Buckstopshere

Don't hang it up yet Doc. This upcoming season is going to be great and who knows what will stick. The DEC appears to be throwing lots of ideas up on the wall to see what sticks and what falls off. The DEC is concerned that the deer population in certain areas is going to get out of control because frankly, as hunters we are not doing our job. We are not killing enough. We are becoming too choosey. These new AR proposals are simply a way to accomplish the goal of reducing the deer herd in a benign way. The DEC does not care if Joe Hunter shoots a four point or an eight point. Of course if deer hunters had access to all hunting properties, the current spotty overpopulation problem would be a non issue. The DEC is in a tough spot, caught between hunters on one side, politicians on the other (all DEC law changes need to be voted upon by both houses like it or not) and business interests...timber and farming. And now these proposals need to be vetted by Gov. Cuomo's think tank. Stay on board. It is going to get interesting.

Putting gun season in bow season is crazy from a safety standpoint. Deer hunters with guns and bow hunters in camo? The DEC would have to change the bow season regs to mandate blaze orange on bow hunters...something NY does not do...even for gun season. To me, the mix of guns and bow hunting is too dangerous to comprehend...knowing the greenhorns (deer hunters with only a few seasons and kills under their belts) out there with guns and we who choose to bow hunt in full camo in the same stretch of woods. But I agree, enjoy this deer season (2015.) It might be the last good one.

Because it is not really about buck management. Simply a political shell game. Watch the pea (the yearling buck.) The real goal is to reduce the deer herd, as was done in Pa., down now 40% in 10 years and headed lower. The buck zones with the highest deer population will see the most restrictive ARs. Hunters will not be able to shoot bucks there so they will whack the does. Simple. Mark my words. The deer population will tumble in the Lake Plains and Finger lake buck zones, just what the DEC wants.

Everything done by government has some political aspect to it by definition.

Here is the link to the online article. http://www.outdoornews.com/July-2015/DEC-creates-buck-zones/

Agreed, but just seeing a mature buck at 20 yards during hunting season in NY is very rare. But setting up near a licking branch, or an overhanging branch hugely increases the odds, not only for "a mature buck" but expect to witness a parade of smaller bucks and does.

From the ad: "The ingredients of Smokey’s gland lures are proprietary, but are extracted from the pre-orbital, tarsal interdigital, and forehead glands taken from harvested deer, and processed to enhance and retain the properties of the scent ." So I would be pretty sure that there is a percentage of real whitetail gland in the bottle...but what percentage? On food labels, the FDA allows all kinds of misleading wording, such as when the label reads "contains Real Fruit" might have one grape in 100,000 bottles, still legal. Buyer Beware. Read the label. The ad reads that it is "processed to enhance." It's a safe bet that there is an unspecified amount chemistry beyond actual glands in the bottle too. But at least it is getting away from the "estrus rut lure" craze and focusing on what is important at the scrape...the overhanging branch.

It probably wouldn't hurt. But chemical (pheromone) messaging is a complex endeavor, and sometimes might create the opposite of the intent (dominant buck scent may spook away less dominant bucks, etc.) I like to move the overhanging branches over scrapes (either visible or not,) and noticed about 10 years ago on my trail cams that both bucks and does had 90% of their attention focused on the branch and the ground. Since then I have been experimenting with moving the overhanging branch from one area to influence the rut in my hunting spots. I think the major glandular vehicle is saliva and not other excretions - just from thousands of observations of videos and jpgs of bucks and does at scrapes. http://www.galesburg.com/article/20100104/News/301049974 http://www.eveningtribune.com/videos/ID:2983690779001/Video:8-point%20buck%20at%20zip-tied%20overhanging%20branch

It boggles my mind that AR advocates paint a picture of all of Pa. as if it was completely deforested by deer (not that acid rain, tent caterpillars, natural succession and poor forestry practices had anything to do with certain areas having less than optimal regeneration of certain tree species.) I hunted there every day during the seasons during the 80s, 90s, and never saw an overpopulation in Unit 3A in Northern Potter and Tioga counties. Anecdotally, it looks the same. A lot of big bucks were tagged as always through those years. They were tough to hunt as always. I killed a lot of nice 6 and 8 points. (There were enough bucks then to be selective.) There is no difference now in the deer size or health-wise except nearly a 50% drop in the deer population. Where are the stats and research that proves the deer are larger and healthier today in Pa. due to the current fad management scheme?

