This is part of why I have very little faith in what comes out in news releases.


Based on an examination of Game Commission invoice, inventory and computer records, according to Ross, the inspector general concluded that, from January 1993 through April 1999, Madl abused the agency's supply system by ordering 67 pairs of black socks and 69 pairs of boot socks; 4 pairs of rubber boots, 14 pairs of summer boots, 8 pairs of winter boots and 7 pairs of dress shoes, all in a variety of sizes; and 6 insulated vests.
According to Ross, the inspector general compared Madl's ordering habits for vests and socks to those of an average wildlife conservation officer and an average Bureau of Law Enforcement officer in the Harrisburg office. The inspector general found that Madl's vest orders were 8.6 times higher than those of an average field officer and 30 times higher than those of an average Bureau of Law Enforcement officer. Madl's orders for socks were 3.1 times higher than those of an average field officer and 9.8 times higher than those of an average Bureau of Law Enforcement officer.
The report also concluded that when Madl retired as executive director, he failed to return equipment and supplies issued to him, including: 12 tires; 2 computerized Global Positioning Systems; 11 Game Commission badges; 1 Sharp Wizard Organizer; 1 Pentax camera; 1 Motorola radio; and 1 Sony voice-operated recorder. Once the inspector general initiated its investigation, according to Ross, Madl returned many of these items to the commission.
Based on interviews with agency employees, the inspector general also concluded that, between 1988 and 1998, Madl used commission employees and equipment to perform personal services during normal working hours, including: skinning 123 deer shot by Madl; skinning 52 deer shot by Madl's friends and family; plowing the driveway to Madl's house approximately 10 to 12 times; and repairing Madl's hunting trailer approximately 6 times. Additionally, the report noted, that between 50 and 60 of the deer Madl brought into the office for skinning were not properly tagged. Since the statute of limitations has expired on prosecuting any alleged violations of the Game and Wildlife Code, Ross said, the Game Commission has sent a copy of the inspector general's report to the Office of Attorney General for possible further action. In addition to seeking Madl's immediate resignation, Ross has informed Madl that the agency will be asking him to repay the Game Fund for misappropriation of commission equipment and services.

Good save. We tried turning in poachers, that really went far. It would seem wardens are far more interested in patrolling private property. Call a deputy warden? One morning in a state parking lot a deputy was checking people the first day of archery. It was dark, but he was visibly intoxicated and smelled like it too. Not long after he made the papers. Something about killing a car hit deer in front of a group of people with a shotgun and being drunk. Farmers killing deer for crop damage? The wardens look the other way. A few years ago in the Pennsylvania Game News there was a black and white map showing about 500 deer killed for crop damage in the whole state. More than 500 deer were killed by farmers in a 15 mile radius of my house! Deer defoliation? Yes, some places. The mountain I mainly hunt was losing laurel fast. You really notice it if you don't go to a certain place for a couple years. What we did notice is orange spots all over the leaves of the large plants. Underneath there is laurel about 3" high everywhere. Strange all those deer did not eat it. Oh, by the way, I saw in the game News you finally figured out the laurel is being killed by a blight. Took you long enough. Yes, we don't understand. We don't understand your train of thought at all. I did hunt Maryland until elitists such as you ruined the state lands. They are slowly turning them into parks. That is where the money is right?

What your report doesn’t say is that it was actually people within the Game Commission that brought Madl’s infractions to light in an effort to bring justice to any infractions or abuse. All people within the Game Commission fully cooperated in the investigation but, since it was turned over to the Attorney Generals Office it was fully in their power to make the decisions as to the way it would be resolved.

It doesn’t make what Madl did right but it also proves that the people within the Game Commission do not condone such abuse and illegal actions either.

Dick Bodenhorn

normal
 

when i was official,i saw this type of thing all time.not shocking to me.
i just wish the pgc would make it 3 point rule for all of us.just to much breaking rules there......

Deer shouldn't be eating laurel.In fact,if they are,they're most likley starving.No one has ever blamed the deer for the loss of mountain laurel.

Wow,500 deer were killed in a 5 mile radius,just from crop damage.You have a serious overpopulation problem.

