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Post by shouldernuke on Apr 16, 2014 16:36:27 GMT -5
If you take a closer look @ those numbers and add the buttons into the buck numbers, you'll see that the male/female harvest numbers since 2005 has been very close to being a ratio of 1/1 buck to doe. The one year that shows a significant increase in our ratio of buck to doe harvest is 2012 and that was the first year of the bundle license. In that year the buck harvest was approximately 62,000 bucks (antlered and buttons) and the doe harvest (adult does and doe fawns) was 74,000. But last year was back to more a more normal ratio. Quite true and we had our first "special antlerless hunt" in December of that year where 9,842 antlerless deer were taken. I know some hunters had a really tough season last year but looking at the entire state it was not all that far out of the norm. Averaging the kills since 2002 (when we went to a one buck rule)shows: Antlered - Antlerless - TotalAverage - 50,178 - 74,589 - 124,768 In 2013 the kill was: Antlered - Antlerless - Total2013 - 46,240 - 79,395 - 125,635 Difference - Antlered - Antlerless - TotalDiff - -3,938 - +4,806 - +867 867 more deer killed is less than 1% change from the average total yearly kills.And you know as well as I do that the DNR and herd biologists use the buck harvest to see the health of the herd and how the herd is trending ..Not the over all harvest info .So use the buck harvest info from its highest point top its lowest point and you have the true nature and trend of our herd and its not the way you represent it to be by using the total herd harvest figure ..Now lets not spin this tell it like it is by the indicators that the DNR use not the numbers that fit your argument . So by useing that our all time high in 2004 was 54,743 bucks and if you as sure but it went up and dow it did but the peak of our herd between then and 2010 btw had a buck harvest of 53,007 . That is a drop of between 7000 and 8000 from all time highs and these highs were relativaly recnt years with stable buck hunting rules no change at all .So now that is about 20% fall in just 3 years so how bad does it have to get Woody 50% in 5 years ? Lets own whats wrong not sweep it under a rug . The herd is in a big downward trend from its peak and that is shown with the buck harvest info not the harvest info with antlerless law and season changes every year or two .And the late antlerless season was a bad bad idea . .
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Post by greghopper on Apr 16, 2014 18:03:57 GMT -5
Lol.... So you now want to kill more male deer than female in the state? We are already almost 1 to 1 now!!!! Is this in atemp to grow the herd or you just feel you need to kill two Bucks to save the herd? ..........For your info the DNR is trying to reduce the herd some what not grow it!!! BTW...... They OBR is here to stay !!!! Sorry you where on the wrong train again when it left the station..... SMH
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Post by Woody Williams on Apr 16, 2014 18:40:30 GMT -5
Why sure the DNR looks at buck kills, but that does not mean that they don't look at ALL kills when determining the status of the herd and how many bonus permits to allow for what county. They also look at deer and vehicle collisions.. LOTS of various data goes into the equation.
Prior to last season and FROM THE DNR...
[DNR] 2013 Deer harvest may not exceed record of 2012
Hunters in Indiana can expect another productive deer season in 2013, but probably not as productive as last year’s record setter.
Hoosier deer hunters in 2012 harvested 136,248 deer. The deer harvest record has been broken in four of the last five seasons, a trend that DNR deer research biologist Chad Stewart doesn’t expect to continue in 2013.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if it was down a little this year,” Stewart said. “But I don’t expect the harvest numbers to fall off a cliff. There will still be plenty of deer out there.”
The 2013 overall deer hunting season began Sunday with the opening of the urban deer zone season. Archery season starts Oct. 1. Firearms season starts Nov. 16. For more information on seasons and regulations, visit Hunting.IN.gov.
The main reason Stewart thinks a dip in the harvest might happen is because hunters in 2012 harvested a record number of does. As a result, reproduction was likely down this year compared to previous years.
Stewart emphasized that reducing the deer population to a more balanced level has been the DNR’s goal in recent years. Changes to hunting regulations that went into effect in 2012 were geared toward that goal. The changes included extending archery season, allowing crossbows for all archery hunters and creating a “license bundle” that saved hunters money.
“A reduced deer harvest would mean we are making progress,” Stewart said.
(He did not say “A reduced BUCK harvest would mean we are making progress”, he said, “A reduced DEER harvest would mean we are making progress.”)
The 2013 license bundles give the additional option of harvesting either two antlerless deer and a buck or three antlerless deer.
Last year’s record deer harvest happened even as epizootic hemorrhagic disease was reported in 67 of 92 Indiana counties. The outbreak killed many deer before hunting season began, especially in northern Indiana. This year 15 counties have reported EHD.
