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Dr. Trout -> RE: 2007/2008 deer harvest (3/24/2008 7:35:28 PM)
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Not been the best of a year for me..had heart surgery in November.. NO deer hunting for me.. that's part of that 11% decrease in the harvest.. and had trouble with my browser and this site after it was updated (changed) I could not log in or post..everything seems to be fine now.. so I'll stop by from time to time...
As for Ohio check stations...
I have shared this E-mail from someone who works for Ohio and the check stations... but maybe some here have not read it before....
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Dave,
As you may know, Ohio is only one of several Midwestern states that have mandatory registration for both deer and turkey.
Technically, I guess you could say that PA does, but their process actually involves both mandatory reporting via postcards and visits to processors to measure non-reporting rates.
In the 10 years that I've been here, I've been engaged in numerous discussions on the pros and cons of mandatory registration.
I have also found myself answering more than a handful of emails from MI and PA hunters who feel that the system used by their respective agencies leaves a lot to be desired.
In their mind, they see mandatory registration as the only means for getting an accurate count of the harvest.
Much to their chagrin, I have to disagree with hunters from both states.
On the surface, MR seems like the "cats meow." You kill a deer, you bring it to the check station, it is permanently tagged and recorded and you go home. At the end of the season, the data are tallied and you not only know how many were taken, but you're now in a position to generate an ACCURATE estimate of the size of the upcoming fall population.
In a perfect world, that might be the case.
The reality is, we know PA and MO come to mind immediately, that not everyone checks their deer.
How many?
Who knows for sure?
In some years it may be as low as 7%, in others it may be as high as 30%. No one really knows and more importantly, estimating it year in and year out is costly and very difficult to do.
If you didn't check your deer and you were asked after the season via a phone call, if you checked your deer, what's you're answer going to be?
My point is, if you live in a state with MR, estimating non-compliance is difficult at best.
Moreover, if you don't know what noncompliance is, you don't know what the true harvest is either.
So why spend valuable license dollars year in and year out providing manpower and resources to operate check stations when in the end, your harvest estimate is just that – an estimate.
In large part it is because of tradition.
It also is a very good PR tool.
It gives us an opportunity to interact with our hunters.
I like working check stations, as do many of my colleagues.
The same could be said for Missouri. Be that as it may, it is my understanding that MO will be fully implementing TeleCheck this fall.
On-site registration will be a thing of the past.
Last year was the last time they collected biological information at mandatory registration stations; they now rely on processors for that data.
Mandatory registration has its advantages.
However, providing biologists with a more accurate harvest estimate over many of the alternatives is not one.
While my counterparts from MI and WI and I agree to disagree on a few small details, we generally agree that Michigan's current system for estimating harvest is very sound and in some respects, better than mandatory registration.
Brent "xxxxx" , a good friend and someone whom I respect a great deal summed it up best with the following comments:
"Another major concern relates to estimating non-compliance.
When hunters are required to register a deer, or even required to return a postcard, make a phone call, etc. to report their season results, it is difficult to later ask how many individuals did not comply (and are thus admitting to violations).
Although we know that it is harder to garner a survey response from individuals that did not hunt or harvest any deer, we do capture information from these individuals and are able to generate confidence intervals."
I believe PA has tried to estimate non-compliance by examining how many deer checked at processors do not show up later in the reported harvest, but I don't remember what they've found from this.
I don't believe WI tries to determine non-compliance at all, which means the number of deer registered is simply a minimum number of deer killed.
This unknown element would especially be of concern when trying to summarize figures for individual units.
Thus, I would disagree with the generalized statement that "registration enables us to manage deer on a finer scale... with greater precision".
Precision in the harvest estimate is not known in either of our states, as it would require knowing the true harvest.
Although providing confidence intervals generally makes constituents uncomfortable, especially with the relatively wide range at the level of a WMU, they do provide a measurable means of exploring the consequences of not knowing the exact harvest.
Other general benefits of our system are that we generate measures of participation and effort."
Mandatory registration may help some to restore hunter confidence in the DNR estimates.
However, I don't believe it will improve the estimates themselves.
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