15 mile radius. You either have a problem reading or like to change facts just like the game commission does. I live on the border of Bucks county and have deer walk through my front yard. Even if we have a deer population problem here, it is no reason to distort facts to prop up a failed program in other areas. If there is a crop damage area that requires culling a lot of deer, so be it. I don't see why the commission would lie about it. The area is unhuntable during daylight hours because the deer are laying up in housing developments. Shooting them at night, or using pro snipers in populated areas is the only option. Why do they have to lie constantly?

Deer should not be eating laurel? I have seen deer browsing on laurel during early archery season with acorns on the ground. Maybe you mean rhododendron?

Sorry,my mistake.Still that's over 33 dpsm dying just for crop damage which is an obscene amount.

I know the difference between laurel and rhododendron.Both are very low on the prefered list and if the deer are eating it,they simply have no other choice,which means the habitat stinks and you have too many deer.My rhododendrons get hammered very hard when we have a bad winter because our habitat is crap and we simply have too many deer.We had a bad winter this year and they didn't get touched because they just logged about 1000 acres in front of my house.With 1000 acres of fresh tops to browse on,I hardly saw a deer all winter.That's a temprary situation that won't last. If deer ate laurel,we wouldn't have a habitat problem.If deer ate beech we wouldn't have a habitat issue.Unfortunately,decades of overbrowsing by huge deer herds wiped out the prefered species and now the non-prefered species like beech,ferns,laurel,striped maple and black birch have filled in the gaps,leaving much of the state with poor habitat that will take decades to fix.

On the mountains I hunt, you would be hard pressed to find a beech tree and striped maple is almost considered an invasive species. It only pops up after a burn or cut off. Black birch has always been there and has its' uses. One mountain has plenty of oak starters in various stages another has nothing. Soil difference I would say. My favorite one to hunt was bought by the commission about eight years ago. Thank god nobody will let them cross the only accessible section to get in with logging equipment. When they were marking the boundaries there was talk of "improving" the habitat. They saw all those white oak flats on top and the old red oaks on the sides and started to see $$$$. I don't know what your area looks like, but around here it is straight up and down. I have seen what "improving" the forest does to it. I used to do logging and land clearing and you would be better off burning it every few years once you have trees 30" and over well established. Yes, I have hunted places where that actually happens. The large trees are not affected and the undergrowth comes back with a vengeance.

What use does black birch have?The deer really don't touch it.It outcompetes more beneficial trees and it's worth next to nothing as far as timber value.

I live and hunt in 2G,from the upper half of Clearfield county through Elk county and into Cameron county the majority of the time.Invasive species are a major obstacle and they're so prevelent because the deer overbrowsed the prefered species,allowing the non prefered species to take over.It's not the soil.I've walked through hundreds of exclosures and once they fence the deer out,the regeneration comes back.

Logging,absolutely,positively improves the habitat and increases the carrying capacity tremendously.

Controlled burns can be effective but they're very labor intensive and there's a very short time period when they can be done in Pa.

For a couple years deer can browse on the birch, it grows thick as grass when it gets an opening. The grouse and other small birds feed on the seeds. Logging off an area is a short term fix for deer feed and ruins it for bear and turkey. After the game commission rapes the top of a mountain, money well spent would be to do a fly over and dump acorns. Some of them would get into cracks and start to grow. That would be a lot better than flying around with a heat sensing camera to count deer. It would definitely be better than flying around dumping a deer carcass to feed an animal that should never have been reintroduced in this state anyway.

You seem to think deer need acorns to survive.Presently only about 40% of Pa's forests are oak/hickory.Many areas of Pa never had an oak tree and never willMast is good but it can't be relied upon.Deer need high quality browse.Black birch is not a highly prefered browse species.Much of any new oak regeneration comes from stump sprouts after a cut.Problem is,until recently they never made it past the deer unless they were fenced off.Early succession forests are good for deer and a variety of game animals,including bear.They're also good for turkeys because they provide safe nesting sites.

Surely you aren't suggesting that a mature forest is ideal deer habitat?

