The Great Outdoors
Getting disgusted talking about deer It’s fishing season and I am sure some of you, but not all, are tired of reading about deer management.
Quite honestly, my emotions lean more toward disgust rather than fatigue. It seems unbelievable to me that somewhere in the last five years we couldn’t find some middle ground and get some quiet time. Quite the contrary.
My fellow outdoor writers are continuing to pour out columns demanding the need to further reduce our deer herd. I suppose I’m responding to them as much as trying to keep you informed of the hottest topic in this state.
The harvest numbers came out for the 2005 season and many of us were taken back a bit. A miniscule reduction in the buck harvest from 125,000 in 2004 to 120,000 to 2005 has more than a few scratching their heads. The antlerless harvest fell from approximately 280,000 in 2004 to 233,000 in 2005. The PGC states these numbers are quite understandable. We had a corresponding reduction in overall license sales and doe allocations, and thus the reason for the overall decline. Frankly, I am not picking up what they are putting down.
If we examine the buck harvest at 120,000 versus the number of licenses sold at approximately 850,000 we find a relationship of one out of every seven hunters tagged a buck. I just spoke at a meeting and the ratio was one out of every eight killed a buck. “Let’s see a show of hands for who killed a buck this year” is not a scientific sampling by any means. Change the ratio to one out of every eight and the buck kill drops to 106,000. If my emails are any indication, I’d say one out of every 10 killed a buck this year. However, none of this speculation is honest deer management, which only proves my point for the need of a credible method of gathering harvest numbers. Let us not forget that accurate population numbers are derived from accurate harvest numbers. The standing herd number is reversed engineered from the harvest number.
Let’s look at it from a different angle. There are 45,000 total square miles in PA and I’d say about 35,000 are huntable. If we take the overall harvest of about 355,000 and divide by 35,000 square miles, we get a harvest of about 10 dead deer for every square mile in the state. Using just the buck harvest, we get 3.4 bucks harvested for every huntable square mile in the state. Sound believable?
Taking another approach, let’s think back to the infrared flyovers. This technology revealed large areas of PA without any deer. In other major areas less than 10 deer per square were found. It is difficult to conceive harvesting 10 deer per square mile if the existing herd was less than 10 deer per square mile. Something just doesn’t jibe.
By now some of you are thinking that deer do not exist evenly across the landscape so this simple analysis doesn’t work. Alright, let’s say the harvest above Route 80 was two bucks and three antlerless deer for every square mile. The rest of the state would need to pick up the slack. I don’t know the actual square miles above Route 80, but using approximate numbers the harvest south of Route 80 would climb to approximately thirteen deer harvested for every square mile. Does this sound believable?
There is one more factor that could be contributing to this questionable situation. This year there was enormous pressure put on the deer in the Special Regulations areas. A quick analysis reveals almost 15,000 bucks and 36,000 antlerless deer harvested from three small geographic areas. This condition would pump up the overall numbers and not be representative of what hunters sensed across the state.
Let us not forget the PGC will be in court very shortly defending their deer reduction program. This year’s harvest numbers indicate a stabilization of our deer population. I don’t think our sporting class is buying what the PGC is selling. The general consensus across this is state is that the herd is continuing to decline.
All of the deer controversies can be put to bed with a pilot deer check station program. Dead carcasses tell no lies. We would be on our way to credible numbers and a credible deer program. Don’t blame me for continuously writing about deer. It is the PGC that has caused this fiasco and the press just follows the controversies.
I can’t speak for you, but I can’t wait to beat the water to a froth with my fly rod.
Jim Slinsky is the host and producer of the “Outdoor Talk Network”, a nationally syndicated, outdoor-talk radio program. For a station near you or to contact Jim, visit his website at www.outdoortalknetwork.com