Maryland White-tailed Deer Management Plan

Antarctica · Nov 9, 2020

Just saw this in a DNR email:

https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Documents/2020-2034MarylandWTDeerPlan.pdf

This is the proposed plan open to public comment.

In addition to being a management plan, it contains some interesting history on deer hunting in maryland. We all know there's a surgeon population, but I had no idea that deer and deer hunting were virtually nonexistent from about the late 1800's to about the 50's.

mdunphyjr · Nov 9, 2020

That's going to require more time to read than I had expected lol. Gonna have to come back to this after working hours!

Melnic · Nov 9, 2020

The department uses a population reconstruction model (Lang and Wood 1976; Downing 1980) to estimate the deer population size based on the total annual deer harvest and the biological data collected by staff at deer processors during the hunting season.

Hmm, gee I see no fault in that. Rigghhhhttt

Liberal seasons and bag limits enacted for antlerless deer have successfully stabilized and/or reduced deer populations in many areas. However, in areas with limited access for hunting, the deer population often remains higher than desired

No kidding.

Like numerous other states, the number of hunters in Maryland has declined as the hunter population ages, youth are not recruited into the sport, other activities demand or attract more of the public’s time, and available places to deer hunt have declined dramatically. The sale of resident hunting licenses peaked in 1968 at about 183,000 licenses sold and has declined to approximately 85,000 resident licenses sold in recent years

and that supports the method of counting deer how?

135sohc · Nov 9, 2020

This past weekend I saw at least a dozen road kill's in my driving on Saturday alone. They are out there and there are too many of them.

SummitCnty · Nov 9, 2020

135sohc said:
This past weekend I saw at least a dozen road kill's in my driving on Saturday alone. They are out there and there are too many of them.

They are in rut right now. The boys are running crazy and only thinking about one thing.

This time of year give or take a week road kill goes up tremendously. I can always tell when the rut was in full swing by the road kill.

lazarus · Nov 9, 2020

Melnic said:
Hmm, gee I see no fault in that. Rigghhhhttt

No kidding.

and that supports the method of counting deer how?

So, how is that a problem for counting? Is your field of study wildlife biology? You aggregate harvest numbers from the various units and can track trends from years to years. You are still talking averages over tens of thousands of hunters.

It’s how many states track herd sizes as well as samples from game processors to check average health of the animals harvested.

Muleskinner · Nov 10, 2020

The DNR doesn't count or has any idea of the mortality rate beyond what is reported to them. ,3 substantial demographics are missing making their numbers off by a considerable amount.

1) road kills...in most counties the number is estimated in the hundreds. A few years ago Howard county alone had over 900 reported car strikes.

2) unreported harvests. Ever since the DNR went to 100 percent virtual checking their numbers have been affected by unreported harvests. I know people who have never used the online or phone check in who kill multiple deer a year.

3) disease. Chronic wasting disease has been found in some counties but the affect on the herd has been minimal however EHD or blue tongue disease has killed off a significant number of deer in QA county this year and 3 years ago another outbreak in QA and Caroline killed hundreds. (And that's just the ones reported) . Some farms reported finding as many as 50 dead in their fields

In places in suburban counties they may never get the population under control because property owners are either concerned with potential liability or they are anti hunting and won't give permission.

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