In Consideration of Sustainability

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Deer Management

Next to Baseball, hunting is America’s favorite pastime. More recently, a problem has arisen relating to sustainability of deer populations based on harvest of animals. In reality, the management of a deer herd is quite similar to the proper management of a large city. The city can only supply so many people with jobs and resources before it succumbs under the stress. Forests and luscious pastures only have enough resources for a certain number of deer, while the deer population needs a certain ratio of bucks and does to be healthy.

Well what is the ratio?

For the average piece of land the ratio needs to pretty close to 1 buck for every 4 doe. Even if the ratio is right, overbearing the carrying capacity of the land can just as easily destroy a quality deer population. My farm is exactly 1502 acres with a total deer population of 453. A little quick math leaves you with 3.31 acres per deer. To be honest, our land is carrying a few to many than it should! A solid number is around 4 per deer. In that number, a certain amount need to be young bucks and does! A little more on that in a while..

What’s the big deal with carrying capacity?

To maintain a healthy population of deer along with seeing high quality bucks, a certain amount of land must be allotted for each deer. Not saying that all of the deer will take their 4 acres and not let anyone in but to allow proper bedding areas and food production, that is the ideal amount. In fact, many of the deer will end up living within the same area. The deepest and thickets portion of your property is where the deer will bed and live when not feeding in fields. Too many people think that deer will lie down and sleep wherever they want. FALSE. Deer seek protection from predators like coyote and protection from the elements. If deer overrun a plot of land, there will simply not be enough land for the deer to survive on. Numbers will remain the same for the most part but the quality will be very lacking.

“Young Bucks? Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

The problem is, you should! Young bucks and does are the backbone of a solid deer population. More mature bucks do make hunts interesting but 3 years down the road there will be nothing to see! The same goes for doe of all ages. They are fun to hunt but if you kill all of the does there will be nothing for the mature bucks to breed with. For example, if the youth of America were just theoretically pushed off a cliff, the next generation would not happen. Plain and simple. To maintain a deer herd involves the harvest of older deer to make room for the younger and less dominant bucks.

“If it’s brown, it’s down!” may be the worst possibly logic for management of a deer herd. Hunting is not all about killing. The natural beauty of nature is what hunting is about. Being able to escape the work place or classroom on the weekends and sit up in a climber helps the brain stay intact. Improper management of any type of ecosystem leads to unhealthy populations and habitat destruction that can be impossible to revive! Overfishing of the ocean has led to strict regulations on the harvest limitations and season on many of the most popular gamefish. Red Snapper used to have a season all spring and summer long but it has been reduced down to hardly 7 weeks!

The choice is yours, people. If killing all of the deer on your land is fun, keep on. If you are interested in the well being of America’s most majestic beings I strongly recommend some sort of management to start on your land.

http://www.qdma.com/articles/qdmas-position-on-mandatory-antler-restrictions

Works Cited

Adams, Kip. “QDMAâs Position on Mandatory Antler Restrictions.” N.p., 11 Jan. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://www.qdma.com/articles/qdmas-position-on-mandatory-antler-restrictions>.

Koerth, Ben. “Carrying Capacity.” Whitetail Deer Hunting. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013. <http://www.whitetaildomains.com/Articles/ShowArticle.aspx/192/Carrying Capacity>.

- Rhett P.

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Pre-mature Harvest of Whitetail Deer, and How to keep it Sustainable

By Clayton J. Glassey

Hunting. We have all been affected by hunting in some way, form,or fashion. Taken a minute to think about how you have been affected. Being affected does not necessarily mean you have been negatively affected. It can mean you have been positively affected. I myself have been both positively and negatively affected. I have always loved to hunt whitetail deer, and I always practice good sportsmanship. You know, not shooting fawns, mothering does, and bucks with a small rack. I often wonder how other people view these tactics. Do other people practice good sportsmanship?

Sitting here writing this blog post, I can think back on a time when I was in a hunting club in southwest Alabama. We used to do regular hunting, and by regular I mean hunting from a tree stand, but we also used to do dog runs. We usually did these when the rut ended because at that time, the deer do not move near as much as when the rut is in full swing. I was young then and did not really know any different. It was action packed, fun, and exhilarating. The dogs used to run deer out of the woods, and the hunters would blast anything that resembled a deer. Their motto, “If it’s brown, it’s down”. It didn’t occur to me until a few years later that maybe this wasn’t the best type of sustainable practice for managing a herd of deer.

Now that I have aged some and have come to learn the rights and wrongs of hunting from fellow sportsman, I have begun to wonder, “What is the appropriate age to harvest a whitetail buck? What about a doe? What happens if a hunter shoots everything they see, as when I was back in that hunting club?” These questions have perplexed me for some time. I recently sat down with Professor Stephen S. Ditchkoff of Auburn University. I posed these questions to him to see what a professional like he thinks about these potential problems. The first question I asked him was what is the appropriate age for harvesting whitetail bucks and does. He responded with “I don’t think that there is an appropriate age for harvesting does”. He went on to explain that this is because it is so hard to know the age of a doe, or the number of does that should be harvested. He answered about harvesting bucks by saying that “…it is dependent on what the management objectives are”. Who, of the hunters, doesn’t want to shoot that big wall hanger? This isn’t possible without displaying good sportsmanship and being sustainable to your deer herd. This means that you shouldn’t have the mentality of “If it’s brown, it’s down”.

Professor Ditchkoff, having worked with whitetail for many years, gives a great view on this topic, but I wanted to talk to someone that lives in the hunting world every single day. For this I chose the owner of BladeVision Films, LLC., and the star of Razor Dobbs Alive on NBC Sports, Mr. Razor Dobbs himself. I interviewed Razor, and asked him about age of harvest for bucks and does. He responded with something very similar to Professor Ditchkoff’s answers, adding that a proper harvest age would be somewhere around 4.5-5 years for bucks. Razor proceeded to explain that these ages are dependent on the quality of the deer. He said, “Your bucks will be allowed to reach a mature age and reach their potential. Of course, culls (cull bucks) will have to be removed as soon as it’s determined that they do not fit the management plan”. Razor is right; cull bucks that don’t fit the management plan should be removed a.s.a.p. Just because you give a young buck a dirt nap (comical hunting reference), doesn’t mean you should feel bad about it. There is a fine line between shooting everything that moves, just to say that you killed something, and shooting the right deer for the right reasons to implement you sustainable management plan. People like Professor Ditchkoff and Razor Dobbs are the people that positively affect and influence hunters. They help create a sustainable future.

For further information related to sustainable deer management, go to www.qdma.com.

In this picture is Razor Dobbs.

Works Cited

Ditchkoff, Stephen S. Personal interview. 17 Jan. 2012.

Dobbs, Razor. Personal interview. 12 Feb. 2012.