Contact Information: Name: Chad Stewart Phone: (812) 334-1137 Email: dnrnews@dnr.in.gov
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Post by shouldernuke on Apr 16, 2014 19:59:30 GMT -5
Yes but call him up and ask you will find that they use the buck harvest not the over all harvest to do herd trend estimates sorry your yellow letters do not change that fact .His letter is for the lay person who will not understand that the buck harvest trend is the most important trend in herd estimation .sorry your reaching man and you know it lol .
You and others here are so scared you might loos some deer hunting opportunity or deer seasons or part of them you are unwilling to admit when the sky is blue when it comes to deer hunting here in our state .Just the way many see it not just me brother .
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Post by shouldernuke on Apr 16, 2014 20:03:10 GMT -5
Lol.... So you now want to kill more male deer than female in the state? We are already almost 1 to 1 now!!!! Is this in atemp to grow the herd or you just feel you need to kill two Bucks to save the herd? ..........For your info the DNR is trying to reduce the herd some what not grow it!!! BTW...... They OBR is here to stay !!!! Sorry you where on the wrong train again when it left the station..... SMH Grow the herd and wait and see we will very soon see a second buck to entice hunters back and help grow the herd man .Lets face it when enough hunters drop they will react in the way to draw in hunters and make it exciting and fun for them . Right train wrong chat forum buddy .the view point is changing about hunting deer in this state and not in a good way for trophy hunting and the OBR .Wait and see in a few years where the rule change talk changes too .
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Post by Woody Williams on Apr 17, 2014 7:49:18 GMT -5
You did not address it but again, Chad Stewart said - “A reduced DEER harvest would mean we are making progress.” He was referencing “deer”, not just bucks. Controlling the herd, whether it is to increase the population, decrease the population or have it remain stable is done through the “bonus permit system.” Only by the killing of does can the herd be managed. Our DNR, like so many other states, uses a kill model for managing. That kill model takes in a lot of data from different sources and it is not just buck kill. They use buck kill, antlerless kill, trends in accident rates, social acceptance, farmer attitude, hunter attitude and unfortunately more recently political attitude. This is their kill model that is still in use today…. INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES Bloomington
DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM DATE: 2/22/01 TO: Fish & Wildlife Personnel, Law Enforcement Personnel FROM: Jim Mitchell - Deer Management Biologist SUBJECT: Interpretation of County Deer Data Statistical Sheets I have been asked to provide a few comments about how I look at the available deer data when trying to predict: 1. what has been happening to a county’s deer herd and 2. what will likely be the effect of choosing different bonus county quota options. We should first recognize that we have several semi independent indicators of the trend of each county’s deer herd that will often will lead to conflicting predictions. Thus the trick is to decide how to best resolve the conflicts or to decide which indicator to ignore when they offer substantially different predictions. It is relatively rare when every piece of data agrees as to the trend of the herd. Additionally any prediction in population trend is only as good as the assumption that conditions of data collection are constant. For example, we assume that misrepresentation of county of harvest is a small constant percent relative to the total harvest for the county. If differences in quotas through time (1 vs A vs 3) cause misrepresentation of county of kill to vary widely, then bad data will lead to bad predictions. Likewise if a check station doesn’t send in data for 1 year or writes down the wrong county for a week etc, bad data will cause bad predictions. The first data that I look at is the trend in the antlered harvest. Since we have relatively constant numbers of hunters and relatively constant rules on antlered harvest, as a 1st approximation the trend in antlered harvest should parallel the trend in deer population. Since very few hunters ever took more than 1 antlered deer with a bow and 1 with a gun, the change in these regulations in the mid 90's really had no effect on whether harvest trends parallel population trends. (Hunter surveys have shown that only 10% of our hunters take more than 2 deer per year including all seasons and both sexes. Since approximately 65% of the harvest is antlerless, most of these hunters taking multiple deer are taking a combination of antlered and antlerless deer.) The next thing that I look at is whether there has been a substantial change in the number of antlerless deer taken per year. Each year we find that approximately 27% of the antlerless take is comprised of button bucks (round to 25% for ease of calculations). Thus if a county takes 100 antlerless deer in 1990 that means that approximately 25 males were removed and were unavailable to show up in the antlered harvest in 1991. Let’s assume that the population remains constant but we change the bonus quota and instead allow 600 antlerless deer to be taken in 1990. Then approximately 150 males were removed and are unavailable to show up in the 1991 antlered harvest. The bucks were merely taken at different ages. Thus if the county has widely varying antlerless harvest, I consider a modified antlered trend that is created by adding 25% of the previous year’s antlerless harvest to the current antlered harvest. Unless the antlerless harvest varies widely, I ignore the impact of antlerless harvest on subsequent antlered harvest. The next issue is how any change in antlerless harvest relates to changes in bonus permit quotas. A change in antlerless harvest under a constant bonus quota would be indicative of a change in population. However, a change in quota will confound the correlation of a change in antlerless harvest to a change in population trend. As we