The Three-Minute Outdoorsman: Wild Science from Magnetic Deer to Mumbling Carp

12. Can Game Managers Control the Number of Deer?

t h e t h r e e - m i n u t e o u t d o o r s m a n 56 ened” subspecies, irrespective of how distinct they are, simply because they have a taxonomic name. That’s unfortunate given how few of the thirty-eight are truly distinct. However, there is some hope. Although few biologists today actually name subspecies , many subspecies are tested with modern genetic methods, and we are finding that only a small portion of subspecies are genetically discrete. We hope that taxonomic names will someday reflect more meaningful divisions of species in nature. 12 can game managers control the number of deer? In some areas, the deer herd is out of control. This is especially true in some eastern states and in many rural or metropolitan areas, where abundant food and lack of predators have raised numbers to well beyond what the habitat can support. Habitat destruction, damage to crops and ornamental plants, and deervehicle collisions are all a result of overabundant deer. For many game species, managers often adjust seasons and bag limits to reduce the harvest of certain age and sex classes. Some states specify slots for fish, roosters-only take for pheasants, and limits on the number of hen mallards that can be harvested by duck hunters. These are all designed to keep populations at a level that will sustain harvest, by protecting vulnerable sex and age classes deemed most important for reproduction. In the case of deer, various types of strategies are used to manage the herd. Some states use antler-point restrictions (APR), designed to yield greater representation of older bucks. There is merit to this, as often older bucks have “proved” their genetics and are the ones we want siring fawns; if they’re killed as one-and-ahalf -year olds, they will not get the chance. We have also seen the A L L T H I N G S D E E R 57 use of special seasons or intensive-harvest areas for does. The most effective way to control the growth of the deer herd in areas where there are more than can naturally be sustained is to reduce the doe population. Alternatively, when there are fewer deer than desired, only bucks are allowed to be harvested, owing to the fact that relatively few bucks father most of the young. Managers must balance the harvest, area by area, to reach an appropriate level of deer abundance (which depends on which stakeholder group you ask). The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources decided to try to manage deer via its Earn-A-Buck (EAB) program. Basically , a hunter had to register an antlerless deer to be able to fill a buck tag. I heard quite a few complaints, and one of my Wisconsin hunting friends even asked if I knew where he could “borrow” a Minnesota doe. There was relatively little support in Wisconsin for the EAB program and the October antlerless hunt (which get bucks spooky before the gun season), and they were discontinued in 2011. In some areas the population size was at the preset goal and didn’t need to be reduced by continued pressure on does. In areas where the population is still considered to be too high, lots of antlerless tags were made available. A scientific assessment of the EAB program was published in 2010 in the Journal of Wildlife Management by Timothy Van Deelen from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues from the Wisconsin DNR. In addition to the EAB program, they also considered the use of opportunity-based supplemental antlerless -only seasons (SAOSs). For example, there were four-day (December only) and eight-day (four days in October plus four in December) SAOSs. The effects were judged at the level of Wisconsin’s Deer Management Units (DMUs), which are areas delimited years ago and used to monitor populations and harvest. In addition, they factored in variation in the amount of forest or farmland habitat, deer and hunter densities, winter severity the previous year, and amount of public land available for hunting. As one can appreciate, figuring out the effects of programs like EAB is actually rather complicated unless you know these things. For t h e t h r e e - m i n u t e o u t d o o r s m a n 58 example, fewer bucks might...