My answer was smart-assed because yours was condescending, both to me and game biologists. In fact it implied that all game biologists are incompetent or mouthpieces for their agency.
Game biologists are humans, so naturally vary considerably in their competence and integrity. I know this partly because I was a wildlife biology major, many years ago, and even though I never made my living that way it acquainted me with biologists and their methods, partly through helping on more than one field study. Two of my favorite examples of incompetence or “paid results” are the Yellowstone Park biologist who claimed bison never migrated out of the park in winter until plowed roads and snowmobile trails appeared in the 20th century—part of a report that appeared while I was still in college. A more recent example is the report from a California university, funded by an animal-rights group, claiming that cattle grazing on prairie-dog infested ground gained MORE weight than cattle on PD-free ground. (The general rule among range specialists is a loss of 50% of available grass to prairie dogs.)
There are also some biologists with very limited outlooks. When mule deer populations started crashing in the early 1970’s, after decades of overall increases, often massive, biologists of course started looking at possible reasons why. I got into a discussion about this at a convention of the Mule Deer Foundation a number of years ago, held in conjunction with a meeting of western deer biologists. There was general agreement about the overall causes—including habitat changes such as subdivisions in mountain foothills and browse growing into mature forests, an increase in coyotes due to the cessation of the use of 1080, and a rise in populations of other big game animals, including whitetails and elk—
except from one guy. He insisted very different reasons caused the mule population to drop in his particular area of Colorado, which seemed very odd, since the drop was so wide-spread and simultaneous. (Localism is also popular among many hunters. In a Campfire thread a few years ago a hunter claimed that the well-documented increase in whitetail numbers since World War Two was BS, because he lived in a part of—yes—Pennsylvania where the population had dropped.)
Game biologists sure don’t agree on everything—during that same mule deer gathering two gray-haired biologists had to be separated in the lobby of the hotel during an argument over the effect of coyotes. In fact I’ve found game biologists and engineers to disagree more often (and vehemently) than just about any other professionals. However, most of them are dedicated to trying to find out why game populations go up and down, and willing to look intensively at all sorts of possible factors.
Game biologists don’t just work for government agencies or pay-for-results universities. Some work for hunting groups, especially those that advocate for various animals, or private landowners, and are actually looking for reasons and solutions, rather than creating propaganda or covering their employer’s butts.
They also must actually quantify their results, to provide their conclusions with back-up data. This means they can’t just say “a lot of deer,” but must provide reasoned estimates of numbers. Luckily, methods of making estimates have improved considerably in recent decades, one reason we out here in the West will eventually have a grizzly bear hunting season. Bait stations that provide hair for DNA testing have provided a far better idea of how many bears are out there, though anti-hunting groups continue to deny the results, using phrases like “not enough bears” (which is remarkably similar to “a lot of deer”).
“A lot of deer” also doesn’t mean much: Is it 10 deer per square mile, or 20 or 50 or 100? A whitetail biologist here in Montana did document over 100 whitetails per square mile on the Yellowstone River bottoms in the eastern part of the state, which is indeed “a lot of deer.” They also document the degree and type of over-browsing resulting from a lot of deer. But because you’ve flushed sufficient grouse in areas with “a lot of deer,” you somehow suspect field reports of deer impacts on grouse nesting are false.
When researching biological game studies for articles I look at a lot of ‘em from various parts of the country (or even the world), and from various sources, not just game department biologists but those employed by hunting groups (whether Ducks Unlimited or the Mule Deer Foundation), universities well-known for their competent wildlife biology departments rather than providing what a study-funder wants, or private landowners actually looking for solutions.
When I did a short search yesterday on the effects of deer browsing on ruffed grouse nesting, similar results showed up from a wide area of the country from the East Coast to the upper Midwest. Also, the field studies were done by biologists working for various entities, not just state game departments. This corroborated what my West Virginia biologist friend suggested—as I guess it would, since he’s a pretty thorough professional.
