Interesting Article: Biologic and Other reasons for Antler Restriction in NY

[TheHunter]

Check out this article on the Hudson Valley QDMA about Biologic and Other reasons for Antler Restrictions in New York. 

http://www.hvqdma.com/biological-needs-for-antler-restriction/

[solon]

it's a wonder mother nature survived for thousands of years on it's own with out all the smart people

[steve863]

it's a wonder mother nature survived for thousands of years on it's own with out all the smart people

You got that right!  An article from the Hudson Valley QDMA that antler restrictions are a good thing.  Now that's a good unbiased organization if I ever saw one.  LOL

[burmjohn]

It's an interesting article... Has a lot of valid points.

[Larry]

Could QDM be a prime factor in the lower number of deer sightings?

We all heard it at the end of deer season on wed sites or in publications from other hunters; I hunted all season and only saw 6 deer all season. Then we start looking for someone or something to blame. We blame the DEC because we think the herd size estimates are wrong, we blame coyotes, to many nuisance permits being given out and even cars. All these are factors and there are more one of the biggest factors is hardly mentioned and that’s “US” myself included.

  When we all first started to hear about QDM and its management style; we were told if we wanted to see bigger bucks we needed to let small bucks walk, manage does (kill more does) this is not the same as antlerless. We were told the buck to doe ratio was way off and needed to be 1 to 1 this ratio is not correct.

  The harvesting of doe’s makes scents; to control a population you need to add or subtract females. We were also told that if we killed Does we would see more bucks. I do not think that is necessarily true and I can prove it. When I say doe’s I mean females 1.5 years old and older not antlerless. Because at any time before the deer season ½ to 2/3’s of the antlerless population on a piece of land are fawns.

  If on your land you have 15 doe’s and 5 bucks (1.5 years and older) and you kill 10 doe’s and no bucks you still only have 5 bucks. What you have done is reduced the number of doe’s by 2/3’s. What you will see are more buck sightings per doe sighting and you will see fewer fawns the next year. Another example is in Allegany County a farmer started a QDM program on his 1700 acres. He went out at night spot lighting to see what kind of deer he had and he saw lots of antlerless deer. For 3 years they took over 40 doe’s a year using DMP’s and DMAP’s. He would let you hunt there but you had to kill doe’s no bucks. They would kill a few big bucks. Then in years 4-6 they started to kill fewer and fewer doe’s by year 6 they killed less than 10 doe’s and no bucks, saw plenty of bucks before the season but killed none. Funny thing started to happen, his neighbors started to kill big bucks. They were not killing off their doe’s so the bucks were moving to where the does are.

  What I believe he did was not only destroy his doe population he also destroyed the age structure of his doe herd. This is what I believe we are doing under the miss guided concept of killing doe’s gives you more bucks and the myth of the 1 to 1 buck to doe ratio. If anyone can show me how killing doe’s can give you more bucks that’s a trick I would like to see. With a birth rate at 50/50 bucks to doe’s I am not advocating not shooting doe’s; what I am advocating is be careful on how many and where in the age structure you harvest the doe’s from.

[JGaruti3]

I think mother nature knows how to balance things out better than any human

[TheHunter]

You got that right!  An article from the Hudson Valley QDMA that antler restrictions are a good thing.  Now that's a good unbiased organization if I ever saw one.  LOL

Dick Henry, the guy who wrote the artice, is a recently retired big game biologist from the DEC.  He knows his stuff.

[steve863]

You got that right!  An article from the Hudson Valley QDMA that antler restrictions are a good thing.  Now that's a good unbiased organization if I ever saw one.  LOL

Dick Henry, the guy who wrote the artice, is a recently retired big game biologist from the DEC.  He knows his stuff.

Then I reckon he wasn't the one who wrote the official DEC statement saying that AR's are NOT biologically necessary?? 

[burmjohn]

Obviously not, since he wrote this article explaining why the DEC is incorrect...

[steve863]

OK, then the REAL question here is whether or not his retirement might have been a forced one??  LOL

[Fairgame]

Necessary No.  Better Yes

[burmjohn]

OK, then the REAL question here is whether or not his retirement might have been a forced one??  LOL

Hah, maybe...  But if you read the article fully, it really does make sense.

[Doc]

You got that right!  An article from the Hudson Valley QDMA that antler restrictions are a good thing.  Now that's a good unbiased organization if I ever saw one.  LOL

Dick Henry, the guy who wrote the artice, is a recently retired big game biologist from the DEC.  He knows his stuff.

There's a lot of people who "know their stuff" including a few in the DEC, that don't seem to agree with the premise of the article. But then I suppose that a person would have to fancy themselves as a bit of an expert themselves in order to know whether somebody really "knows their stuff" ..... lol. But in the end, it all turns out to be a "my biologist is smarter than your biologist" kind of argument. Not terribly meaningful and frankly, I'm not impressed.

