State Lands Vs. Antlerless Permits

[Doc]

Well, once again, as the first part of archery season closes and the first couple of days of gun season is now behind me, I have noticed that the deer population on the stretch of public land that I hunt is exceptionally small. And yet I and all the other masses of hunters crowded into this land have a pocket full of antlerless permits. The other strange thing is that the deer take numbers for the entire wildlife management unit will undoubtedly again be quite high. How can this be? The answer is simple, the private land (primarily posted land) still has large numbers of deer, and hunters on these lands are having no problems filling all their tags and inflating the take numbers so that it appears that all is well within the wildlife management unit. The last couple of days, I have been conducting an informal and un-official survey of hunters that I have run into while hunting as well as visiting the parking lots at the end of each day to see what the take has been and what other hunter opinions are on the subject. So far, I have yet to find anyone who doesn’t agree that they have seen very few deer and that their antlerless permits will, most likely, go unfilled again this year. As available hunting land gets scarcer and scarcer, more hunters turn to the public hunting grounds, bringing their armfull of permits with the intention of shooting whatever deer gets in front of them. This has been going on for a few years now and the impact is now convincingly showing up.

Since I am one who is relagated to hunting public lands, I have been thinking a lot about what might be done to fix the problem. First of all, I am interested to know if there are other people who hunt public lands who have experienced the same situation. It is possible, but I would think highly unlikely, that this phenomenon is only happening on our local piece of hunting grounds. I would like to hear other opinions on this.

I think that there is a possible solution, and I would like to get some general opinions from others, to kind of throw darts at the idea and see if there are any shortcomings that I am not seeing. My thought is that each of the state hunting lands could be given a code that would be reported if the deer was taken on those lands. In other words, if your deer was taken on one of the public hunting areas, a location code would be used to help establish the actual hunting take of each state land area. With that information, the DEC could determine which areas are being over-harvested. When it is determined that a particular state hunting land parcel is being overharvested, the DEC could make all or some of the antlerless permits void for those parcels. This would be one way to fine tune the management of deer lands and produce a more uniform and equitable herd size without a lot of additional costs. No longer would hunters be going into lands where herds have been decimated, armed with excessive amounts of permits.

If this idea is as simple and lacking in problems as I currently see it, my next challenge will be to try to figure out someone who has the authority to propose this thought. First of all, though, I would really like to have some input from other members of this forum. Do any of you experience the same problem with deer populations on public lands that I do? And do you think that what I have proposed has any merit or any problems? These questions are primarily directed toward New York hunters, but there may be other states with similar circumstances and I would like to hear your opinions as well.

Doc

[HuntingInMaine]

Re: State Lands Vs. Antlerless Permits

I am not in NY, and the following are just my thoughts, so I may be wrong.

If there are a lot of hunters in one area, then the deer are naturally going to move to an area that has less pressure (posted land). The state could follow the program you are proposing and close an area of state land that doesn't have a large amount of deer for one year. The deer will move back into the area and then it will be reopened. The hunters move back in (and probably in even larger numbers because they know the land has been closed to hunting for one year), the influx of hunters will once again push the deer back onto posted land. You might have a week of good hunting, but it won't take long for the deer to move back to safer lands.

I don't see the problem being a lack of deer population in general, but a lack of land open to hunting.

[Stinger-Hunter]

Re: State Lands Vs. Antlerless Permits

There is an opposite problem near where I live. State Parks have too many deer and the county will not allow bowhunters in under any circumstances. This is one of those situations where public land should be hunted to cut the overpopulated areas down.

There are multiple deer/car collissions because of this.

If you implemented a closing of some public ground and supplemented in with bowhunting in state parks for a year or two, this might solve some problems.

[Doc]

Re: State Lands Vs. Antlerless Permits

I see what you are saying, and I'm sure that some of the deer do head for protected cover, but on some of the larger tracts they never make it there. The reason I say that is that even when there is not that much pressure, such as during bow season, the herd is still awfully sparce. So one would conclude that they didn't escape to return later. I think that once an area has been nearly cleared of deer by excessive overkill, it takes several years for new deer to filter back in and establish a viable herd. When every year, whatever deer that do decide to take up residence get blown flat by the large numbers of frustrated hunters, an awful lot of good deer habitat goes unused, and a lot of potential hunting opportunities are never realized.

