QUALITY  DEER  MANAGEMENT  ASSOCIATION  PIKE  COUNTY  BRANCH NEWSLETTER 2003 Fall Issue

Pike County Quality Deer Management Association is a  501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Quality Deer Management (QDM)

 QDM is a philosophy or practice for landowners and hunters to work together toward producing healthy deer herds by not harvesting young bucks but harvesting enough does to better balance the herd and maintain quality habitat. Public awareness and continued hunter education is vital for sound decisions in deer management practices. The national Quality Deer Management Association office is located in Watkinsville, Georgia. Visit their website www.qdma.com for additional information.

 Pike County Branch President's Message

More Big Bucks and a Healthy Forest: These are the goals of the Pike County Branch of Quality Deer Management Association. As we head into the 2003 rifle season, how do we stand in achieving these goals?

Low Body Weights: For the last three years, the Milford Experimental Forest and DCNR Bureau of Forestry have run a public check station near Milford to measure the age, weight, antler dimensions, and fitness of Pike County deer. Our study shows that Pike County deer have exceptionally low dressed weights.

 Pike County Average Dressed weight of Bucks

Age	2000	2001	2002
0.5	59.7	70.0	57.4
1.5	96.0	92.6	96.4
2.5	102.7	103.2
3.5	111.5	122.7	(Waiting for
4.5	121.1	125.1	2002 lab
5.5	124.5	127.3	results)

Since the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) doesn’t run check stations to gather weight information, we can’t compare our weight statistics against other Pennsylvania counties. However, when we compare our data with bucks in North Carolina, which does check all harvested deer, the picture is not pretty. At about 95 pounds, our average dressed weight for yearling bucks falls in the lowest 20% of North Carolina counties. However, our two-year old bucks at 103 pounds fall at the very bottom of North Carolina counties averages, which range from 101 to 140 pounds. North Carolina has plenty of heavily forested counties, so why do our deer have such low weights compared to theirs?

 

            Poor Quality Habitat: Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised about the condition of our deer if we look carefully at the quality of their food supply in our forests. The adjacent photo shows a forest with a well-defined deer browse line, and with almost no woody vegetation on the forest floor to support the deer herd through the critical winter months.

For the last five years at the Milford Experimental Forest, we have monitored a set of permanent vegetation plots each year. What we have found is pretty shocking. In our 1,400-acre oak forest, we have only 10 oak saplings per acre, when a healthy forest should have at least 500 saplings per acre. Closer to the ground we find only 180 oak seedlings per acre when 15,000 are needed to regenerate a healthy forest. The bottom line is that during the winter, once the fall mast crop has been consumed, there is very little woody vegetation left to feed the deer herd. So it should be no surprise that our deer have such low body weights.

Too Many Deer for Our Habitat: The underlying problem is that our deer herd is well above the carrying capacity of the forest, or put more simply, there are many more deer than the forest can support. Last March, we hired a census of our deer herd using a Cessna airplane equipped with an infrared video camera. This study showed that in the Milford Experimental Forest we have about 50 deer per square mile. This is about 2.5 times the deer density target of 21 per square mile set by the Game Commission. The bottom line is that we have a deer population that is destroying its own food supply and that is causing serious damage to the health of our forest. 

In addition, Pennsylvania’s hunting tradition of focusing primarily on harvesting bucks has produced a herd with many more does than bucks. This skewed sex ratio produces very high reproduction rates. Our field observations at the Milford Experimental Forest indicate a ratio of six or seven antlerless deer for every antlered buck, which translates to about four reproductive does for every mature buck. 

 Putting the QDMA Philosophy Into Practice: Given the conditions we have, what can hunters and landowners do to bring the deer and forest back into a healthy balance and to produce bigger, healthier deer?  The goals of the QDMA are almost identical to the changes that Dr. Gary Alt has been making in PGC regulations. If we want to restore high quality habitat and produce larger bucks, then we need to reduce the deer population to allow the habitat to begin its recovery. This means:

1. Concentrating on a heavy harvest of adult does. This will reduce the total deer population and rebalance the buck to doe ratio, thereby slowing reproduction rates. 

