Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting If your state has a "DMAP" program, please let me know your thoughts...

If your state has a "DMAP" program, please let me know your thoughts in regards to the programs success, failures, etc..

Georgia is looking to go to this and I fear the "WORST."

The upper half of Georgia is broken up into much smaller, read as usually less than 500 acre, tract than is the lower/southern section.

Georgia has a very weak and largely void enforcement system.

Georgia has very liberal bag limits coupled with an extremely long season (& long modern firearms season).

Plus, in the last 3 to 5 years, Georgia's deer population has almost shrunk to 50% of what it was a decade ago.

So now the DNR/WRD is looking to implement a Deer Management Assistance Program but in place of an overall management system implemented and enforced by the state wildlife officials themselves.

Worried...

Most states have the opposite problem these days: too many deer. Since most wildlife agencies don't really manage wildlife except on designated Wildlife Management Areas, the landowners by default become the de facto managers. About all that most state wildlife agencies do is set limits on seasons and harvest.

Some states, like Texas, have very effective landowner outreach programs that provide assistance to landowners who want to intensify wildlife management on the lands that they own or control. As in most government programs, the devil is in the details. DMAPs don't automatically guarantee that deer populations will increase or decrease or that the quality of the deer harvested will be enhanced.

Since you stated that the Georgia DNR/WRD apparently provides little in the way of guidance or enforcement, enlisting the cooperation of landowners to actively manage wildlife on their lands may very well be a good thing. I assume that Georgia, like most eastern states, has very little public land. Therefore, to the extent that wildlife species benefit from active management, the management has to be done by or for the landowner.

PA has implemented DMAP tags for antlerless deer for some time.

The DMAP allocation is somewhat separate from the "normal" statewide doe tag allocations each year, subject to tweaking on an annual basis. Each Wildlife Management Unit (WMU) receives its own doe allocation and DMAPs are not "figured in" for the overall WMU allocation.

Seems to work fairly well for those engaged in agriculture wishing to control local deer numbers.

Biggest complaint, is over DMAPs on public ground, primarily State Forest lands. Many hunters don't like more doe being taken via DMAP tags issued for SF lands, so it's become an annual fuss-a-thon.

Despite the continual fussing, we generally average around 300,000 deer taken each year, with roughly 800,000 deer hunters each year, out of 900,000+ hunting licenses sold.

There is also a Red Tag program for agricultural lands severely-affected by deer numbers, that runs into the spring.

Arkansas has a DMAP program.. the club next to one of my properties is on it and I can tell you it SUCKS... In Arkansas you can kill 6 doe (in my zone) if you wish..and I do my part to shoot them. The club next to my place gets over 30 extra doe tags on top of the 6 they get with their license... they can start shooting them with firearms opening day of archery season...Oct 1 thru Feb 28th. Before they went to this program you could count on killing a decent buck off our three stands every year. I attribute this to having quite a few of the big breeding does to bring the bucks in.... not any more..( we have not killed a buck off this place in 3 years) if a doe crosses your foodplot it is a very small yearling and is nervous as heck. If a doe crosses their food plots it gets shot. I like a lot of the programs that the Game and fish has came out with... but I am not fond of this one.

I'd much rather here the op's thoughts about it in 3 to 4 yrs. Our deer herd here has been cut in half,and our hunters views on EVERYTHING divided...

Virginia has one - it seems more targeted at the urban areas where the deer are learning to live depending on food sources provided by suburban living.

Our DMAP tags are seperate from the regular tags on your license, 2 antlered/4 antlerless, and can be used from Sept through March for does.

Frankly, I don't see a lot of DMAP tags used after the rut. I hunt with a deer managemnt group for Fairfax County, 20 parks have teams in them to cull deer in the parks. Public outcry varies, we had five stands vandallized in the past two weeks, and each year has it's own set of public problems. The County Biologist is a huge fan of the DMAP concept and IMHO, does a very good job of managing over 500 hunters on 20 sites throughout the County. We are starting to see a steady state population in the park we hunt, and the roadkill numbers in our area are finally down.

NOVA, from what I hear and see, seems to think as a whole that the deer population still needs trimmed back further.

I'd vote that the DMAP program is working, we are maintaining a healthy population, and will be sustaining our hunting oppertunities for years to come.

Exactly right. Seen same thing. I love to see game. Hate to see the nervousness. No wonder there is so many against hunting. I am a hunter but where will it stop?

In North Carolina in the 90's I was in a club that had high numbers but no quality, after ten or so yrs of whacking and stacking under dmap the club started killing quality deer. I thought we were wiping out the deer by killing forty a weekend on 6000 acres, but still today they average 6-15 deer a weekend. Lots of nice bucks there now considering its all cutover land.

