In the Outdoors
An argumentative sport
With Oak Duke

There is always going to be dissention among deer hunters because of the pluralistic nature of deer hunting.

Deer hunters often have different goals and therefore do not agree on the methodologies for whitetail deer management.

Also, the whitetail population objectives, determined by the DEC vary greatly across New York.

Whatever the case, the deer hunters of New York state are going to see statewide, about the same allocation of Deer Management Permits in the upcoming 2006 season as they did during the 2005, up slightly by five percent.

Why?

Because the DEC’s own calculated harvest figures show that the deer herd overall, statewide, is about where the management objectives have been set. (Therefore the slight increase, from 313,840 in 2005 to 328,160 in 2006.)

The DEC recognizes this and has made significant cutbacks in tags for hunters in some DMUs, in others they have increased.

But whitetail deer management varies with different range types, holding capacity, hunter patterns, whitetails’ effect on human habitation, and driving patterns.

So the DMP allocations differ greatly from one DMU to the next.

In 2005, the state released an initial 313,840 DMPs, which was a decline of 40% from the 2004 season, recognizing a need to rebuild the deer herd in many areas.

This year, deer hunters will see an initial target release of 328,160 permits, up 14,320 permits- but that is statewide.

As they say, “where the bullet meets the bone,” is in the individual Deer Management Unit, which has its own unique deer population goal.

DMUs next to each other may vary dramatically.

The goals or population objectives in the DMUS differ greatly from Lake Erie to the Hudson Valley and from the Adirondacks to the Allegheny River.

But still, the fact is, in at least 65% of the DMUs, the objectives were not met when the numbers were tallied. Hunters did not harvest the deer the DEC expected.

The overall deer population is categorized as low in these specific units, so the permits need to be cut back to let the deer herd rebuild.

And here is where some deer hunters may be unhappy with the number of permits they receive, being use to getting a pocketful just a few years ago (2001 and 2002.) Now this same hunter, applying in the exactly same Unit may not get even one DMP permit for the upcoming 2006 season!

9Y - Take for instance, my home DMU 9Y (124 square miles,) in southeastern Allegany County, carrying one of the most dense deer populations in New York state (Buck index of 4.4 per square mile.)

Last year hunters tagged 755 whitetails on DMU permits in 9Y. But this year, the DEC only wants to take 200 deer out of the population in 9Y on DMPs, so there will only be available 800 permits (figuring on about a 25% success rate.)

Therefore, the DEC has given deer hunters in 9Y only a “Medium” chance of getting a DMU permit at all. Consequently, there will be a lot of deer hunters around here very unhappy because they will not have a DMP permit this season. But they have to understand, that according to the harvest figures last year, the population can not take another massive doe kill.

Hold off this year and the population should be back up to better numbers in the next year or two.

Let’s take a look at a couple other Deer Management Units around the state:

5C - The Adirondacks have quite a few DMUs with a relatively low Buck Index. This unit, in the northern range, has .3 bucks per square mile, with an actual harvest figure from 2004 and 2005 at that level. Four hundred deer were harvested there in 2004 and 378 in 2005. The DEC did not release any DMP for the 2005 season there and again, this year, the state will not release any DMPs in 5C.

3M - This DMU is near New York City with its southern border on New Jersey’s northern border. Here the DEC wants 2,350 deer removed and is releasing 18,200 DMPs, figuring a 12% success rate. It is a large DMU with 749 square miles, so that is 24.3 DMPs per square mile. Hunters have a “Medium” chance to get a second DMP here, meaning that they are virtually assured of getting at least one DMP here.

Last year, during the 2005 season deer hunters took 2,740 deer on DMPs in 3M. The buck take objective here was 3.3 and the actual buck index in 2005 was 3.4. Hunters tagged 6,983 deer here in 2004 and 5,762 in 2005.

With this quick glance, one can see that New York state has a patchwork of deer management objectives and though the DEC, overall, has edged up the statewide DMP allocations in some DMUs, others have significantly decreased.

Oak Duke, publisher of the Wellsville Daily Reporter, writes a weekly outdoors column.