QDMA North American Whitetail Summit

Here's an interesting read for whitetail hunters......

www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/big-buck-zone/2014/03/live-blog-qdma-north-american-whitetail-summit



Here's a bit of the article....

Tuesday, 3:45 PM: American Deer Hunting is at a “Crossroads”
“Whitetail deer hunters and whitetail deer managers are at a crossroads,” says Brian Murphy, the CEO of the Quality Deer Management Association. That’s how he framed his comments opening the general meeting of the first-ever North American Whitetail Summit.

“We face more significant challenges than we’ve faced since the (wildlife) restoration era.”

That’s the reason we — a couple hundred deer biologists from various state agencies, representatives from corporate land holders, industry professionals, and non-profit groups devoted to hunting and wildlife management — are here this week in Branson, Missouri: to identify and start to address these challenges.

Among the issues Murphy noted: more frequent and severe EHD outbreaks across whitetail country, the vexing spread of Chronic Wasting Disease, increased fawn mortality (mainly by the teeth and claws of predators), lack of hunting access, intolerance of deer (and sometimes hunters) by landowners, non-hunters, and even changes in land use from coast to coast.

“There’s more concern and anxiety among the American deer hunter than we’ve ever seen,” says Murphy, who is one of the catalysts for this summit.

But Murphy noted that all this “anxiety” occurs in a context. For starters, the decline we’ve seen over the last decade comes from what have probably been unsustainable highs in whitetail populations and distributions.

“It’s important to note that I am not saying that whitetails are disappearing. But what I am saying is that they are down 10, 20, even 30 percent from their recent highs,” says Murphy. “How we address these issues will dictate what hunting and deer management will look like in the years to come.”