DID ANYONE HEAR ABOUT ANYTHING ON THE COMPANY THAT IS COMING OUT TO COUNT THE DEER IN PA. TO DETERMINE THE AMOUNT OF DOE TAGS AND THE SEASON LENGTH IN PA.

yea greek i heard about that on the news a few days ago. the company is from minn. i think. there going to use helicopers and some kind of heat sensors to count them. i am still trying to find out more information about it, but right now thats all i know. you whould think the pgc whould post something about it. its not good when pa has to use heat sensors to count deer, a spot light and a tank of gas was all you needed 5 years ago. lol peace

The aerial counts started this past weekend. I hope whoever is conducting the tests are quailified and that the equipment can tell the difference between deer and coyotes or even people out walking around.

Are they going to post the count numbers as they start to do this? I also wonder what areas of the state they are going to cover. They can't cover the entire thing of course, I just hope they hit those areas that seem to have fewer deer and not just the heavily populated areas trying to support their case of more doe tags.

Fish and Game in Delaware did night counts with copters last summer. There was a State park few miles down road they flew over. Showed some real skewed ratios. They did the counts before they finalized the 2004 Deer regs.

What do you mean by skewed ratios? You don't mean doe/buck do you, I wouldn't think they could tell from a copter.

MY QUESTION IS HOW DO THEY KNOW THERE NOT COUNTING THE SAME DEER OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN BECAUSE YOU KNOW HOW 1 DEER WILL TURN INTO 10

First off, the company is from Idaho. You can check them out on their webpage. Vision Air Research

The know what they are doing, unlike a lot of posters here. Where do you guys get your information?? Do a little research on the topic before making any assumptions.

VAR is using the same technology that the Army uses in the video(s) that we have all watched as they bomb terrorist in the hills of Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between a deer and a coyote and even people.

DCNR will be releasing topo maps on the web showing the results of the inventory... ONCE IT IS DONE. DCNR has no information from the contractor at this time.

There are a number of newspaper articles on the aerials being done. Here is just one of them.
"We can see dogs, we can see a deer's ear, we can tell what's a puddle, what's a stick, what's a rock," said Susan Bernatas, president and founder of Boise-based Vision Air Research.

I heard that they scan the landscape in a very deliberate grid system and then enter the results in a computer and the actual deer numbers are figured. that's what I heard anyway. They can supposedly differentiate between the different animals.

livbucks,
The utilize GPS to determine their flight paths. Using airplanes not helicopters. The plane flys just fast enough that it does not stall out (as slow as it can go with out falling from the sky). Video is recorded during the flight and is georeferenced (they know the location via GPS). The deer numbers are determined simply by counting the number of deer they see.