Check out results on this property in NC PA

[venado]

sharpshooter, here is a link to an article about Jim Jenzano's 190 acres in north central PA. This is that area where some say the deer no longer exist due to that mean ol' PGC..! He killed a 147" P&Y buck last season. That is his best so far but when you see where he came from a few years ago where a 100" deer was a monster it is a remarkable change since he started his program.

With the acreage that you have available, perhaps there are some things that can be learned from Jenzano's actions that with some coordination of your hunters could produce similar results. One should never believe those that say that personal responsibility when it comes to deer harvest can not pay off on private land.

http://droptinewildlife.com/articles/evolution_of_a_small_property.pdf (http://droptinewildlife.com/articles/evolution_of_a_small_property.pdf)

[sharpshooter94]

venado, thanks for the great link. I hope that some day our camp could be like that.

[Renegade]

Ditto that, thanks Venado.

[Laturkeyhtr]

Venado, you da man! I don't know how you found that article, but that is great that you were able to find it. Maybe Badger (id he ever comes back) will print it and take some of the info to heart or maybe I should say "to the field".

Sharpshooter, it takes time, dedication and a committment to want to see a plan come together. Some folks think it costs lots of money, but if you can do some timber sales and redistribute that income back to the property it can work. Also, if you will contact your local soil and water conservation district you may find out that there may be some gov't cost share problems available not to mention technical assistance. Good luck !!

pgc, I would be interested in reading what you have to say about this article.

[Bob S]

Quality deer management combined with habitat improvements can lead to some great hunting. Every month in Quality Whitetails we see hunters who are making a difference and improving their hunting. The article in the June 2009 issue about the Missouri property was another great success story.

It means restraint in the deer you are shooting, and some hard work making habitat improvements. Some find complaining easier than making a difference.

Some even seem to think it is the job of the state to provide them with a deer herd to hunt.

Three weeks ago when I was at the QDMA National Convention, I talked with several Pennsylvania members who attend the convention every year. None of them complained about the PGC or a lack of deer.

[venado]

When we first heard of Jenzano's successful program a year or so ago we realized that he had done this in that north central area of the state where it was claimed that thire were no deer remaining. Our moderator was very interested and tried to get one of the perpetual complainers in the area to contact Jenzano. The complainer didn't but LATH did and at his request Jenzano was nice enough to come to this site. Even though he was open to questions none of the complainers bothered to even ask him how he had accomplished his improvements. It didn't take him long to decide that those complainers did not want help so he did not return. One could not blame him.

[Laturkeyhtr]

Bob, you said a mouthful:
I talked with several Pennsylvania members who attend the convention every year. None of them complained about the PGC or a lack of deer.

That is easily explained, those were folks that had an interest in tkaing issues into their own hands and doing something besides complaning.

I am glad that Venado made the article available. However, the complainers don't want to read it. At the time, I told Badger that I will mail him a copy if he would only provide me an address. It is sad that folks had rather complain than get involved to make things better. :(

[Renegade]

We see the same issue happening with habitat tours. I've been to at least 7 different ones and two other ones, one on capturing deer for the buck study and at the PennState deer pens that was strictly about the life and times of deer. These tours are advertised on various sites, signs posted in sporting goods stores and some legislators are even personally invited. There may be between 10 to 50 people show up and only 1 or 2 of them are these naysayers (who usually have a different outlook afterwards). They then use the excuse that the tours are propaganda, skewed, and only done on prime sites. PGC gardens ya know! The typical "the fix is in beforehand claim".
The reality is that some of these are put together by your average Joe hunter who searches for a speaker on a related topic, and have been done by PGC, DCNR (dept. of conserv. & natural resources), private timber companies, and located around the state. I've driven 2 1/2 hours for some, one way.

Not once have the opposing naysayers (read usp) sponsored or put together any tours. There was another time too where this one county club was raising such a fuss that they were renting a bus to haul any whiner down to the January quarterly meeting at PGC HQ. The first day of these meetings are for public input where you get 5 minutes at the mike to say your piece.
Well there was a big brew-haha that hunters were fed up and going to descend upon the PGC by the hundreds to show their solidarity in mass. The PGC had extra officers attend in case things got rowdy. The bus showed up with like 8 men, women, and children!

I have a couple of these tours video'd on the website for viewing but I don't know if it's okay to link to another message board site or not. Laturkey?

[GF.]

To what degree is this a public/private thing?

In CT, we're up to our arses in whitetails - unless you're one of the poor, suffering bastards condemned to hunting one of the 12 acres of public land we have out here.

