That is of course based nothing more than your biased opinion.

Nope. In this case perception is reality. You dont have such high levels of dissent, and so much "out of the ordinary" compared to other management and then say there is no problem. Its ridiculous.

Surveys have shown that the majority of the hunters across this state do support the Game Commission’s current deer management plan and direction.

No they havent the only surveys done by pgc were in regard to ANTLER RESTRICTIONS. Very few if any "hunters" support the excessive hr. PERIOD. And every single place where opinion screening isnt an issue, herd reductions have proven to be about as popular as pulling teeth.

Of course we all know that not everyone understands or supports the deer management plan or objectives since it no longer supports more deer than the habitat can sustain for the long term.

Then on the other hand there are those of us whom are educated when it comes to these issues, and know that some common sense principals are being used for excuses, and in the meantime, extremes are being sought.

The problem and conflicts develop when some people don’t care about the future and demand that they have all they want now and reject any management that conflicts with their selfish demands for more now.

Thats nothing but your skewed version of reality. I think there are VERY FEW that do not care about our future. Me. You. Or most others in these conversations, I believe care very much. However some of us just have some bizarre notions of what our present and future should be.

I think there are VERY FEW that do not care about our future

Not sure just how many do not care but believe me they are out there..

You should have been with me selling licenses this past fall and listen to many of the guys, there were quite a few that said they wanted more deer now and they would worry about the future later... and I was really surprised how many said that they could care less about habitat... they just wanted to see and shoot deer....

you see when it comes to other hunter's support or their complaints about the PGC deer plan it all depends on who you are listening to and where it's at..

Trust me we are listening to two completely different groups... the majority of the folks you hear and talk too agree with you thus you feel that is what the majority of Pa hunters feel.. that is far from being true..

as always there are two sides.. the side you know and listen to and the opposite side I know and talk to.

I also think it has alot to do with where one lives...

"city folks" appear to be the ones most upset, while many of the "country folks" (big woods) are seeing bigger bucks and are beginning to see better habitat in the big woods areas and are seeing more triplets that ever in the spring for example.

Don't get me wrong I hear the complainers too, but they are the minority and I get a kick out of the reasons they disagree with the deer plan.... it boils down to 95% of the time .. It's just becuase they did not see "enough" deer or did not harvest one...or it's because more land around here is getting posted and they no longer have permission to hunt there...

VERY VERY few know anything about fawn recruitment, retention, they think all the breeding is done during the rut, have no idea what a deer yarding area is, still believe all does give birth to 2-3 fawns on average, and no idea what is includied in good deer habitat, or even what deer eat besides "apples, corn, acorns, and grass"

I keep asking those complaining about herd reduction and now there are "no deer" ...did they harvest a female this year in the second week .... and most say yes...

One guy that "has no time for the PGC".... has taken 1 buck and 5 does all by himself (THIS YEAR)(2 in 2F, 1 in 2G and 3 DMAPs in two different DMAP areas all with 20 miles of Brockway and was asking me about red tag farms in the area...


Just a matter of each of us forming our own opinions from the sources we choose to believe in and what we hear from those around us....

Care to share any from the last three years.

Why put it on RSB..


where's your stats, studies or surveys showing the majority do not agree ???????

Prove him wrong if you can

produces the studies, or surveys that support your position.......thus making his claims false...

You are simply using the folks you know and talk to as the basis for your opinions about who is in the majority...

I know of NO STUDY or SURVEY results showing your opinions are now in the majority...

speaking of tweety birds .... i just love what the pgc has done with sgl 314!!!! ... but out of it they have made a very nice moto cross / atv trail system out there

Where the trouble is on internet polls is and has ALWAYS been in the wording of the question...
Most I see are something like this..

Thats fine doc, if'n your willing to fund it, Id be happy to have a "real scientific" poll done,just for you.

#1.. Are you seeing bigger bucks now that we have ar.. majorty = YES, but still alot of little ones

no. Not when they cut the ow herd in half here, though Im sure that varies by area.