I am not suggesting mature forests are ideal habit, I am stating it. You seem to know a lot about preferred browsing species, did you take a poll from the deer in your area? The biologists are always falling back on what was "natural" before the Europeans came to Pa. and destroyed the balance. A mature forest is what they are talking about. I never read about Indians logging off Pa. forests. Deer do not need acorns to survive, but it helps. It is the prefered food of deer, period. They will browse on laurel even after a morning of feeding on acorns. It may be a digestion thing, I do not know. There is not enough done after logging to repair what has been done to the forest. Planting a couple of apple trees or letting the logging companies replace hardwoods trees with pine seedlings is a joke. I don't know the number, but the SGL behind Cabelas in Hamburg has small plots of hybrid chestnut trees planted there. Go pick up as many as you want, nothing eats them, or maybe.....there is no deer to eat them?

Mature forests are far from ideal habitat.Deer need high quality prefered browse to sustain themselves through winter.Mast crops can be very spotty and inconsistant.On top of that,they only provide a food source for a brief period of time throught the year.

Yes,as a matter of fact,I have taken a poll of sort from the deer in this part of the state.Every year,I work side by side with foresters from PSU,DCNR nad the US FOREST SERVICE evaluating the effects of browsing.We set up miles of transect lines and do pellet counts every 100 feet along the lines and every 200 feet we evaluate what's growing in the plots.In doing so,we find out what prefered species are growing,what non-prefered species are growing and how the deer are impacting them.If there's no prefered species growing and the non-prefered species are being browsed we monitor to what extent that's occuring.Once the prefered species diappear to the point where the ono-prefered species are being browsed down or hedged,it's a sure indication that you have too mnay deer,regardless of the number.

Deer are picky eaters.they eat the more prefered species first.Those prefered species have been documented for years.In fact,many species such as hobblebush,trillium,azalia have been practically wiped out but are starting to come back.Deer will hit the more prefered species first,depending on the area.For years,it was almost impossible to see an oak stump sprout make it past the deer.Last year,I walked through a 70 acre exclosure a few miles from my house.It was a shelterwood cut designed to get some advanced oak regeneration occuring.Three years ago,it was loaded with young oak seedlings.Three deer got in and completely wiped out the oak regeneration with the exception of some stump sprouts that had a head start.These stump sprout all had a distict browse line around them.I took R.S.B there and he took some good pistures,maybe he'll post them.The red maple that was in there hardly got touched because the deer keyed in on the more prefered species first

Acorns alone will not sustain a deer herd.Heck,only about 40% of Pa's forests contain oak.Each deer needs between 3-5 lbs of browse a day to make it through winter.If there's too many deer,they quickly wipe out that prefered regeneration and inasive species take over.This is exactly what happened accross the northern tier of Pa.Now,we're faced with poor habitat that can't suppost large numbers of deer.Once the habitat gets to this point,it takes far less deer to continually impact it.If deer don't have high quality browse,they loose weight over winter.Once a doe loses 20-25% of her boidy weight,she stands a very good chance have having her fawns die at birth or shorty there after.This effects the future population.They key to having decent deer populations is having high quality habitat.Mature forests with nothing but ferns and non-prefered species is some of the worst deer habitat there is and you shouldn't expect to see many deer.

We have far more deer now than when the indians were trying to chase deer around.

If deer are eating laurel,they're extremely stressed.They simply don't eat it unless they have no other choise.

There's tons of information on deer and the effects they have on the habita.Spend some time googling.Punch is overbrowsing by deer,prefered and non prefered browse species of deer.Punch in hobble bush+whitetail deer and see what you find.

What I will find is a lot of information that does not pertain to the area I hunt. Everything you write sounds like you copied it right out of a book. I don't hunt in Potter or Pike county and we have lot of oak and laurel here in the middle of the state. Next you will be trying to tell me that laurel is detrimental to the ecosystem. Back when there was too many deer in the area I hunt, it was common to get a doe over 100 pounds. Some of the bucks had awesome racks on them. That is genetics at work. Now it is really rare to see a big racked buck on that game lands. Nobody gave a thought to what the liberal hunting was doing to the genetics of the deer. Yes, I know, I hear the stories too about how the deer taken are getting bigger. I hear it at the range all the time, but every one of them admits their club plants superfood or throws out minerals or hormones and God knows what else. Usually none of them took the big deer on open land, they use SLG to kill doe.
As long as the commission uses a "one size fits all" plan for the whole state, it will always be a failure.

