I was not complaining about the number of deer or the number of licenses allocated. If an area has a low population, I agree with reducing the kill. But that can be accomplished by reducing the number of antlerless licenses issued instead of reducing the number of days. I have had the opportunity to discuss this with Chris Rosenberry and Brett Wallingford. When the switch was made from 2 weeks concurrent to the 6 days, license allocations were increased by nearly 20% to keep harvest levels the same. If the PGC wanted to kill 3000 deer in a WMu, they could give out 3000 licenses and give the hunter from Sept 1 to Jan 1. Currently the harvest rate is between 25- 30% so they need to issue about 12,000 tags to kill 3000 doe. If a hunter is given more time success rates should improve thus resulting in a lower number of tags needing to be issued. The original thought of DMAP was to lower the deep population in the state forest lands and other larger private tracts to allow the forest to recover from the over browsing that had been going on for decades. The landowners were supposed to make forest improvements during the time of lower deer population. This is why the PGC has started using Prescribed fire but the higher ups at DCNR are still anti-fire and are not using it.
I dont agree with Rosenberry on many issues, doe allocations being one of them. Between him and Diefenbach theres so much misinformation being used to manage our deer that im surprised either have jobs quite frankly. Duanes 2001 study on fawn predation and Rosenberry's willingness to overlook coyotes as a non issue pissed me off to no end the last couple years.
DMAP should never have been issued on state forest land. Their FLIR study spelled out deer numbers pretty well. Deer were not a factor regarding forest conditions. They played their game with fencing, but when the dust settle DCNR enrollment reports pointed not to deer but competeing vegetation as the number one factor in forest health. Points directly at their inability to manage forestry, looking at dollars instead of forest health.
We'll agree to disagree on season length, which hunter efficiency/season length is born out with our archers. Tag allotment does indeed spell out total kill, but our GC has their head up their ass and stuck on failed science. There are many factors in coming up with projected harvest goals, but the weight given to science hasnt born results in health of our forests, and until those in charge figure that out and change, they will meet greater resistance from not only hunters but the legislature. Hence why youre seeing the PGC's game of concurrent and non concurrent WMU's and hunters screaming for 3 day, or elimination of does season altogether for a few seasons in some WMU's. The GC can get things back in order but they wont. Theyll stay the course and play politics with season length and allocation to appease hunters, but again when the results are in you still have pissed off hunters and a GC who could give two schits what they think.
