ORIGINAL: eyesandgillz
Just think what the winter kill would be, and the overbrowsing damage done to young trees, if the deer populations were as large as they were in the late 90's/early 00's? Herd reduction is a good thing; especially for winters just like this one in southern PA.
I grew up in Cambria County and hunted deer (still do) in Clearfield County and until the last 10 years or so it was the norm for there to be at least some form of snow on the ground from around Thanksgiving until around Easter. While getting 2 feet or more at a time like we recently did was unusual except for some of the years other posters have mentioned, the accumulation of 4†here, 8†there, etc. often lead to a snow base that was equal to or greater than what is on the ground now. And it started earlier and lasted longer.
Did it kill deer? Probably. How many? That is debatable, at least in the areas I hunt. We typically fished the small mountain streams in that area for wild brook trout each spring. These 3-5 mile hikes did, at times, turn up dead creek bottom deer. But even during the worst of winters and there was a year that there was thick ice on top of the snow for over a month, we never found more than a handful.
Did they starve? Maybe. Did they fall and split their pelvis? Maybe. Did they die from wounds from one of the hunting seasons? Maybe. Did they die of disease? Maybe. Did they die of old age? Maybe.
The point is that without a definite cause of death, no one knows if it was winter kill (starvation) or not.
But, just to go to the extreme example, let’s say that all of the dead deer that we found starved. And let’s say that the worst year was the norm (there were many years that we didn’t find any). Use a 5 mile hike as the base and 5 dead deer as the find. I know, we were only along the creek and not covering a square mile, but since a good portion of dying deer try to make it to the creek bottom, let’s presume that what was there was the kill.
To use PGC methodology of guesstimating like they do with report cards, let’s presume that we didn’t find them all and that some didn’t make it to the creek bottom (this is the fudge factor to kind of convert stream miles to square miles). So let’s take the 5 dead deer and triple that to be 15 dead deer in 5 miles or 3 per mile.
Now, let’s go with the extreme estimate of 35 deer per square mile (1.6 M PGC population estimate divided by 46K sq. miles in PA) since the questions was about what if we had this weather back in the “good old days†when populations were high before HR. Even if the PGC population figure is inflated, there also aren’t 46K sq. miles of huntable ground in PA either (most parking lots in Philly don’t have any deer), so the overestimate in population is a wash with ground that has deer v. ground that has no deer.
So, if there are 3 dead deer per sq. mile out of a winter (not before hunting season) population of 35 dpsm, that would be a winter kill (since we using the worse case number and are presuming 100% of them starved) that would be a population loss of 8.5%. And that is worse case in an area that has real winter.
To take it to even a further extreme, let’s take that percentage to 10% (realistically since not every year had the worst weather and not every deer starved, the actual percentage would not be 10% or even the 8.5%, but something less, probably a lot less). This begs the simple question –
SO WHAT?
Mother Nature is very cruel. A great percentage of her creatures die every winter. Most of her creatures die untimely, slow, or violent deaths. Not only do most get eaten, but most get eaten alive. For those that aren’t eaten alive or aren’t completely eaten, the mice, and possums, and skunks, and crows have to eat too.
Do we care that when this snow melts that it will drown a certain percentage of hibernating groundhogs and their broods? Nope.
Do we care that because of the great visibility afforded by this snow cover that hawks will kill an unusually high number of birds? Probably not.
Do we care that rabbits will have a tough time getting away from foxes in this snow? Not unless you are beagle guy.
Do we care that this may cause a very wet spring and could decrease grouse and turkey populations because of poult deaths? Maybe, but we will just shrug our shoulders and say it was a down year because of the weather and go hunting them anyway.
So why do we give this romantic notion of winter death to deer that is not afforded to other critters?
Please do not use the “quick death by a bullet or arrow beats a slow death by starvation†argument because if that held water there would be a Dr. Kevorkian clinic in every strip mall in America in order to save ourselves from the slow agonizing death from cancer or Alzheimer’s or whatever disease that will end each of our stories. Everything wants to live. Everything wants a chance at survival. If deer live to be 4 years old in the wild, surviving from November to March is 8% of their life. How many people would take an 8% cut in life expectancy, especially if death (in the case of the deer, death by starvation) isn’t certain? Not many I would bet.
But back to the numbers and the argument that HR is a good thing. Using our model, on the extreme end, 10% was lost to winter kill starvation. Let’s get even more extreme and say that number is too low and double it to 20%. Now, let’s say that number is still too low and double it to 40%.
An estimate of HR from the boom population to the current population is a 50% reduction. Using our extreme estimate of 8.5%; increasing that to 10%; doubling that to 20%; and then further doubling that again to 40%, still leaves more deer that HR did. And this is just for one year, not the sustained population drop that HR has wrought.
So even if we give the romantic Bambi syndrome to deer that is not afforded to other critters, how is HR better?
Now go to the other extreme. Let’s presume that all of the deer deaths were the result of something other than winter starvation, so 0% of the population was killed. Did they over browse and kill all the trees? Obviously not. The population sustained itself on what food sources were available. Trees still grew. Regeneration happened to the extent that all the other contributing factors would let it happen. The landowners run a small saw mill and makes hardwood furniture and cabinets and they were not at all concerned about the number of deer (either way), so the economic impact on them was negligible.
So if there was no effect to the landowner stakeholder (non-funded because they didn’t hunt) who had a vested economic interest by having zero deer die over the winter, how is HR better?
In the end, going to either extreme, 40% winter kill or 0% winter kill, leaves more deer for hunters than HR did and has no measurable adverse effect on the landowner who directly has an economic interest in trees and regeneration.
How is HR better?
post edited by DarDys - 2010/02/24 09:18:06