However as much as I am not really an expert in the field, I feel pretty secure in predicting that the deer herd will most likely get along just fine for the next century and probably a few after that without AR, inspite of all the "sky is falling" claims from all the self-proclaimed "experts". How on earth is it that we still have all these deer running around, and even a surplus of them occasionally?

Doc

[JCTheGC]

Excellent article from a respected expert biologist.  Despite what ^^^ others say, it was extremely meaningful and spot on.  To bad these guys just don't get it, good thing they are not in my WMU. 

[Buckstopshere]

Pretty long.

Measuring a fetus to backdate a the rut is not what I would call rigorous science, especially when it is averaged? Wow. That is silly.

Big problems arise when these scientists have to kill does that have known conception dates and then measure the fetus. If they do not do this, there is no base.

Do you AR guys understand that?

Look into it beyond nodding your head.

And then there are the aspects of...buck fetus and doe fetus are different size in the same pregnancy.  What about multiple paternal insemination? It goes on and on.... of course the fetus are different sizes, then are they conceived on different dates?

Such bad science.

But did he address the effect that AR's is having on the hunter recruitment by demeaning the average kill? If he did I missed it.

And is he paid to write that stuff?

Scientists should measure and record and leave the conclusions to objective thinkers.

[Dinsdale]

Pretty long.

Measuring a fetus to backdate a the rut is not what I would call rigorous science, especially when it is averaged? Wow. That is silly.

Big problems arise when these scientists have to kill does that have known conception dates and then measure the fetus. If they do not do this, there is no base.

Do you AR guys understand that?

Look into it beyond nodding your head.

That is standard practice of all mammalian studies for conception dates.

Most base lines are derived from captive animals, so where in are the "big problems" in this on a scientific level?

Sample sizes are tyically large enough to arrive at a base line and use of a scale such as shown in the pics on that report is considered statistically accurate. Deer biology for conception dates isn't exactly new and has been around for some time.You will notice that particular scale is from a 1986 issue. I have one that was given to me at Cornell that dates from the late 70's(that study had well over 1000 animals in it for that scales basis)

Even human embryo's have had the same samples done.

The pics of the fetus in the article are from a cull hunt done on a local Hudson Valley college by pro-shooters.

But this article and the principles with in are the basis of animal husbandry around the world on the conception material.

The rest you can argue amongst yourselves.....

[Dinsdale]

For 6.95 and shipping you can have a brand new scale too!

http://www.forestry-suppliers.com/product_pages/View_Catalog_Page.asp?mi=6386

Puts my old metal keepsake one to shame.

:D

[Buckstopshere]

Dinsdale: Thanks, I bought one a few years ago from QDM.

Since you are evidently up on the fetal measurement science, what base is currently being used for New York deer? It is my understanding that there is a significant difference in fetal growth in whitetails between the various strains and various regions. What is the base number of pregnant does with known conception dates used?

Is it the old Cheatum-Morton study here in New York,  Hamilton, Tobin and Moore, or the Armstrong study here in NY? Especially troubling is the difference between the Hamilton et.al. and Cheatum studies. And what was the sample size for the base? I think Cheatum used 25 uthanized does and Armstrong 75?

Do you have any studies that you would recommend? I have access to the JWM.

[Dinsdale]

No, unlike some, not trying to portray myself as an expert......

My interest in the reproduction of cervids stems from an interest back a few years when I was learning how to AI cows. I was taking a set of courses sponsored by Cornell for a few weeks for certification from one of the Associations.

At the same time a friend and I had this plan to raise commercial Reindeer for meat in the Southern Catskills,marketing  in NYC. :  So while there I talked to everyone I could find about reproduction of cervids in general. Met quite a few very nice folks who were more than willing to let me borrow and use their material to read up.(we applied for a grant and lost out, so the project never went anywhere)

But a PhD candidate gave me a box of materials I still have somewhere and there was a study in there from the mid-west(Ohio?) that had a large sample size; it was done on a commercial farm( had something to do with Texas A&M,IIRC). I'd have to dig it out. I do recognize that Cheatum study name; isn't that from the late 40's? I know some are in the 30's that are still used.

And that was my point; the numbers have been crunched for quite a while; and most are accepted as statistically accurate(from anyone I have met anyway).

So you bought a scale for use....but don't believe in the science behind it?

Do you have some better #'s to share ? Are you doing research ?

Thoughts?

I just find it interesting you can quote specific studies, can you offer any evidence they are all controverted? I was under the impression most are fairly good(?)