#2.. Are you seeing more fawns and triplets now ...majority = YES

No. because even according to pgcs own data, embryo counts, it wasnt the case. Nothing changed.

#3.. Are you seeing more deer every year now that the herd is rebounding ... majorty =YES
all agree we still have fewer than before herd reduction.. DUUHHHHHH.....

Yea, duh, because its a dumb questions. lol.

Ive seen it asked, and appropriately so, do you support the extent of herd reduction that has occurred in your area. And its NO by a landslide in every case. Course some "environmentalist/pgc/dcnr" type site, it might differ? Anyway that should be the #1 question, because its the number one problem.

#4.. Is the habitat getting better in your hunting area... that's still about a 50/50 position...

It is here, not that it needed to. See the answer doesnt tell the story. And overall statewide, pgcs data says NO. Which is absurd.

ORIGINAL: Dr. Trout
#1.. Are you seeing bigger bucks now that we have ar..

Yes

#2.. Are you seeing more fawns and triplets now

No. Twins were and still are th emost common

#3.. Are you seeing more deer every year now that the herd is rebounding ...

NO

#4.. Is the habitat getting better in your hunting area...

Yes. Never was as much as a problem in 2A and 2B though as compared to others areas of the state.

ORIGINAL: RSB

ORIGINAL: DarDys

ORIGINAL: RSB

ORIGINAL: S-10

This is just one of the few remaining web sites where those apposed to professional deer management practices have been able to gather and post at any level of strength over those that do support scientific management.

Care to give any EXAMPLES of SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT that has been employed by the PGC that is different than before HR/AR?

1. The method of estimating deer numbers is the same method used in the 1970's
2. The PA SAK model is from the 1950's
3. Nearly everyone of the newer research papers references studies from as far back as the 1930's
4. HR was sold on 1,600,000 million deer which was a lie.
5.HR was sold on deer being responsible for Lyme disease which was a lie
6. Pa was using scientific deer management for 100 years. Just not the kind that put the Audubons birdies in front of the game animals.

The reason we are able to post with any strength is because we have been able to prove false most of the claims that the PGC's minions have been making on here. Sorry that upsets some people but perhaps if they didn't try to BS us all the time they wouldn't be proven wrong so often.

We are still using round wheels too. There has been no need to continuously reinvent the wheel because it works the same as it did 100 or even 1000 years ago.  

  
R.S. Bodenhorn

And those wheels are no longer made of stone, or metal, or wood, of in some cases, even rubber.  Those wheels may or may not have treads, may or may not be filled with air at varying pressures foam, or are solid.  They may be soft or hard.  But they fit the specific application they are intended for.  And the research that makes the changes, or more correctly stated, evloution of the wheel, is done by those that utilize proper methodologies because, unlike a psuedo governement agency, designing the research wrong, doing the research wrong, or coming to incorrect conclusions about the research has serious implications for their organization and them personally. 

And just who do you think should be making the decisions on which changes and deciding which are best suited for the future direction, those that have been educated on how to set up the correct research procedures or those that simply use the results of the changes?
 
What experience do you have to determine the wrong research is being done the wrong ways or coming to the wrong conclusions?
 
Why don’t you just tell your doctors how to treat your ailments? Or maybe head on down to the local sports bar when you need a broken bone set the next time, after all most of those people have probably experienced that a time or two? That would make just as much sense as what you are advocating for wildlife management.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn

The majority of your post is so silly that I won't embarrass you by responding to it.  However, I feel that it is fair to answer this question that you put forth:

"What experience do you have to determine the wrong research is being done the wrong ways or coming to the wrong conclusions?"

For over a decade I chaired a standing Focus Team charged with the strategic planning, continuous improvement, and responsibility for the complete business function including the interface between Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Quality, and Operations for the second largest connector manufacturer in the world.  Part of that responsibility was new product design and process development.