try to sort out the impact of changing quotas, we need to keep in mind that for a constant deer population, changing from an A to a 1 has a significant impact on antlerless harvest (generally will increase harvest by 2 to 3 times) while changing from 1 to 2 will have a much smaller impact and changing from 3 to 4 will have a very small impact. The decreasing effect of higher quotas is predictable from the low numbers of hunters who take multiple deer as discussed above. In general, changes in antlerless harvest are the hardest data to interpret unless the quota has been constant for several years. Obviously changing from an A to a 0 would have the biggest effect on antlerless harvest of any quota change and eliminating any antlerless harvest in the firearm season will lead to rapid herd growth. Such an extreme change in quota should be reserved for a unique situation where disease or other factor requires a major rapid increase in herd size. Trends in accident rates, accidents per billion vehicle miles and number of damage reports generally parallel the trend of the deer population and are especially useful in evaluating the population trend since these indicators are independent of the hunting regulations / hunting conditions. The percent antlerless in the harvest generally indicates how much pressure we are putting on the antlerless herd and thus is an indicator of whether the herd can be expected to grow. While a given percent antlerless would have a different effect in counties or states with greatly different pressure on the antlered deer, for the amount of pressure that we are putting on our bucks we find that 60% antlerless generally is the breaking point between growing or declining herds. If the % antlerless increases 5 or more % above 60%, our herds generally decline rapidly while if the % antlerless harvest declines 5 or more % below 60% our herds generally grow. The percent 1.5 yr old males in the harvest is blank for a given year unless at least 15 1.5 yr old males were checked for the county at biological check stations that year. If the percent (not number) of 1.5 yr olds shows a significant decline for a single year, that most probably is the result of a declining herd due to high antlerless harvest (remember the 27% button bucks). The way this works is that we still have a relatively large number of older bucks due to the previously high herd but have low recruitment of 1.5 year olds due to the decreasing herd and due to the high antlerless harvest. Retention of older bucks coupled with the lack of recruitment of young bucks causes the % young bucks to decline. This is an important additional indicator of population trend! On the other hand, if we are simply merely putting a lot of pressure on the bucks, then few will live beyond 1.5 years. In this case the % 1.5 yr olds will increase and remain high through time. After we look at all of the above, we then can estimate whether the herd is growing or not and where it stands relative to the previous 10 years. Then we turn to deciding whether to increase or decrease the antlerless harvest. As indicated above, a change to or from an "A" will significantly change the number of antlerless deer taken while any other change will have a much smaller effect. Regardless of the absolute deer population, if we want to increase antlerless harvest we need to liberalize the quota and vice versa. Thus the quota is primarily related to where people want to hunt (hunting demand) and secondarily related to where the herd is relative to desired level. We have counties with large herds and high hunting demand that have a low quota and vice versa. Finally we need to keep in mind that rapidly fluctuating quotas make harvest data interpretation difficult and are not popular with the public. When in doubt, make changes progressive through time. The desire to avoid rapid large changes in quota also applies when considering setting a county quota at 0 which would need to be balanced by a much higher quota in a short time after the herd significantly grows. The last 2 data sets to check your recommendation against are landowner and hunter attitude data. Keep in mind that we are trying to balance the herd so that both sides win something and neither side is sacrificed for the other’s desires.
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Post by swilk on Apr 17, 2014 8:01:20 GMT -5
He did address it .... he claimed that even though that is what Chad wrote it is not really what he meant and that he only wrote it for the "lay person" who does not understand how such things work. Basically he is claiming that Chad lied because folks are dumb.
We need a BS-O-Meter on this site ....
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Post by Woody Williams on Apr 17, 2014 8:07:34 GMT -5
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Post by greghopper on Apr 17, 2014 8:29:54 GMT -5
He did address it .... he claimed that even though that is what Chad wrote it is not really what he meant and that he only wrote it for the "lay person" who does not understand how such things work. Basically he is claiming that Chad lied because folks are dumb. We need a BS-O-Meter on this site ....
exactly ......then when the Deer herd is at unaccepted levels. The DRN will then lets folks shoot 2 Bucks to grow the Herd and make Deer hunting more enticing ......lol....SMH
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Post by Woody Williams on Apr 17, 2014 8:44:04 GMT -5
He did address it .... he claimed that even though that is what Chad wrote it is not really what he meant and that he only wrote it for the "lay person" who does not understand how such things work. Basically he is claiming that Chad lied because folks are dumb. We need a BS-O-Meter on this site ....
exactly ......then when the Deer herd is at unaccepted levels. The DNR will then lets folks shoot 2 Bucks to grow the Herd and make Deer hunting more enticing ......lol....SMH
We will never go back to two bucks. The uppers in the DNR F & W believe that the OBR is partially responsible for the larger bucks being taken. They want Indiana to be known as a "big buck state" so that they can raise non-resident license prices. They have looked at Illinois and want to copy their money grubbing plan..