None of that came from a book and what applies in the northern part of the state will also aplly to the central part of the state.Yes,mountain laurel is detrimental.It shades out desireable species that actually feed deer and other wildlife.I don't hunt in Potter or pike county either.The majority of my time is spent in Clearfield county and elk county but I also hunt bear in Center county as well as hitting Cameron county,Wyoming county and Jefferson county.The habitat where we bear hunt in Center county is some of the worst deer habitat around.

Nutrition and well fed deer is what makes deer bigger.There is no doubt that larger bucks are being taken on the public lands in this part of the state.If you have a fax machine,I can send you a picture of a truck load of bucks,taken on the last thursday of the 2008 season on public land in 2G.If you think it's fake,I'll also send you the phone number from taxidermist where the picture was taken.This guy mounts between 300-400 bucks a year.Prior to ar ne was lucky to do 200 and maybe 1 or 2 would have 20+inch spreads.Now we gets in over 50 a year that have spreads that big.

There was no one size fits all plan.Allocations,and seasons lengths have all been adjusted according to the wmu's

For the record,I don't even know of a club that plants food plots or practices any type of QDM around here.

You don't have the slightest idea of what you are talking about. Laurel detrimental to the forest. No wonder nobody will listen to the commission. When they actually do spend money on habitat improvement, one of the first things done is tons of lime is brought in. Over half the plants you would like to see won't even grow on the tops and sides of these mountains. What do you want to do, level the woods every 10 years to stop the shading affect? I don't need pictures from you showing big deer from the northern regions. I have plenty of old Game News from the 60s to look at. Over 20 years ago I hunted Maryland down along route 15 when there was way too many deer. A gypsy moth kill wiped out most of the big trees and it turned into a jungle in 2 years. With all those deer there it stayed that way. That is just the way it is with big trees shading out the understory. You would have to constantly knock down the bigger trees to maintain your perfect forest.

LOL.I don't know what I'm talking about?You haven't made one post that makes any sense at all.Laurel is absolutely worthless except for cover but that overshadows the fact that it outcompetes and shades out more beneficial species.Lime treatments have been tried by both DCNR and the US forest service and found to do very little.It has been shown to to help certain species such as sugar maple but it does nothing for oak.Oak grows just fine in acidic soils.There were several area limed by Dr William Sharp in Moshannon state forest.I've walked through those areas and the adgacent areas that were never limed twice with the district forester from Moshannon state forest.There is lliterally no difference except for the rate at which the bvracken ferns grew.What makes a difference is fencing the deer out.You erect a fence and low and behold the oak regenerates like crazy.The soil and the rain fall are the same inside the fences as outside.

By the way,some of the best regeneration that's occuring is on the tops of the mountains.Deer are forced off the higher elevations during bad winters(when most of the browsing damage occurs)and into the lower elevations.Because of this,there's often no need to fence those cuts and the area regenerates just fine.

I've also seen areas turn into a jungle after the overstory is revoved,despite the fact that there were loads of deer.What you faill to understand is that deer don't eat just anything.Not all thick areas are good habitat.If the area regenerated in non-prefered species because the deer cleaned out everything prefered,the habitat will be in worse shape than it was to begin with.That's exactly what happens when you have too many deer.In 1985 a huge tornado ripped through Moshannon state forest.The deer herd was large to begin with but then it exploded.Some of that area was too thick to walk through but the deer cleaned out everything of value.Today,it's lousy habitat with a low deer density.

I am not suggesting mature forests are ideal habit, I am stating it.

Are you saying mature forests are not good deer habitat? If you are you are only partly correct. Mature forests don’t support as many deer as seedling/sapling stands but they support a lot more deer than pole timber. Plus if you have a mature forest that has the correct balance of deer, with the shrub layer that should occur in a healthy mature forest, the mature forest can be very productive for deer.

You seem to know a lot about preferred browsing species, did you take a poll from the deer in your area?