With regard to new product design, the team, under my leadership, took conceptual ideas and put them through a PACE pipeline in order to determine their viability as desirable new products; the ability to be transformed from first an engineering idea to a blue print to a laboratory built prototype to hand assembly to semi-automated assembly and finally turned over to manufacturing in the form of an ISO registered automated production process; the amount of required capital investment at each development stage; the return on investment and time table for break even toward profitability; and to make sound business decisions based on science based research methodologies at each phase in the pipeline whether to continue with the product development, change the product development, or scuttle the product development.  Design of Experiment (DOE) was an integral factor in all of this.

As for process development, the main focus was to take past practices and utilizing rapid continuous improvement methodologies, experiment with improvements to the process or process controls that would result in being able to produce a higher quality product faster while reducing costs and increasing repeatability and product type flexibility.  This was done using DOE as the principle.

In both of these endeavors, a lot of money was at stake - both as capital investment that must be spent correctly and as foreseeable profitability.  There was little to no room for error so only acceptable research techniques, proven as reliable by the academic scientific community, were used in order to minimize "wrong research being done in wrong ways or coming to wrong conclusions."  Many of the research techniques used were approved by Intel, AT&T research labs, and the Research Center for Engineering at Princeton.  When the capital investment is in the 10's of millions of dollars and the potential annual profits are in the billions, with a "B," you get the research right by conducting the right research in the right manner and coming to the right conclusions.

As an example, the IBM Blue Gene Project, which is part of their Smarter Planet initiative, utilizes as its main interface connection, a product that the focus team took from idea to full blown production.  It is also the interconnect basis for the Watson super computer used on Jeopardy.  The business plan called for an 18 month time frame.  Utilizing strong DOE work, including asking the right questions before starting any of the research so that the DOEs themselves would be designed, developed and implemented in the best possible manner, this was accomplished in six months, saving the company millions of dollars in "wrong research" that would meet dead ends or delay the product's market introduction and increasing profitability by 100's of millions of dollars by beating the competition to the market with a higher quality product that was then designed into our customer's next generation of their products thereby increasing market share and guaranteeing sales for at least a 20-30 year product life span cycle.

Further, the team developed the connector technology, again using DOE principles, that developed the interconnect solution that permits video over the internet.  So the next time you watch a YouTube video or movie trailer, you are using a product that my team ran DOE's upon in order to either develop the product or refine the manufacturing of the product.

If practical, profit driven experience isn't enough for you, how about that I hold advanced degrees that required major research projects, including one that is being used by a global, market leading company to adjust their labor force, in order to have the degrees conferred?  Care to guess how those research projects were developed?  Thay's right, DOE methodology.

You see RSB, sound research methods are sound research methods.  It doesn't matter what the subject is.  It makes no difference if the experiment is for how to develop a new product, how to refine a process, test an academic principle, or even make informed decisions regarding wildlife management.  Proper DOE techniques are like the ABCs - they are the basis for sound research and as soon as they are not followed, that research is garbage.  I pointed out in my posts where the study as presented in the thread fell down on several basic DOE principles and I never debated the research itself, but rather the shoddy and unacceptable methodologies,, thereby rendering it to anyone that knows even the most rudimentary amount about sound, reliable, repeatable research as poorly designed, poorly developed, and poorly concluded.  Attack me all you want, but that doesn't change the facts that the PGC researchers didn't follow accepted research study methodologies.

Further, I do have an educational, albeit not a working, background in animal bioscience, animal husbandry, and genetics, so in addition to having been involved in hundreds of DOEs, I do know a wee bit about the breeding of animals and what the results can be.

By the way, if you go to the doctor and you think they are wrong because you are complaining of knee pain and they are checking your elbow, either get a second opinion from another doctor who may actually be using sound medical practices to determine your diagnosis or call the PGC and get that doctor some smart pills.   Lord knows that it appears that your researchers aren't bothering to use them, so they should have some spares.
 