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Post by swilk on Apr 17, 2014 8:46:00 GMT -5
What year did the DNR go to our current system of liberal antlerless permits?
What year did the DNR announce that they were looking to reduce the herd?
If I knew nothing .... which is possible ... and I just studied the numbers .... I would say the herd exploded in growth throughout the '90's. herd size began to stabilize in the early 2000's and by the latter part of that decade it seemed to reach its plateau and we achieved a nearly 1:1 kill ratio by sex. We sustained that 1:1 ratio until the last couple of years when the female kill exceeded the male kill by enough percentage points to be relevant.
So .... DNR implemented liberal antlerless seasons sometime in early to mid 2000's to stabilize a growing herd. After 2011 they tweaked again to try and reduce the herd a bit.
If they would just tell us how many we have .... how many they want us to have ... and how they arrived at both of those numbers .... I might be inclined to consider them pretty smart folks and able to achieve the goals they set.
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Post by swilk on Apr 17, 2014 8:47:33 GMT -5
Unless it is some sort of "earn a buck" ....
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Post by Woody Williams on Apr 17, 2014 11:27:45 GMT -5
Unless it is some sort of "earn a buck" .... Personally I don't think we will ever see a statewide EAB. Many years ago the DNR Deer Biologist (pre Chad)wanted to do away with the UDZ buck (basically an extra archery buck). An IBA officer said that they would not fight that as "they had to pick their battles". I did a little Vanderburgh county UDZ research and it showed that the doe kill was up significantly in that county since they went to the UDZ buck with the rest of the state on OBR. I sent that to the DNR director telling him he needed that "buck carrot" to get the hunters to hunt these areas. They ended up withdrawing that proposal. The EAB in the UDZ is the next best thing to eliminating it altogether. From my conversations with Chad he is not in favor of any EAB. BUT.. he could get over ruled..
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Post by jjas on Apr 17, 2014 12:29:20 GMT -5
If people are complaining about the pressure on the does now, let the IDNR implement a statewide "earn a buck" reg......Does, doe fawns and buttons will hit the dirt like we've never seen in this state and the public grounds would get hit the worst.
The present bonus antler less permit system in conjunction with the recent addition of the late antler less season are great tools to manage herd numbers.
So as far as EAB goes.....I don't see the need for it, nor do I see it happening.......
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Post by shouldernuke on Apr 17, 2014 18:59:32 GMT -5
Lol.... So you now want to kill more male deer than female in the state? We are already almost 1 to 1 now!!!! Is this in atemp to grow the herd or you just feel you need to kill two Bucks to save the herd? ..........For your info the DNR is trying to reduce the herd some what not grow it!!! BTW...... They OBR is here to stay !!!! Sorry you where on the wrong train again when it left the station..... SMH One more thing to drive my point home on this we grew the herd you now enjoy and had at all time highs with a two buck a year and one or two doe per year system long before you guys tried to save our buck herd .That was the nail in the doe herd populations coffin so to speak.lol.... The two buck rule was all about growing the deer herd and it works flawlessly .
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Post by swilk on Apr 17, 2014 19:07:39 GMT -5
That is some very flawed logic.
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Post by GS1 on Apr 17, 2014 19:07:40 GMT -5
I's say it was the one or two does a year rule that grew the herd. Not the "two buck rule" that had anything to do with it. You could kill 5 bucks a year and one doe and the herd would increase.
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Post by swilk on Apr 17, 2014 19:15:05 GMT -5
Yep. How many females killed trumps how many males killed when it comes to growth/static/shrinking of the herd.
An argument can be made that manipulating the male kill can tweak age structure of male deer.....
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Post by greghopper on Apr 17, 2014 19:43:24 GMT -5
That is some very flawed logic. you really didn't expect anything different did you?
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Post by greghopper on Apr 17, 2014 19:53:39 GMT -5
I's say it was the one or two does a year rule that grew the herd. Not the "two buck rule" that had anything to do with it. You could kill 5 bucks a year and one doe and the herd would increase. EXACTLY...
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