Not faulting the hunters persay, I know the game commission sets the standards and seasons, but just as you said we did exactly what they asked. That is my point, we as hunters knocked the population down, not the game commission, they didn't use the tags, we did. And yes we can't control the other 40 hunters I agree with that. Let me ask this, If the Game commission said that if you buy a license you can harvest as many deer as you want no limit, we would all agree that it is ridiculous, but there would be hunters here in PA that would shoot or atleast shoot at every deer they saw. My point was that you or I may not have used our doe tags this year cause we are using our own conservation methods but there is probably somebody that is complaining about the deer numbers that would.

Coming from a guy who has complained ad nauseum about the button buck kill I'm surprised you admitted to the apalling number of bb's you killed. For a guy who claims to care about our herd you sure dont practice whay you preach!

Id call that being a hypocrite!

Oh and as for some evidence that Alts plan is working, some just arrived at my door Monday. Here are some stats from the latest issue of Field and Stream....

Winter 2002 before AR..... 2% of deer captured for the buck study were adult bucks, BB's to adult bucks were 15 to 1 and adult does to adult bucks were 14 to 1

Winter 2004 after just 2 years of AR...... 13% of deer captured were adult bucks, BB's to adult bucks were 2 to 1 and adult does to adult bucks were 2 to 1

and all in spite of Darryl and company in their efforts to exterminate the little bucks!!!!

But, I encourage all of you to read the whole article, not just my little excerpt. It is not my goal to mislead with bits and pieces of the picture. There's already been enough of that here.

Field and Stream, July 2004, page 28

Please read the whole article because our own bean counter will undoubdtedly pick it apart by using "parts" of the information offered.

BT, what was the number of antlered bucks harvested in 2001 and 2003? Also, what was the number of antlerless deer taken in those seasons? I guess I'm asking if the buck harvest increased or decreased from 2001 to 2003, and same for antlerless harvests. I looked on the PGC web site but could not find the actual numbers.

I never complain about the number of BB being harvested. I simply point out that because we harvest such a high percentage of our buck as anterless deer, AR is doomed to fail and by implementing AR while trying to reduce the OW herd by 50%, Alt guaranteed AR would fail.


The anterless harvest has included 21-23% BB for the past 40 years and it has had no adverse effct on the health of the herd. The fact that we were able to harvest 6 BB proves that the herd is very healthy and productive in our area.


Those stats only apply to the deer that were captured and do not reflect the ratios in the rest of the herd. For ,example, in 2002 we carried over 80K adult buck to 2003. With a 10 :1 ratio we would have had over 800K adult doe , but we actually had less than 500K. The dramatic change in the ratio of BB to adult buck may mean that the number of BB decreased significantly , which would mean this falls buck harvest will be even lower than last year. Therefore, non conclusions can be draw based on the data provided on the captured deer. The only survey that matters is the annual harvest and the buck havest is down is down 30% in just 2 years.

Here is the link to the harvest data for 1915- 2003.

http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/v...a=493&q=159232

Buck harvests droped from 203 K in 2001 to 142K in 2003. Anterless harvest increased from 283K in 2001 to 323 K in 2003. BB harvests increased from 43K in 1999 to 77K in 2002.

BT, you should rethink what this post actually means.

How can this be proof that Alt's plan is working, as you say? For this to prove anything, you would have to assign some meaning to the numbers. And you have to take the study as a whole, you can't pick and choose, saying some numbers are accurate, but other are not. If one segemnt of this is not representative of the population, than all other parts must be in question as well.

For example, in 2001, there were approximately 203,000 bucks killed, which, if we are to believe these numbers mean anything, there were 2,842,000 adult does just for those bucks killed, plus 14 adult does for every buck that was not killed. These numbers do not include male and female fawns, so a conservative estimate would put Pa's deer herd at well over 5 million animals for the 2001 season. Are you saying that there were over 5 million deer in Pa's woods that year? If you don't believe that, than you cannot believe these numbers have any value.

Also, by working through this as you would have us do to prove Alt's plan is working, we find that in 2003, there were approximately 142,000 bucks killed, and, according to your "proof" only 2 adult does for every buck. That would mean only 284,000 does for the harvested bucks. Since we don't know how many deer were spared, we'll assume only 50 percent of the adult males were killed, and therefore, another 284,000 adult does for those bucks, again, going by the data you say proves Alts plan is working.

For us to believe that these numbers prove Alt's plan is working, we must believe in the numbers first and foremost. To do that, we must believe that approximately 4 million deer were taken between the time period of 2002 to 2004, which is when the data you provided was collected.

Do you really believe that there were over 5 million deer in 2001?

Do you really believe that there were nearly 4 million deer taken between 2001 and 2003?