Here is a link to the mismanagement of Pa.'s deer herd. It is Part 1 of 8, (links below to the other parts) and does a better job than I can do, narrated by John Eveland, the former top deer and elk biologist in Pa. The first part is by way of introduction of him...about bears and kind of cool, but a bit off topic. He gets rolling in the other parts about whitetails. No, I do not follow the Unified Sportsmen of Pa. We can argue about numbers and our memories. But here are facts. Part 2 - Part 3 - www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG6Yb5QnoFQ Part 4 - www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISihJZBj4S8‎ Part 5 - www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUQvjNFPYnQ Part 6 - www.youtube.com/watch?v=tERrTqhLrxY Part 7 - Part 8 -

Right. Let's take a little stroll down memory lane, way back when I was a youngster and could run up one Pa. ridge and down another without thinking about it. Skidding deer through neck deep beaver flows and swamps with a rope in my teeth and a bow over my head. Back then in the 1970s, in the later years the entire statewide buck take was 61,698 in 1978; 58,864 in 1979 and 73,196 in 1980. Hardly an overpopulation. The doe take mirrored it with 59,543 in '78, 55,930 in '79 and 62,281 in 1980. For comparison lets look at last season in Pa. (2014) 119,260 bucks and 184,173 antlerless. So one would believe that hunters today have it a lot better than we did in the old days. Again, I repeat. There was no overpopulation of deer in the 1970s in Pa. and the harvest figures taken directly from the Pa. Game Commission prove it. Now lets look at the 80's. Ah the 80's and the advent of the compound bow. In the 70's I hunted with a recurve and an .06. By the end of the 1980s, the Pa. herd was getting really fun to hunt, still a challenge. In 1988 Pa. hunters took 163,106 bucks and 218,293 antlerless deer and by 1990 it was up to 170,101 and 245,460 respectively. In 94 it was 157,000 and 238,000. The numbers show that certainly in the 70s, 80s and early 90s, Pa. had no deer overpopulation problem, except in pockets, so I stand by my statement. There are the facts.

The Pa. overall management plan that precipitated the AR experiment in 2003 is called the Pennsylvania Regeneration Study (PRS.) This is the first sentence with the emphasis on the word "plagued." The Pa. overall management plan blatantly stated in its first sentence:! (sic bold and italics, mine.) "Pennsylvania’s forests have long been plagued with tree regeneration challenges due to many factors, the most significant of which has been deer browsing. Isn't it any wonder the population has been decimated with that type of mentality.

There was never a "vast overpopulation problem" in Pa. with the deer. Sure, there were pockets that needed judicious addressing, just like in NY, today. But Alt and the PGC jumped on the issue to pursue their agenda to cut back the deer population by getting a significant percentage of hunters to buy in to it, thrilling their handlers the business interests. I hunted Pa. hard during those years, and so did my buddies. We never saw a "vast overpopulation problem" in Northcentral Pa. At least in Tioga, Potter, and McKean counties. Right now as we speak (or write) the buck index or bucks per square mile in 3A is worse than anyplace in the Adirondacks. The deer per square mile in Pa. Unit 3A (which spans the three counties) is worse than the bucks per square mile just a couple miles north in New York state in Units 9Y and 8X where I hunt. And I know what I am talking about because I am here. My buddies and I hunted Pa. in the 80's and 90's and it was a lot like hunting in NY now. Not better, not worse...as far as deer sightings went. But now, unless you have controlled, managed, private, posted land with food plots, etc. You will have a tough time getting a deer, any deer in Pa.'s Unit 3A. And as the deer numbers drop there, so have the hunters, the average hunter who does not make deer hunting his passion (like we do,) but just a rank and file deer hunter who likes to go out deer hunting for a week or so and have a good time and a reasonable chance at seeing a deer... and that is a real shame. It would be interesting to correlate the deer index in some of the Pa. Northcentral units with the square miles to come up with the index, back in the day when the AR experiment was instituted. It would be a bit complex because the Unit lines have changed a few times. But certainly worth doing. I would bet that the buck index there in the 2,000 to 2003 period was about 4.0 per square mile with a doe density of about 9 or 10. Just about where we are at now in our Southern Tier units. Not bad, certainly not warranting the wholesale apocalypse that has occurred. And to add further insult to injury...guess what? The Pa. Game managers actually increased the antlerless permit allocation in 3A! That's right. Up 1,000 for this upcoming 2015 season. I believe nothing will be done in Pa. to change things unless a Governor like Scott Walker in Wisconsin goes in and fires the whole deer management department and hires a private deer manager to build the deer population back up.