ORIGINAL: DarDys

By the way, if you go to the doctor and you think they are wrong because you are complaining of knee pain and they are checking your elbow, either get a second opinion from another doctor who may actually be using sound medical practices to determine your diagnosis or call the PGC and get that doctor some smart pills.   Lord knows that it appears that your researchers aren't bothering to use them, so they should have some spares.

Very impressive research/management background you have ther DarDys.
Color me impressed.

but I think you may have overlooked the possibility of a PGC Biologist (the one with the smart pills) being an abidextrous, double jointed circus performer in their previous life, so that elbow/knee thingy you mentioned may entirely hold water..

JT0817 are you referring to the moonscape out there on SGL 314 ? PS welcome to the boards (land of misery)

ORIGINAL: DarDys

ORIGINAL: RSB

ORIGINAL: DarDys

ORIGINAL: RSB

ORIGINAL: S-10

This is just one of the few remaining web sites where those apposed to professional deer management practices have been able to gather and post at any level of strength over those that do support scientific management.

Care to give any EXAMPLES of SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT that has been employed by the PGC that is different than before HR/AR?

1. The method of estimating deer numbers is the same method used in the 1970's
2. The PA SAK model is from the 1950's
3. Nearly everyone of the newer research papers references studies from as far back as the 1930's
4. HR was sold on 1,600,000 million deer which was a lie.
5.HR was sold on deer being responsible for Lyme disease which was a lie
6. Pa was using scientific deer management for 100 years. Just not the kind that put the Audubons birdies in front of the game animals.

The reason we are able to post with any strength is because we have been able to prove false most of the claims that the PGC's minions have been making on here. Sorry that upsets some people but perhaps if they didn't try to BS us all the time they wouldn't be proven wrong so often.

We are still using round wheels too. There has been no need to continuously reinvent the wheel because it works the same as it did 100 or even 1000 years ago.  

  
R.S. Bodenhorn

And those wheels are no longer made of stone, or metal, or wood, of in some cases, even rubber.  Those wheels may or may not have treads, may or may not be filled with air at varying pressures foam, or are solid.  They may be soft or hard.  But they fit the specific application they are intended for.  And the research that makes the changes, or more correctly stated, evloution of the wheel, is done by those that utilize proper methodologies because, unlike a psuedo governement agency, designing the research wrong, doing the research wrong, or coming to incorrect conclusions about the research has serious implications for their organization and them personally. 

And just who do you think should be making the decisions on which changes and deciding which are best suited for the future direction, those that have been educated on how to set up the correct research procedures or those that simply use the results of the changes?
 
What experience do you have to determine the wrong research is being done the wrong ways or coming to the wrong conclusions?
 
Why don’t you just tell your doctors how to treat your ailments? Or maybe head on down to the local sports bar when you need a broken bone set the next time, after all most of those people have probably experienced that a time or two? That would make just as much sense as what you are advocating for wildlife management.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn

The majority of your post is so silly that I won't embarrass you by responding to it.  However, I feel that it is fair to answer this question that you put forth:

"What experience do you have to determine the wrong research is being done the wrong ways or coming to the wrong conclusions?"

For over a decade I chaired a standing Focus Team charged with the strategic planning, continuous improvement, and responsibility for the complete business function including the interface between Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Quality, and Operations for the second largest connector manufacturer in the world.  Part of that responsibility was new product design and process development.

With regard to new product design, the team, under my leadership, took conceptual ideas and put them through a PACE pipeline in order to determine their viability as desirable new products; the ability to be transformed from first an engineering idea to a blue print to a laboratory built prototype to hand assembly to semi-automated assembly and finally turned over to manufacturing in the form of an ISO registered automated production process; the amount of required capital investment at each development stage; the return on investment and time table for break even toward profitability; and to make sound business decisions based on science based research methodologies at each phase in the pipeline whether to continue with the product development, change the product development, or scuttle the product development.  Design of Experiment (DOE) was an integral factor in all of this.

As for process development, the main focus was to take past practices and utilizing rapid continuous improvement methodologies, experiment with improvements to the process or process controls that would result in being able to produce a higher quality product faster while reducing costs and increasing repeatability and product type flexibility.  This was done using DOE as the principle.

