Be careful what you wish for

[Doc]

For all the people who believe that the deer population has to be severely cut, I'd like to offer a bit of a different perspective. Deer population management is a pretty tough thing, and when the game management departments get real serious about thinning the herd, there are always many pockets of hunting land that over-shoot a bit. For example, in my area there has been all kinds of extra antlerless permits given out for the last couple of years, and it has had a devastating effect where I hunt. Yet because the management area is so large and conditions vary so much, there are huge numbers of permits issued this year again. This means that the scarcity of deer is likely going to be a long-term situation. Amazingly enough, just 12 miles to our south, populations are still quite high. It appears that the public hunting areas are the ones that get hit particularly hard, and unfortunately, that is the area that I have hunted for the last 40 years and is the area that is most accessible for me.

So when they start talking about the need for cutting the herd and start issuing large numbers of antlerless permits for that purpose, keep in mind that it is possible and perhaps even likely that they will over-shoot their goals in your hunting area. It's not really something that is anyone's fault. It's just the nature of practicality that every game department faces.

I do sometimes question their goals for ideal deer density and I'm sure that all the considerations are not necessarily with the hunter in mind or even the carrying capacity of the habitat. I also recognize the pressures that they're under from non-hunting organizations and businesses and I'm sure that population goals are not necessarily to maximize herd sizes within the abilities of the habitat. That doesn't exactly make me too happy, but that again is just the practicalities that game management organizations face. Unfortunately, in my area it has had devastating impacts and has made my hunting pretty bleak.

Even though the deer take from last year was down considerably, the issuing of permits continues at a high level. Their reason for last year's decline was the bad weather that occurred on certain key days of the season. For sure the weather on opening day and some of the weekend days was pretty bad, I'm not sure that they factored in the additional permit numbers that should have helped increase the deer take in spite of the weather. Well, we'll see what this year shows. I can already tell you that the take this year will be significantly down in my locality, but it remains to be seen how the rest of my area and the rest of the state fares.

Doc