Do you truly believe that anyone could accomplish a doe to buck ratio reduction from 14 to 1 to 2 to 1 in just two seasons?

For you, or anyone to believe these numbers mean anything, let alone "prove" anything, you would have to believe each of those statements I just posted.

Actually, the only thing your post "proves" is that this data is more than just a little flawed. Also, if this is what Alt is using for his program, it proves his program is failing, because any study or program that misses the mark as much as this did, is a tremendous failure. It also "proves" that, if you believe this is proof of anything, you are what con artists call an easy mark, and will believe just about anything.

I'm really not trying to be confrontational with you, but to post what you did as "proof" Alt's plan is working was incredibly careless. Actually, if he is putting any faith in these numbers, it proves just the opposite, it "proves" the methods are very flawed and it "proves" they don't have a clue what is going on.

Sorry BT, but I think you shot yourself in the foot with this one.

BT, I guess I should have asked you this question first, without jumping to my own interpretation of those numbers. How do these numbers you posted prove Alt's plan is working? What do these figures mean to you, how do they convince you things are on the right track?

NJB

All this means is whay I've been trying to say all along. That we are headed in the right general direction. Yes, these results are from the capture area and results are undoubdtedly different form DMU to DMU. Heck, they're going to be different from property to property. It can never be expected to be an exact science and good deer management by it's nature has to be an evolving process.


The last paragraph of the article was particularly interesting. (dont have it in front of me now but I'll paraphrase) It started out saying that game management agencies from all over are watching our "Pennsylvania experiment" cautiously. My first thought was that maybe some biologists out there were also concerned over the higher doe kills but it turns out that the skepticism among ALts peers is about whether or not Pa can use the reward of bigger bucks to sell the idea of killing enough does!

DD

Once again you continue to prove that with a set of numbers ands a calculator you can prove just about anything you want.

Lets look again....

OK from those two statements, the adult bucks that survived IN THE CAPTURE AREA increased in 6.5 times. Now the if the 04 bb numbers are only twice what the adult buck numbers are that means the sheer number only went down from 30 bbs per 2 adult bucks to 26 per 13 adult bucks.
Sounds good to me!

And just as it is valid to not assume that these numbers played out through the whole state it is also just as valid to not assume that the light buck kill this past season is the result of AR alone. The weather, which can be a huge factor was not at all conducive to a big kill this past rifle season.

All I have been trying to say is that we need to give it a chance to work.

One more thing DD, I just can't imagine how you can claim you care a lick about our herd when you willingly contribute to one problem that we can only solve through education and a change in the culture of the Pa deer hunte: the killing of bb's. Kinda makes me think you want Alts plan to fail and you're willing to do what you can to help it do just that!

So, I guess Gary Alt hasn't ruined your deer woods yet but it appears you and your gang are trying to do just that.

There is simply no way you can reach that conclusion based on the data provided. You have no way of knowing how much the adult buck population increased or how much the BB population decreased.

But here is a honest and accurate assessment of Alt's plan,whose primary goal was to reduce the OWDD.. The OWDD increased from 959K in 1999 to 1.130M in 2003. So even though Alt increased the length of the anterless season by 250 % while increasing the anterless alllocations to over 1 M. , herd reduction was still a miserable failure.

At the same time Alt said that there would be more and bigger bucks than we have ever seen before in PA. but, the buck harvest decreased to harvest levels last seen in in 1985 when 136k buck were harvested. So while HR was a miserable failure , reducing the buck harvest was grand success.

BTW, the goal for 5C ,where we hunt, is 6 DPSM. We harvested 7 deer on .05 SM ,so we are doing excatly what Alt wanted us to do. If and when we reach the goal of 6 DPSM, our harvest last year will be twice the harvest for an entire SM in 5 C. If that happens 6 hunters will quit hunting in PA.

BT, my point was that you can't honestly draw any conclusion about what direction the herd is going from those numbers. To assume any direction, you have to put some faith in those numbers. It's pretty obvious that they are way off the mark, and are not even a little bit credible. If you want to believe what they tell you about the direction the herd is going regarding male deer, you also have to put the same amount of faith in what they tell you about the female segment of the population. I just have a hard time believing the over 5 million deer in 2001, and killing nearly 4 million in two seasons part. And unless you are willing to stand behind that part of the study, you can't put any faith in the other part of those numbers. This is really no evidence that the plan is working, but more like evidence that they need to re-evaluate how they collect data.

That study area must be a large lease where they decided to only shoot does one year and leave all the bucks, or it could be a place where the farmer whacked all the does on a crop damage permit, who knows. What we do know from these numbers is that they are not credible for use througout the state, and therfore cannot be used as evidence that Alt's plan is working.

Without check stations, you may never have reliable data that indicates whether it's working or not.