[Buckstopshere]

I hope I don't come across like I am an know-it-all, just a layman with a few questions, that's all, but with a passion to understand whitetails.

Back in the late 1970's I went over to Alfred University which is nearby and began going through the Journal of Wildlife Management and copied every study I could on whitetails and cervids. Of course this was long before the internet...which has made things easier in some ways and more difficult in others....but I digress.

When I stumbled upon fetal measurements of whitetails, I thought I had found the Rosetta stone to be able to backdate and figure when the rut happens.

My Dad was an avid trout fisherman and would dump a mess of trout in the sink and my brother and I couldn't wait to stand on chairs and watch him gut them and open up their stomachs so we could see what they were eating. Later, we would I.D. the insects and knew which flies were hatching...

I have shot a lot of does and like to open up their uterus, just to see if they were bred or not...

Only problem is even a late season doe that got bred in the first of the three annual major rut cycles only totes a fetus about the size of kidney bean...in my experience.

I have seen two fetus that are different sizes in the same womb, one almost twice the size of the other. Was this from two conceptions? Was this a buck fetus and a doe fetus? Or are they genetically different.

My brother-in-law has twin girls, they are fraternal twins. One is a large blonde, twice the size of her brunette sister. Is that the case in deer? So many questions. If they were measured and backdated... and yet they were conceived at the same time.

Well, I started looking into studies and sought a base. You are right, the old Morton and Cheatum and Hamilton data bases do not jive. Why? Logical that different strains of whitetails would be different sizes, but New York deer?

Then I wonder if the reality of the controls are the same. What I mean is once the doe with the known conception date is euthanized and the fetus is removed, how careful is it measured? I mean if it is scrunched a bit and is just a mm. off...then it skews the size and therefore the backdate.

I recall reading that the actual way the crown to rump are measured is different, in different studies.

Also, the way that the years are averaged just makes me wonder. Why do they do that?  In 2007 the fetal measurements point to one date. In 2008 another date and in 2009, a third date. So they average them all together to come up with an average date of the rut that can be two weeks off a rut in any given year? What good is that?

The Pa. fetal measurement studies (taken from road killed does) do the same thing and average the rut dates over a number of years and say...."this is when the rut occurs in Pa." Crazy.

I will dig up some critical studies...ya know it reminds me of the radio tracking studies. I thought that they were the be-all, end-all in understanding whitetail movement. And then I began reading how skewed some of the devices actually are...especially the ones that are not or pre-GPS.

I used to think that splitting a deer's gum and aging the teeth was the way to go. And then Henry Chidgey from Texas emailed me and explained the problems with measuring tooth wear.

And I used to think mandatory AR's was the way to go too...and then the weight of the evidence, the force of logic and common sense on the other side made me change me mind. I guess that's how I learn.

[Dinsdale]

Sounds fair....Similar experiences here.

My take on the whole deal is that AR's are a laymans choice to give a field way to judge animals on the hoof. More than likely not the best one, just a stab at something.

Check out the numbers of twins that older does give compared to young deer.....(blue box)

http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/wildlife_pdf/deerrepro09.pdf

AR's have been mixed results depending where and the management style employed. Areas of Texas also employ spread and seem to do better( Just try to sell that one here.LOL)

I live close enough to the current AR program to hunt the boundry area in the next unit. At this point I have to say I have seen a lot more mature deer carrying larger head gear. Is it AR, better hunting skills(thats what I like to think : ), decrease in participation? I don't know. Is it sustainable? Most studies point to eventual high grading issues.

I do know that I have been on intensely managed properties for other game. Wow...good management is unreal in its effects for herd health.Does it apply to the general deer hunter from NY? With patchwork public and private lands and a different regional hunting culture?Guess thats what the debate is about.....and so it goes.

Cheers

[Nomad]

Hum... I hunt QDM and AR land . Heres what its done around me. Big tracts of land that used to be hunted by many are now hunted by few. The many are left to look for a place to hunt,often on less and less land near by.

The QDM land has plenty of deer and we shoot a few does and a big buck here and there . The ones kicked off the "QDM" land see very little . I shoot a few does and am waiting for all these big bucks......

[burmjohn]

Larry where do you hunt?

[Nomad]

sorry for the late reply,been having trouble staying logged on,my lap top seems to work though !

I hunt in 8h  on a large farm,all the rules qdm/ar whatever are farm rules.

[Doc]

Big tracts of land that used to be hunted by many are now hunted by few.

That particular one sentence should eventually account for more and bigger bucks even if there was no AR rules in place. Simply the fact that less pressure should mean smaller harvests. Smaller harvests should result in more deer getting older and bigger. Of course if AR are in place, it will get total credit for the bigger and older bucks. It's kind of like growing bigger bucks by simply not hunting them as much ...... lol.