I just think that there is a need to manage heavy pressured state lands differently than other lands that receive moderate to low pressure (i.e. private posted lands). At any rate, having a way to monitor state lands would quickly point out if what you are suggesting is really happening. The way the system is now, the special requirements of the heavily pressured state lands is being ignored and is being managed or mismanaged by numbers that come from an average take on all lands that comprise the huge wildlife management areas without any factors that account for hunting pressure.

Doc

[BuckNrut]

Re: State Lands Vs. Antlerless Permits

I used to hunt a combination of private/state land in Granger, NY before switching to private land in the farmlands of WMU 8H. I shot a deer maybe every other year in Granger. In 8H I hunt properties in Mendon (borders "no hunting" Powder Mills Park), Rush (borders "no hunting" quary), Caledonia, and Wheatland (both farmlands). Hunting in all of these areas has always been moderate. However, in the later I've taken at least 2 deer every year for the last 12 years. Why? It's simple - more deer. I agree with another poster. If you cram many hunters into an area, the deer move elsewhere. My spot in Caledonia I don't even bother hunting the first week of regular season.

I would invest some sweat equity after this season and find some private land that is not currently hunted. You may be very supprised at the results of this effort.

I don't see (yet) how your proposal would be effective.

BuckNrut

[horst]

Re: State Lands Vs. Antlerless Permits

Doc, I know what your saying and have to agree with you.Most of the public land in the county around here is located right around my town.5 or 6 yrs ago they started giving out antlerless tags.They only have 100 given out in my county, plus they have changed the first shotgun season to an either sex season.But the majority of the hunters within say 30 miles of here travel here to hunt.

The first year they were given out, after it got cold and the deer bunched up you could see them in groups of anywhere from a dozen to over 100.Things were good.Last year, really bad winter, cold, lots of snow, the deer should have been in large groups.You would see 2 or 3 maybe as many 15 or 16, but nowhere near the numbers we had before.Yet when they survey the area to decide on deer numbers we dont seem to get looked at to hard.they check a lot of private ground, not around here, they check the rivers, 15 miles either way from here, but they dont seem to notice how much smaller our deer herd is, and every year theyre still screaming we need to kill more does.

On the surface 100 extra tags dont seem like a lot.But figure most of them deer woulda had twins, some singles and some even triplets, but average it out as twins.The following spring thats roughly 250-300 deer we dont have.Add that up over 5 years, every doe thats killed is 2 or 3 deer that wont be reproducing the next spring and it takes a toll in a hurry.Ive watched deer numbers get smaller and smaller while hunters seem to get more plentifull on public ground all the time.Its pretty crazy if you think about it, one area can be totally wiped out and the private ground across the road can be overrun with them.

[Doc]

Re: State Lands Vs. Antlerless Permits

It's interesting to hear that this is not a unique problem to NY. I guess it stands to reason that state lands that are flooded with masses of hunters carrying multiple permits, would wind up with some particularly heavy impacts. The fact that these heavily used public areas are mixed in with other private lands when doing deer population estimates only compounds the problem and guarantees that these public lands will continue to suffer.

Here in NY, the solution seems to be quite simple to me. Each of these state land parcels has a discreet identification. The boundaries are very clearly surveyed and marked. Each area already has DEC personel assigned and responsible for their management. And hunters are already doing the their harvest reporting directly to the DEC computers via the telephone, so additional costs of monitoring and properly managing these important parcels would certainly be minimal.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that determining population levels by averaging public land harvests with those of private land across huge wildlife management units is not really working, nor should anyone reasonably expect that it would. Something can be done about it, but I suspect that the DEC doesn't even acknowledge the problem. They have no reporting device in place to highlight the problem. I am proposing that they put one in place.

I also don't think that many people realize the importance of public hunting areas. Many, perhaps most new hunters lack the resources for buying or leasing hunting land. With more and more prime land being gobbled up by bunny-hugger city transplants, other types of development, and large hunting clubs and businesses, public land becomes the only viable option for many hunters. This is not a problem that will ever get better, so the future of hunting rests, to a large extent on the successes and experiences that hunters have on public lands. If these are being terribly mismanaged, we will, most likely, continue to experience the down slide of hunter satisfaction and consequently, hunter numbers. Perhaps over the long haul, this becomes a self-correcting phenomenon, because of the reduction of hunters, but I don't think that will point to a very rosey future for the sport itself.

Doc

[Doc]

Re: State Lands Vs. Antlerless Permits

Now all I need is to know what person or agency of authority that I should run this idea in front of. Just randomly sending it into our regional office is probably a sure-fire way to see it get ignored or sent to the circular file.

Doc