With whitetail herds struggling or holding their own in some areas of the Upper Midwest, one of the questions being raised: Have hunters been shooting too many does? I suspect we have been killing too many in places, as I talked about in this post last year:
For the last 20 years, state game agencies encouraged us to shoot more and more deer, and especially does. Hunters obliged; some guys killed 5, 10 or more. Personally I have never understood why a person would want or need to shoot more than 5 deer in a season; surely that is enough to fill your blood lust and your freezer, and donate a couple of animals to the food bank. But the agencies had designed those seasons and limits to reduce the herds…
Now the tide is turning.
Michigan had considered closing the deer season this fall in the U.P. due to a plummeting herd, but word is that the season is on for now. In Wisconsin, the DNR will recommend no antlerless hunting in 2015 in Douglas, Bayfield, Sawyer, Ashland, Iron, Vilas, Price, Oneida, Langlade, Forest, Florence and Racine counties, and a portion of Jackson County “in an effort to regrow the herd.”
What to make of this? For all these years, many DNRs have told us to whack and stack does in an effort to manage and reduce the herds, but now they want to stop or limit doe hunting cold turkey to build the herds back up? Is this type of yo-yo deer management best, or do we need a more moderate and measured approach to bag limits and season lengths?
The latter makes sense to me, what about where you hunt?
This is an issue in many areas, including some areas in Indiana, my home state. The fact is deer management is just that….deer management. Nothing stays the same and as the herd rises and falls, adjustments have to be made. Pair that with the different situations and conditions not only between counties, but even individual farms and public areas, and there seldom is an answer that fist all well. that’s a tough spot for our DNR’s to deal with. The bottom line is, you need to attend meetings to voice your opinion, and write your DNR officials and your Congressmen and State Senators to let them know how you feel about the situations. That’s a great start to fixing things, but don’t leave it all to them. Discuss it with your hunting people in your areas and above all….Practice what you preach. Take inventory of how many deer you need for the year and don’t go over it! We have 5 deer hunters in My family and we figure out how many we need before the season. Usually, that’s 4 or 5 to take care of the whole lot. We hunt hard till that quota is met and then……It’s all over unless somebody has a buck tag and wants to try for a trophy. We do most of r hunting on public ground and some people say they shoot whatever they can because if they don’t, somebody else will shoot them anyway. You can’t think like that! Gove the whitetail credit…the chance you have may be it’s only mistake it makes this season. If you don’t need it and let it go, especially if it is a slickhead, that means 2. 3. or maybe even 4 more deer next year to hunt next year. Doing the math, it doesn’t take long for them to bounce back if we, the real managers of the deer herd, are consciencius and do the right thing. DNR has an impossible job of trying to keep everybody happy. In reality, the responsiblity falls to you and me to keep deer hunting as a great part of a great lifestyle. Let’s work together and get the job done. Nuff said.
No one needs to kill more than 2-3 deer per year for food or recreation and if they’re killing more that I call that being a game hog. Pa. is currently seeing the folly of allowing overkill of anterless deer, after 15 years of issuing over 1 million anterless tags per year. Some areas of the state are nearly devoid of deer most public hunting areas included. I own a farm in WMU 5C where unlimited doe tags could be bought for $6.75 each for 10 years, today the only parts of 5C with more than an occasional deer sighting are extreme fringes of the cities or parks. Public hunting areas along the Blue Mountain range where it was once common to see 2 dozen deer in a field at dusk now hold none. The game hogs bought every tag they could get ahold of and filled them. One guy whom worked for me bought 25 each year and did his best to fill each one. So did his brother..that’s near 50 deer killed each year in the area they hunted..when an area was shot out they simply moved on to the next. Know what happened to all that venison??? Fed to their dogs and trashed!! His logic was “The PGC says I can do it so I’m going to” now there is a sportsmen for ya!!!! game hog, I fired his butt and told him “NLRB says I can do it so I’m going too, eat your venison to survive”!!!!!
For years as the herd numbers grew,game managers were urged to increase doe kill. When they did, the “Bambi” complex took over and many refused for years and , in fact herd #’s increased astronomically, and logorythmicly as predicted. Now we’ve come full circle and when some states or portions of states, had antler limits imposed, the doe kill increased and finally it , in my opinion, was taken to the extreme as Mike stated. We can kill 12 in GA which, I think is way over the need to control. Some clubs and others refused to shoot or allow a doe to be shot till they shot their big boys, even is no deer were shot on a lease. Some folks I know received doe licences and have no intention of using them just like Cary has done in IL. They have done this for awhile now. In my opinion, with winter kill, disease, and other factors influencing the herd, states need to develop effective and quick response to all these factors, but polotics often interfears as well as the dollars needed to effectively run a state management program. Sorry for preaching.
BTW three mos. to go………..
Four the past three years in our little neck of the woods in Southern Illinois, we have had a policy of shooting no does on the land we hunt along the mighty Mississippi. Between disease, coyotes and the flooding of the river during fawning season, we implemented our own rules to help build the herd, do what is best, no need to wait for some government agency to mandate it.
It amazes me how just a few years back that QDMA , many hunting blogs, hunting shows and magazines were pushing doe harvests…HARD. Many people even took on the attitude that does were basically “pests”.
And now look were we are….It just goes to show that when you take things to the extreme it tends to bite you on the fanny….
Tough question(s). I believe the approach on a state/provincial level should be on a regional basis. Individual counties, parishes, etc. should be looked based on their own habitat/herd demographics and then tied into a specific larger region with nearby counties, etc. This is, of course, very difficult without “boots on the ground”. The idea of “doe management” was definately needed in many parts of the continent up until recently. I believe we have the compounded effect of herd loss due to disease, predation, weather extremes, etc. to throw into the mix as well in the most recent 5 – 10 year period. As we all know whitetail deer management is a tough one. There is no cookie-cutter approach that will work in all regions and satisfy all groups involved with it. The good news to me is that the whitetail deer is a survivor and will most likely never be totally eliminated from the planet. Although the American settlers of the 19th and early 20th centuries sure gave them a run for their money. Long live Odocoileus virginianus!