2. Passing up younger bucks and letting them grow into mature, large-racked adults. This will restore normal breeding ecology and will produce a much more exciting hunt. The PGC requirement for bucks to have at least three points on one side protects younger bucks and has already started to produce larger bucks.

3. Continuing intensive doe harvest for enough seasons until the deer population is reduced to the point where a healthy wood understory is restored. This requires an initial leap of faith. However, there are good examples outside Pennsylvania where lowering the deer population has resulted in restoring a healthy forest habitat.   

 Supporting Continued Reform of Hunting Regulations:

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to bring the deer population back into balance with its habitat under the current Pennsylvania deer regulations.  Pennsylvania has some of the most restrictive regulations of any eastern state, with shorter deer seasons and less antlerless tags per hunter than most other states.  Hunters need the opportunity to harvest more than one doe per season if we are going to have a real impact on the deer herd. With only a two-week rifle season, most hunters find it extremely difficult to accomplish this. Many states have two or more months of rifle season and large numbers of doe tags. And they still have deer populations over carrying capacity, although few have deer populations as far out of balance as we do.  

The kinds of tools we need in Pennsylvania to bring our herd back into balance with its food supply include: 

1. A DMAP program (Deer Management Assistance Program) that is open to all public and private landowners and that allows landowners to give multiple antlerless tags to the hunters who are capable of filling them.

2. A considerably longer rifle season so hunters have time to fill their tags.

3. Annual Game Commission goals for reducing the deer population and for habitat restoration

 

4. Education and assistance from the PGC to help landowners and hunters establish deer management plans and hunting strategies that can meet deer management objectives

 

Encourage the Game Commission to Continue its Reform: Please write letters to the Game Commissioners and urge them to embrace QDM principles. Go to Harrisburg in January and April at the Commissioners meetings and make your voice heard. This is a highly political process. Gary Alt and the other PGC biologists need every bit of public support they can get to get their program adopted by the Commissioners. This is a time when your voice can make a real difference to the future of hunting and to our forests in Pennsylvania. 

For more information on how to contact the Pennsylvania Game Commissioners, visit their website at: http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/ or call them at (717) 787-4250.

 

Make Your Voice Heard and Help Gary Alt Continue Reforming PA Deer Regs   PGC Board of Commissioners public meeting,  Sunday,  January 25, 1 p.m. at 2001 Elmerton Ave., Harrisburg, PA See website www.pgc.state.pa.us for Regional Headquarters map   We are at a critical point of deer management in Pennsylvania. After three years of progressive changes in deer regulations, the Pennsylvania Game Commissioners put the brakes on last winter and spring. The result was that the PGC almost lost Gary Alt as its deer biologist. And, we almost lost our leader in getting the principles of QDM applied as the guiding principle of deer management in this state. To keep the PGC moving forward, we need to give Gary Alt all the support we can.   In January, the PGC will propose new reforms in deer regulations. Two significant changes are already being considered. First, the DMAP program will be greatly expanded to include most private landowners, regardless of whether they are enrolled in a PGC "Public Access" program. Second, PGC biologists have proposed a one-week antlerless rifle season immediately before the current two-week rifle season. This would give hunters a much better chance to harvest does before they are spooked by the buck hunt.   The Pike County Branch of QDMA would like to get as many members and friends down to Harrisburg to testify and support Gary Alt's proposals. We have set a goal to get at least 30 Pike County hunters and landowners to the meeting to testify. If you are willing to join us, and it is just one Sunday down and back, please contact Teresa Crerand at 570-686-7611 or email tcrerand@ptd.net, or Peter Pinchot at the Milford Experimental Forest at 570-296-9313 or by email: peterpin@aol.com.   Together we can make a big difference! Susquehanna County QDMA attended several PGC meetings with 20 to 30 members and the Commissioners stood up and noticed. Please take the time to give us a call and arrange to testify at the January meeting.   —    Peter Pinchot, President, Pike County Branch QDMA

 News 

Short Course and Banquet

 Our first major event, a Short Course and Banquet, was held Sept. 4 at the Best Western Inn at Hunts Landing in Matamoras. More than 200 residents from the tri-state area attended the event that was a combined banquet fundraiser with raffles and silent auctions, as well as a membership drive that signed up well over 100 new members.