As Doc said, hunters follow the lead of the state's wildlife biologists. IT was Alt's plan all along to decimate the Pa. deer herd because the power in the Pa. Game Commission is the timber and farming interests that suffer when any whitetail is on their land. What is mind boggling to me is that apologists like you continue to beat the drum, even when the deer take has dropped 40% since AR/s were introduced. That's 500,000 whitetails tagged by hunters to 300,000 last season. Forest regeneration...is controlled more by the canopy than the critters on the ground floor. Walking through the Pa. woods today in Northcentral Pa. (Tioga, Potter, and McKean where I hunting for 40 years) is no different than it was 15 years ago, except for one thing. There few deer trails now. And yes, those with large tracts of land and the money to create food plots suck what deer there are...especially the bachelor groups into a decent controlled hunting environment. No argument there. But what about the average hunter? They are the ones being screwed. But I have to say, there is no excuse for the deplorable actions by some threatening Alt and his family. The perps should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and then some...But many here in New York do not understand the anger and frustration in the rank and file Pa. deer hunter over the situation there, remembering the meetings as the deer population started to tank. New Yorkers are so lucky that we have not had to deal with the deer disaster...yet. Yes, I went to two of the Alt dog and pony shows (Coudersport and Cowanesque) and still have the VHS tape. I was on board to give it a try. I drank the koolaid. But then I watched from my stands each year how the population dropped. Now the true colors have come out and it was all about the business interests and the average hunter be damned.

Just because you can cherry pick a couple studies that have a closer correlation (3 of the 4) at a specific date does not mean that the theory of measuring fetuses to backdate the rut is scientifically valid. My point, which evidently I poorly made, is that though some may correlate at certain ages other studies disagree with each other along the 200 day gestation period to the point where it is not scientifically rigorous enough, or have enough correlation to hang your hat on. Just because you can connect the dots between two studies does not mean that it has any reliability for a future measurement, especially spanning strains of whitetails from one geographic area (deep south) to another (far north as you cited Bergmann's rule.) Again, I have to stress, the sample sizes of these studies are tiny because of the issues with sampling (i.e. expense, manual variation, not to mention ethics - killing a pregnant doe to measure the fetus to get a known scale.) You did not address the real issue... and that is the only way to know if the fetuses can tell us the conception date is to kill nearly 100 does minimum that have known conception dates, pull the fetuses at two day intervals all along the 200 day gestation period so that you have a basic scale. However, it would still be suspect with so few fetuses measured, get my drift? The two studies you referenced Cheatum-Morton (1946) and Armstrong (1950) only measured 17 and 76 fetuses respectively. Hamilton (a southern study - smaller deer) measured 64 fetuses in 1985 while Short's study in Michigan only measured 21 fetuses. And that is what the fetal backdating proponents that claim to be able to gauge the rut date support? I think, even "thinkers" should be able to see through the rusty and crumbling methodology called fetal aging studies here. Thanks for wading through this. Sorry, I didn't follow your baby - fetus sentences. I really appreciate the critique though. Thanks!

WNYBH: Please post the urls or links to the info you reference. I may have read it, but maybe not. I'm always learning and never said I have all the answers. Love to read new stuff on whitetails! We are all on the path to a better understanding of this amazing critter. But all the popular articles I have read that say they have disproved the working formula that the moon fine-tunes the rut simply average fetal measurements and claim that proves the rut date is always the same. The peak of the rut here, is a moving target every year with up to a three week swing from late October to mid-November.

I remember studying the very first radio tracking studies of whitetails back in the late 70's/early 80's and finding them in the Journal of Wildlife Management. This was way before GPS or even the internet. I would go over to the Alfred University library and pull the magazines off the shelves, and then copy (on a copier) every article in the JWM on whitetails. Radio telemetry was pioneered by Marchinton in Alabama and Inglis in Texas. A few outdoor writers picked up the ideas so the early telemetry studies made it into the mainstream outdoor press by the mid-80's. But these early techniques were quite inaccurate because the researchers had to use triangulation, the info transferred to clip boards by pencil, then to maps, the technology was in its infancy, etc. Still it was a breakthrough. Years later with the advent of computers and GPS, our understanding of specific whitetail movement went up to a whole different level. But no matter how refined and detailed the data was, with computers and GPS, it never could tell WHY a specific deer was moving. And then came along the infrared-triggered camera, the trail cam! And then we could see for ourselves the correlation between the moon and the timing of the rut. People are full of myths all right, I will agree with you there. They are afraid to give credibility to all sorts for things, from Herbal Medicine to acupuncture, mushrooms, and the moon. Our society as a whole believes that if ideas are not bought, sold and packaged all nice neat and clean by the mainstream media, they do not really exist. All we have to do is watch a flower turn towards the light to know that light has an effect on all sentient creatures. Moonlight is simply reflected sunlight. Sorry, I get even more long-winded on Saturday morning than usual.