I am from PA. I think dubePA covered it pretty well. I live right across from a State Park which abuts State Gamelands and another State Park. The one State Park issues DMAP tags. There are deer there, but between the safety zones in the park, housing developments scattered in and around the park, and the huge expanse of the area, few DMAP tags are filled. Like any large tract of hunting land, the parks and state forests have their little pockets where the deer hang out. It will never be like 20 years ago where you see 50-60 deer run past you the first day. I think the extra regular tags and hunting time knock down the herd and DMAP has little effect on it.

I have a question for the folks who say their deer herds have declined drastically in the last few years, including the OP.

Is that what you think, or what you know from actual data? If be very surprised to learn of any state in the southeast whose deer herd had declined 50%.

GA DNR reduced the doe days this year closing doe season from !2-1 until 12-26. It did no good, anyone wanting to shoot does just shot more of them earlier. Deer sightings are down where I hunt in GA.

The DNR has admitted that our deer populations are way down and you alt to see the "Boots On The Grounds" report of deer populations from around the state. ALL saying "DEER NUMBERS ARE DOWN."

10 does and 2 bucks for WAY TOO LONG for the number of people that hunt in Georgia.

I live in NY and we have a DMAP program available to larger land tract owners. Based on the application it is targeted to farmers but others can apply. What I have seen is that it comes down how the land is hunted has the larger impact. One area of our hunting land is surrounded by neighbors who do not practice QDMA and basically shoot any deer seen. As a result all we typically see in that area during gun season are yearlings to 1.5 year olds. Another area is generally hunted more in line with a QDMA mentality. As a result we typically see more mature deer, but I wouldn't say we see more deer.

Smalljawbasser: Actual data? In PA? What the heck are you talking about? The PA Game Commission has NEVER used actual data for deer population since I have been hunting. They (PGC) use an "Estimate system" to get the deer kill and to figure the deer herd density. The PGC will never admit they screwed up, but I noticed they(PGC)have been trying to back off on the doe kill.

Same here in Georgia... We have roughly 300,000 hunters and the DNR/WRD calls via phone survey 2500 to figure out our harvest data estimates. It's a crock of crap! But they deem it is scientific and proven...

I would be too. In most places in the southeast the herd needs to decline by 50% or more. In the 15 years or so that Mississippi has had essentially unlimited doe shooting the quality of bucks has gone through the roof. I remember many years under the bucks only laws where I'd see two or three bucks a year, usually spikes, and I'd shoot them all. A 4 point with a 10" mainbeam was a trophy. The herd was so massively out of whack that you'd see hundreds of does per buck, it screwed up the rut too because there weren't enough bucks to do the breeding so does got bred on their second or third cycle which spread out the rut. That propagated itself through the generations to where the rut is all spread out now, fawns are dropped over a 4-5 month period. I saw three fawns last week with spots, none of them were over 30 lbs.

Hunters like to see huge numbers of deer but truth be told the herd would be much healthier with less deer. It would mean the end to hunters seeing 10 deer per hunt but you have to ask yourself if the goal is to manage for the welfare and health of the deer population and habitat or for maximum hunting opportunities. You can't really have both. Being overrun with deer might be great for hunters, but it's not the best thing for the deer or the habitat.

Since we have participants here from 'bout every state in the Union, can anyone name one state whose game agency uses something other than estimates derived from field data and some sort of hunter inputs (kill reports), estimated pre season/post season herd numbers, etc?

Antlerless tag allocations in PA have gone up/down per WMU for several years, based on projections for that particular WMU as to habitat conditions (improving, worsening, about the same), estimated preseason deer numbers, etc.

Doesn't matter what recommendations the biolgists come up with each year on doe tag allocations per each WMU, because the Board always fusses with them, usually to appease hunters from their districts that think they don't have enough deer there.

Which means the allocations are often lowered from the recommendations that were offered.

Makes sense, doesn't it? Biologists spend months doing through the data, make recommendations based on their findings, then the Board throws out the recommendations and "wings it" based on the grumbles from some hunters.

Crow hunter that spread out rut is what we're seeing in some places of NC. Late fawns, and fresh scrapes and rubs. Last year I saw a defined rut, this year I didn't. Hunted the same time period , morning and afternoon.

Yes, the deer herd in Georgia is down significantly from a decade ago. This may not be the norm in other southern states but it's true for Georgia.

It's interesting how times and attitudes change. When I was a young boy hunting in the 70s, does were sacred and no one would dream of shooting one. That sentiment held until sometime in the late 80s. Then everyone, seemingly over night, became a game biologist and thought that doe numbers must be drastically reduced to insure that big bucks would be around. Apparently public sentiment is starting to shift again to a much more conservative approach with regard to doe harvest.

I'm not sure why deer numbers have declined in Georgia (many factors) but I agree that it is so. And as a side note, the decade in which I saw the most good to great bucks was also a time when doe numbers were rather high. I know, it's only anecdotal evidence but I saw it with my own two eyes.

Everyone around my parts buys into the whole, "It's the coyotes."

I think it's the heavy hunting pressure, 10 does - 2 bucks and simple fact that there just isn't a large enforcement presence in Georgia by WRD LE anymore.