Penn’s Outdoors

I am not sure if this is a case of fuzzy math or if I am missing something but quotes about PA’s deer population in an article from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review just don’t make sense.  Here’s the section of the article with which I have an issue.

If you want to know how the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s deer management program is working, Raystown Lake Recreation Area in Huntingdon County may offer answers.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been hammering away at deer there in an effort to balance the herd with its habitat. It’s also been collecting data to measure the success or failure of that effort.

There are some interesting numbers to consider, said Jeff Krause, the Corps’ wildlife biologist at Raystown.

Raytown’s deer population was estimated at 60 to 80 animals per square mile a decade ago. That had consequences, Krause said.

Quite clearly this amount of deer was too many.

Timber cuts meant in part to produce habitat failed to regenerate. Desirable trees like oaks — favored by deer as a food source — were browsed back, allowing birch and red maple to take over.

To change that, the Army Corps began working to lower deer numbers. Since 2000, it has created additional parking areas for hunters, improved roads and access points, and, most significantly, got heavily involved in the deer management assistance program, or DMAP, which offers additional doe tags for specific properties.

That’s put a lot of doe hunters on the ground.

“Counting regular antlerless deer licenses and DMAP tags, we’re averaging 58 tags per square mile, which is 10 to 12 more per square mile then are even offered in special regulations areas,” Krause said.

Ok, nothing new here yet.  This is the story that we all know about.  Kill a lot of does to reduce the deer population. 

Not surprisingly, the result has been a significant decrease in deer numbers. The population is now estimated as 15 deer per square mile, Krause said.

Fifteen deer per square mile.  At least, this is better than some spots in PA that have been totally wiped out.  I am not a biologist but was it really necessary to reduce the deer population to less than 25% of what it formally was.   But this next part is what makes me scratch my head.

That doesn’t mean hunters aren’t still finding and killing deer, however.

In wildlife management unit 2G, hunters kill about 2.5 deer per square mile. In unit 4A, the figure is about eight deer per square mile, Krause said. At Raystown, he said, hunters are taking 18-to-22 deer per square mile every year.

That means that while hunters may not necessarily see the same number of deer they might have 10 years ago, they’re still shooting plenty of them, Krause said.

So, there are 15 deer per square mile currently in this area but hunters are taking 18 to 22 deer per square mile every year?  Huh?  How do you kill 18 deer in a square mile if there are only 15 living there?  Even if somehow you do that one year, what’s the population the next year?  -3 deer!  This just doesn’t make sense to me.  I have given you the article in total so that you can show me what I am missing.  I suspect that hunters have been killing this many deer to get the population down to where it is today.  But, the propaganda here makes it sound that hunters are still having a lot of success.  The math just doesn’t add up.

Here is how the article ends…

Now, by maintaining the herd at its existing size, timber cuts are successfully regenerating, he said. Cuts that were comprised of 23 percent oak seedlings prior to DMAP are 42 percent oak now, for example.

That’s going to mean better habitat that will be able to support more deer in the future, Game Commissioner Russ Schleiden of Centre County told Krause at a meeting last month.

“I think what you’re saying is that once we get the herd to where it needs to be, and the habitat starts to recover, the deer herd will rebound, too. That’s something your data shows, and it’s something commissioners have been saying all along,” Schleiden said.

Talk about optimism.  I wish that I could be that optimistic about the deer populations coming back. You can only knock them down so far and expect them to come back.  I guess we’ll see…