Branch President Peter Pinchot not only emceed during the evening, he gave a PowerPoint presentation about the high populations of deer and showed examples of severely overbrowsed forests in Pike County. He pointed out more people are practicing QDM, but the most difficult situations are tremendous concentrations of deer in private communities.

             QDMA Northeast Regional Director Kip Adams gave an overview of the educational national organization. During his PowerPoint presentation, Adams stated, "QDM is first and foremost about putting the right number of deer on the landscape...in all age classes." The more knowledgeable you are, the better decisions you make while hunting, and you influence that deer herd in a positive manner whether hunting on public or private lands.

             Hunters Sharing the Harvest (HSH) Pike County Coordinator John Crerand gave a brief overview of the HSH program put in place in Pike County last hunting season. Area hunters donated deer to the program that totaled an overwhelming 900 pounds of ground venison given to a Milford food bank.

            This year, the hunter donation has increased from $10 to $15 when donating a whole deer, but another option allows a hunter to pay all processing costs and donate a portion of a deer to the HSH program.

Maryland Wildlife Biologist Dr. C.J. Winand, pictured at right, gave a slide presentation and kept everyone on the edge of their seats with his humorous approach while talking about deer biology, hunting techniques, and how to determine age by examining teeth, and explained the home range of deer is based on their food source.

            Winand encouraged hunters to make a commitment to QDM and suggested fertilizing natural vegetation to improve habitat and benefit deer herds.

 Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Biologist Dr. Gary Alt stated there are eight PGC board members who will decide the future of hunting in Pennsylvania, and people need to be heard to help them make the best decisions.

            "We [PGC] are launching some of the largest studies in north America on white-tailed deer," said Alt who urged sportsmen, sportswomen, and the general public to work together with the PGC to keep the herds under control for the good of the deer, future of hunting, and all who live in the state.

            The PGC is conducting a variety of hunter surveys in Pennsylvania with Penn State and Cornell University relating to responsive management and the need to learn more about hunters and landowners.

            By next April, over 600 bucks wearing radio collars in a buck study will show data about dispersal patterns and survival.

            Alt said some of the deer have showed up 26 miles away from where they were collared.

            A two-year research program with over 500 hunters wearing GPS (global positioning system) transmitters showed 60 percent hunted within one quarter mile of a road, explained Alt, who added, we need to use GIS (geographic information system) to see where big bucks are and get hunters further off the road.

            Next year, the PGC will radio collar hundreds of doe in certain areas, and likely on DCNR land, in efforts to reduce the deer herds in a study to "fix the forests of Pennsylvania," said Alt.

            "The number of deer in the state is phenomenally high," Alt said and pointed out that contraceptives would never work.

            "We want to stop the over harvest of bucks which we've done for as long as we have been alive and the under harvest of does that we have done since the 1920s," said Alt.

            "Once the herd is under control, hunters can keep it under control."

Pictured at the Pike County Branch QDMA banquet and short course on Sept. 4 are, from left, seated: Branch Director & Board Secretary Teresa Crerand, QDMA State Chapter President Ed Grasavage, Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Biologist Dr. Gary Alt, Branch President Peter Pinchot, QDMA Northeast Regional Director Kip Adams; standing: Directors Robin Wildermuth, Joani Bucksbee, Russ Current, Jim Walters, Branch Treasurer John J. Buck, Branch Vice President John T. Buck, Hunters Sharing the Harvest Pike County Coordinator John Crerand, and Branch Director Tim Carr. Missing from photo: Maryland Wildlife Biologist Dr. C.J. Winand.