In a sense they have taken food preference polls from deer. Deer foods have been extensively researched over the years by putting a set number of deer in various enclosures of known sizes with different species of trees and plants present. From that they can see what deer eat first and even what deer don’t eat until they are starving to death. They have also been able to determine from those enclosures how many can live in the various habitat and forest types and conditions before they starve to death.

The biologists are always falling back on what was "natural" before the Europeans came to Pa. and destroyed the balance. A mature forest is what they are talking about.

I am not sure what point you are trying to make with this comment. We have entirely different forest type and structure now then when the settlers arrived here. It will never be like it was before the lumbering boom years of the late 1800’s and early 1900s.

I never read about Indians logging off Pa. forests.

Though it is true that the Native Americans didn’t log large tracts as man does today it is also known that the Indians did use fire to alter the forests and make large opening and meadows as a form of both forest and wildlife habitat management.

Deer do not need acorns to survive, but it helps. It is the prefered food of deer, period.

Though acorns are a preferred deer food when they exist it is not something deer can count on since many years there are no acorns. Since no one knows in advance what years we will or will not have acorns or when you are going to have a harsh winter you simply have to manage your deer populations as if you were not going to have a mast crop and a lot of deep snow when the deer have to survive on the woody browse available in wintering grounds habitat.

They will browse on laurel even after a morning of feeding on acorns. It may be a digestion thing, I do not know.

Deer do actually eat some laurel even during the summer, but it is not a high quality deer food and when deer are eating it in any quantity it is because the habitat conditions are very poor. I can also show you where for many decades the high deer populations were preventing mountain laurel from reestablishing on the fringe of a deer wintering grounds. It wasn’t until we put a small fence in a patch of inches high laurel and hemlock that we discovered it was deer preventing both the hemlock and laurel from growing there.

There is not enough done after logging to repair what has been done to the forest. Planting a couple of apple trees or letting the logging companies replace hardwoods trees with pine seedlings is a joke.

In most cases they shouldn’t have to plant anything to get new trees regenerating after timbering an area. Nature plants hundreds of thousands of new seedlings of highly preferred deer browse on every acre of suitable soil every year. If nature can’t keep up with the deer at such a high planting rate man certainly isn’t going to help much by planting additional seedlings. Certainly man can benefit some areas though by supplementing the area with some quality food producing trees and shrubs, but it shouldn’t be needed to get a new growth forest started after doing a timber cut.

I don't know the number, but the SGL behind Cabelas in Hamburg has small plots of hybrid chestnut trees planted there. Go pick up as many as you want, nothing eats them, or maybe.....there is no deer to eat them?

Chestnut is a good species because it is late to blossom and most years produces because it is rare for it be adversely affected by the last frosts that frequently kill the oak blossoms. Since deer, turkeys, bear, squirrel and several other species eat chestnuts, especially if they can get the smaller nut American/Chinese chestnuts established game prefer it will be a good thing for the future of native wildlife populations.

Dick Bodenhorn

i agree on CHESTNUT .if disease resitant chestnut is found i have vision of thousands of them along pipelines etc.what is sad is what has happened on route 44 near black forest inn. they cut every tree,did not leave a oak at all.for miles it looks like bomb went off.
disgusting is all i can say..............:eek2:

The lose of the American chestnut has really played a major part in both current and future deer numbers. Getting it back in the right places could really be a major improvement too.

During the years of harsh winters with deep snow conditions the deer in the northern tier simply have to abandon much of the best habitat and get forced into the wintering grounds valleys, rivers and stream bottoms. Those areas are where the pine/hemlock bottoms are supposed to be and at one time they were pretty much made up of that type of habitat. Those areas were the most protected from the deep snow conditions and also provided the thermal cover best suited for deer survival. Inter-mixed with those pine/hemlock stands were both rhododendron thickets and chestnut trees. Those stands provided what was normally an abundant food supply and escape cover where the deer could avoid predation.