In both of these endeavors, a lot of money was at stake - both as capital investment that must be spent correctly and as foreseeable profitability.  There was little to no room for error so only acceptable research techniques, proven as reliable by the academic scientific community, were used in order to minimize "wrong research being done in wrong ways or coming to wrong conclusions."  Many of the research techniques used were approved by Intel, AT&T research labs, and the Research Center for Engineering at Princeton.  When the capital investment is in the 10's of millions of dollars and the potential annual profits are in the billions, with a "B," you get the research right by conducting the right research in the right manner and coming to the right conclusions.

As an example, the IBM Blue Gene Project, which is part of their Smarter Planet initiative, utilizes as its main interface connection, a product that the focus team took from idea to full blown production.  It is also the interconnect basis for the Watson super computer used on Jeopardy.  The business plan called for an 18 month time frame.  Utilizing strong DOE work, including asking the right questions before starting any of the research so that the DOEs themselves would be designed, developed and implemented in the best possible manner, this was accomplished in six months, saving the company millions of dollars in "wrong research" that would meet dead ends or delay the product's market introduction and increasing profitability by 100's of millions of dollars by beating the competition to the market with a higher quality product that was then designed into our customer's next generation of their products thereby increasing market share and guaranteeing sales for at least a 20-30 year product life span cycle.

Further, the team developed the connector technology, again using DOE principles, that developed the interconnect solution that permits video over the internet.  So the next time you watch a YouTube video or movie trailer, you are using a product that my team ran DOE's upon in order to either develop the product or refine the manufacturing of the product.

If practical, profit driven experience isn't enough for you, how about that I hold advanced degrees that required major research projects, including one that is being used by a global, market leading company to adjust their labor force, in order to have the degrees conferred?  Care to guess how those research projects were developed?  Thay's right, DOE methodology.

You see RSB, sound research methods are sound research methods.  It doesn't matter what the subject is.  It makes no difference if the experiment is for how to develop a new product, how to refine a process, test an academic principle, or even make informed decisions regarding wildlife management.  Proper DOE techniques are like the ABCs - they are the basis for sound research and as soon as they are not followed, that research is garbage.  I pointed out in my posts where the study as presented in the thread fell down on several basic DOE principles and I never debated the research itself, but rather the shoddy and unacceptable methodologies,, thereby rendering it to anyone that knows even the most rudimentary amount about sound, reliable, repeatable research as poorly designed, poorly developed, and poorly concluded.  Attack me all you want, but that doesn't change the facts that the PGC researchers didn't follow accepted research study methodologies.

Further, I do have an educational, albeit not a working, background in animal bioscience, animal husbandry, and genetics, so in addition to having been involved in hundreds of DOEs, I do know a wee bit about the breeding of animals and what the results can be.

By the way, if you go to the doctor and you think they are wrong because you are complaining of knee pain and they are checking your elbow, either get a second opinion from another doctor who may actually be using sound medical practices to determine your diagnosis or call the PGC and get that doctor some smart pills.   Lord knows that it appears that your researchers aren't bothering to use them, so they should have some spares.
 

 
I am sure you are well qualified to do research on the design of connectors. What does knowing how to design and market connecters have to do with understanding the research principles and methods used in wildlife management?
 
I don’t see that there is much that can be compared or overlap between the two fields.
 
As for second opinions, there have been many second, third, forth and so on opinions from REAL wildlife management professionals and researchers that fully concur with Pennsylvania’s deer research and management direction. In fact researchers and deer managers from all over the nation have been saying for decades that Pennsylvania needed to harvest more deer or it was going to reach the point where the deer populations of the big woods crashed. They have been proven to be right. It is about the same as if one goes to the doctor, is told they have cancer, gets the second and third opinion only to hear the same diagnoses then says I don’t want to believe that so I am going to just ignore their advice. Well guess what after a while it is too late for anything to change the final outcome.   
 
R.S. Bodenhorn