern as it is the fact that the plan was supposed to be guided by herd health and habitat health. My concern is with both showing at best erratic results, how "scientific" can it be and what does it mean to our deer herd and hunting if its not.

If the herd health isnt showing what it should be showing after all this reduction why are we doing it to the extent we are? also, if we were to follow this program , by taking that reproduction issue at face value...it would equate to even FEWER deer!

Also, the regeneration issue...How do we gauge deer impact...if regeneration is so fickle as not to bea reliable indicator of acceptable deer levels with other factors at play and cannot be dictated by science, but a mere "judgement call" about what else among other known factors as well as unknown may be the cause?

BTBowhunter

Science and good old common sense tells us that both should have increased. Something other than deer numbers has to be involved.

The idea of less deer having trouble finding mates doesn't fly . Deer are very mobile critters and there are still plenty out there for mating purposes. Besides, if deer were having trouble finding mates, the breeding time window would have increased.

bawanajim

In areas where deer numbers are at levels where fawns are a large% of the breeding deer I can see where breeding rates would fall as a doe fawn will likely produce just one fawn that first year.

bluebird2

You were given the answer months ago but you and RSB blindly rejected it because of your inherent bias?

Why do you think the PGC isn't doing an extensive study to determine the cause of the decrease? The answer is they know the reason, but simply don't want the hunters to know. Instead they dismiss it by saying the herd isn't managed based on statewide breeding rates. It doesn't get much better than that.