Thanks for the critique. The Cheatum-Morton study has the 54 day old fetus at 100 days, the Armstrong study has the same fetus at 67 days, the Short study has it at 79 days and the Hamilton study is 69 days for the 100 mm fetus. So which is right, if any? And that is just one variable and only one of a few major issues with the technique. As far as Ultra sound with humans goes...I believe it is used to back date the conception date for individuals, not the entire species as the fetus charts claim to do. As we know, some babies are born at 7 pounds and others at 12 pounds with the same number of pregnancy days obviously their size is different. Bottom line, fetal measuring should be see as more akin to its precursor phrenology, now discredited as science and considered pseudoscience. But at one time, considered like today's fetal aging, gospel. And state game departments use fetal aging to peg the rut. The rut is a confusing term, no doubt. And different people mean different things when they use the term. But what I mean by the high point of the rut is those few days when the bucks are going bananas chasing, and everyone in the woods in the same region is noticing it at the same time,... just before peak breeding. The rut (when the bucks are on their feet chasing during the daytime) varies each year and can be pretty well pinpointed by the moon formula, but not fetal aging.

Here ya go. I have a couple other columns on the subject. http://www.tauntongazette.com/article/20110909/News/309099951

No doubt Alt "whacked the numbers down" for those reasons. So what? But what about hunters? I guess I am one of the "non-thinkers" on here, but it amazes me how Alt continues to justify the decimation of the Pa. deer herd and the resulting drop in success for the average Pa. hunter and it is supported by deer hunters! I hunted in Pa. for 40 years, hiked the ridges wild-crafting, and hunted turkey there. How much did Alt hunt there, spent time in the woods? All I can say is when the AR experiment was first proposed, there was little mention of the catastrophic decline that the whitetail population there would undergo. Now he is telling the truth. And hunters...at least what are termed now "the thinking hunters"...support it. Unbelievable.

Psychologists call it "the placebo effect." That is, when the newest fad, sold by slick snake oil salesmen actually makes us feel better and the new pill is the right thing to take, even though it is just a sugar-coated fantasy. If the deer take had dropped 40% in 10 years (from 500,000 to 300,000) by any other reason, there would have been riots at the deer meetings and a deafening clamor for change, like in Wisconsin. But in Pa. they drank the purple kool aid and still to this day, few who swallowed the notion of statewide ARs have the stones to admit that they were led down the road by the Pied Piper Gary Alt.

Old dominant does will put their ears back and chase each other in the spring, defending their fawning areas. But I have not witnessed does chasing other doe in the late summer or fall.

I have tagged a number of "dry doe," at least what I believe to be dry doe over the years and I too am well into the triple digets. I determine that it is a dry doe because, a. No milk in the sac when I dress them out, b., nipples barely noticeable, and c. when I check the teeth, they are brown and worn down to just about the gum line. Usually, 1 out of 20 or so. But that was when I was targeting big or alpha doe, now by shooting young doe, I don't think I have killed a dry young doe. But 30 years ago, I didn't think about it or know enough to check, so I could have.

I couldn't agree more (about shooting the younger does and leaving the old gals.) I used to try to tag the largest doe in my hunting areas, for the challenge and for the meat. Lot more meat on an old one than a young one. But the negative effect that taking an old doe has on the local rutting buck population is surprising. When the old alpha doe in a hunting area is taken out, it seems the younger does that are herding up, gravitate off the property towards adjacent alpha does, fall in with them and take on their patterns. And of course the bucks follow.

I remember back in 2005 (when the article was written,) two years after Antler Restrictions were made mandatory in Pa. for historical context. Many of us, if not completely sold on the idea, thought mandatory AR's were worth a shot. Alt seemed to know what he was talking about (I attended one of his presentations and have his vhs video.) And the article is right, in that context that Alt "could sell ice to eskimos." But now, with the collapse of the Pa. deer herd 15 years later (from over 500,000 deer harvested in 2002 in Pa. to barely 300,000 last season, none of us saw that coming. But now, the cat is out of the bag. AR's are an elaborate deer reduction campaign by business (timber-farming) interests, supported by environmental hyperbole like the above article. And one other thing concerning the Ivory billed woodpecker reference (used as an example for expanding nature center funding in the article.) The species is listed as critically endangered and possibly extinct by the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The American Birding Association (ABA) lists the ivory-billed woodpecker as a Class 6 species, a category the ABA defines as "definitely or probably extinct."