With the timbering boom of the late 1800’s they cut down the pine/hemlock forests and built cities, roads and railroads through the deer wintering grounds valleys. That forever changed the ability of the valleys to support the deer numbers they should and once could. That might never change. Then when we lost the American chestnut, a very consistent mast production tree in the northern tier due to its late blossoms, the deer lost their major winter mast crop. That forced the deer to rely more on woody browse and acorns as their winter food. Since acorns tend to be more of ridge top species many of them simply aren’t available to deer when they need it the most. That then put more pressure then nature intended on the woody browse of the wintering grounds habitats until those habitats actually became so degraded they couldn’t support many deer.

If we ever get the chestnut back it could have a profound affect on the number of deer we can once again support through the winter. I hope that the first places planted with the hybrid chestnut is around the deer wintering grounds where the deer could get the most benefit from it during those harsh winter years.

Dick Bodenhorn

The loss of the Chestnuts had a big impact on the Bear population too or so I'm told.

I am sure the bear ate a lot of chestnuts back in the day they grew across our northern tier. But, in most areas of the state the bear populations are still very high so I am not sure the chestnut really had that much influence on the bear populations. I am sure the loss of the American chestnut had a profound affect on what the bears were eating after the loss of the chestnut though. Since bears are omnivores with the ever increasing ability to live closer to people it seems they have just shift their food priorities to what they can get by living closer to people.

The loss of the chestnut probably had more of an affect on deer, turkey and squirrel populations then on bear populations due to each species ability to substitute to alternative foods to replace the importance of the chestnut in their diets.

Dick Bodenhorn

i tried to buy a chestnut tree that is blight free and they are hard to find.millers in new york grow them on lake seneca and they are cold hardy. i think they are 26 dollars for 2 a male/female one 4 ft high.

I was talking about back in the day in regards to bears. I agree we have a great bear population currently. I read an article in the PA Game News Treasury book by a Bear trapper named Chauncey Logue (I think) and he talked about how the bear numbers took a dive after the Chestnut blight of 1907 or something like that.

well.. understand, I have to. why? because these are real Pa sportsman who are aggrivated at the system. and from the way it sounds, I can't blame them, regardless of their knowledge level of management. it's written in the Good Book, that you can "judge a tree by the fruit it bears".... when the fruit is bad, then theres something amiss with the health of the tree. I'm not in anyway slamming Pa hunters, because you have riff-raff everywhere, but with the competetion level at ultra high status to kill available deer, the ionclination to do wrong when opportunity exsists, greatly increases. However, I believe it's a status of society in general, than in hunters particular. we've lost rspect for everything and everyone,in general. it shows everywhere I go, regardless of state boundaries.

Agreed!

Dick Bodenhorn

doe season
 

I remember when PA doe season was only 1 day - rain, snow or shine. Back in those days, many applied for doe tags, but few received. Time period was 1960's, and deer were plentiful.

In 2009, I spent 82 hours in a tree stand in archery season and saw a total of 13 deer. 9 buck and 4 does. Now tell me this is QDM.

PGC program in Central PA sucks, a la total fiasco.

i think you did better than me here in clinton county.you have a lot of deer if you saw 13, they need thinned out:rolleye0011:
on thursday the first week of gun i talked to my NETWORK of crews locally driving.
here is what 1 crew said, SPROUL WE GOT A 8 POINT AND SPIKE BUT NOT SEEING ANY DEER.this is big crew 25 hunters that dont wear their hats sideways and go to college in harrisburg and see lots of deer when they come here..
they are HUNTERS , they dont kill a doe anymore ,only bucks.

so i get TRUTH of what is going on.in each of their drives there was a miniumum of 6 hunters sitting waiting for deer to be pushed their way. they did not see deer also.new jersey hunters got 2 bucks for 6 days the first week off their drives.

I hunt in a unit where most people say there are no deer but it doesn’t seem as bad as what you described. If you only saw 13 deer in 82 hours that is less than 0.16 deer per hour. I only hunted 10 hours in archery season but saw 8 deer or 0.80 deer per hour.

Dick Bodenhorn

germain, this is what i am seeing too.sgl in williamsport is unreal on feed for deer but to see a pile of poo, you are very lucky.small game same thing.
JUST TO MUCH HUNTING PRESSURE OVER YEARS .best habitat in world and very few deer..............