OK, mild exaggeration :rolleyes:, but with first-shotgun season succcess in the low teens and second-shotgun season & ML season success in the low single digits, the public-land hunting is a horror show--and when the lottery limits first-shotgun hunter density to 1 gun/20 acres, some would say that holds true even if you can get drawn for the first shotgun season. And I'm not talking just about bucks, I'm talking about all firearms hunters getting an either-sex tag, no restrictions.

So you read this article, and what's it all about? Food plots and sanctuaries. In other words, draw the animals off of the surrounding areas and keep 'em there. Nobody's doing any o' that on the public land, so where are the animals most likely going to show up?

Food plots or no, that's pretty much how it works out in CT; the public areas are so small and so scattered that it's easy for the deer to move onto private land sanctuaries to dodge the worst of the pressure, and the more feed there is on the private land, the less reason the deer have to go back to the public....

But I guess the bottom line is that statewide averages mean squat. If 15% of the state's hunters have access to heavily-populated private land and they all tag out, then the other 85% of the population could strike out entirely, and the 'statewide' average still looks pretty damn good. They way they run the math in CT, 5 guys taking 3 deer each (easy to do on private land) and 95 guys getting completely skunked on public land still works out to an 85% success rate. Squat.

What has cost the PA 'not enough deer' contingent their credibility with me is that they still report seeing multiple deer every day out; they're just no longer conveniently counted in dozens, like back in the 'good old days'. Maybe somebody from down there sneaked a post past me, but I've never heard of anyone in PA - public land or no - who could put in 3 or 4 days of honest effort and never so much as see a deer.

So while the guy who wrote the article has obviously done a number of things right, he's also nursing a population time bomb unless they've got access to virtually unlimited doe tags and they've got people willing and able to fill them.

So I have no idea where the truth lies for PA. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me to find that they have the same public/private issue that we have farther north here, except again, it seems to me that the guys in PA who are screaming the loudest are whimpering about 'only' seeing deer in numbers that are far higher than anything I've ever imagined....

[Laturkeyhtr]

If 15% of the state's hunters have access to heavily-populated private land and they all tag out, then the other 85% of the population could strike out entirely, and the 'statewide' average still looks pretty damn good. They way they run the math in CT, 5 guys taking 3 deer each (easy to do on private land) and 95 guys getting completely skunked on public land still works out to an 85% success rate. Squat.

GF, I don't know how they do the math either, but I suspect that you have it wrong. It just does not compute!

I don't think that habitat improvements do as you suggest. There is still a lot of land around him that is just like it always has been. Besides you can only put so many "fish in a rain barrel". And I can tell you one thing, He doesn't have enough land under his control to even contain one deer average homerange.

[venado]

Just a guess but I think the math is no more complex than 15 deer killed by 100 hunters which would be a 15% success ratio. In PA's case that would be about 40% of + - 800K hunters or 320K deer, which is not far from the total kill of 336K in 2008-9.

[Bob S]

To what degree is this a public/private thing? I don't know about any states other than Michigan. According to a 2001 survey done by Michigan State University more than 83% of Michigan's hunters hunt private land. Sure the majority of deer are on private land, but so are the vast majority of hunters.

Any private land owner who does not have deer has no-one to blame but himself. I applaud the hunter/landowner who decides he wants better hunting and makes his land better to attract more deer. I have no sympathy for the hunter/landowner who sits and complains because the state is not providing him with the deer herd he wants.

[Laturkeyhtr]

I have no sympathy for the hunter/landowner who sits and complains because the state is not providing him with the deer herd he wants.

Very well put Bob!

[GF.]

Nor I... But I have plenty of sympathy for the guys who don't own any land, to speak of, and who end up on the wrong side of a property line with no deer to hunt....

'Cuz I'm one of em...

There's just something a little cockeyed when a landowner ends up using damage control permits to thin out a herd that he has deliberately attracted to his own property in the name of QDM. You don't hear much about that, but I don't know how else a lot of private land owners could possibly keep up with the doe cull numbers that they'd need in order to maintain some semblance of herd balance and the integrity of their landscape....

[dave-t.]

That has been going on for years in MO. Farmers who lock up their property (100% their right) to keep people out, shouldn't be allowed to have 20-40 ag. damage permits for the summer night shooting of state owned deer, imo.

You don't know that common hunting can't solve the deer problem when you post up 1200+ acres with 800acres of soy beans on it and never let more than 2 guys hunt it. If you opperate like that, then yeah, deer are going to eat up your proffits, and I don't know that the state should bail you out by allowing basically unlimited shooting out of season.

But, if you are hunting at least a guy every 200-300acres, who are filling doe tags, and you still have ag damage, then yes the state should issue you some ag. damage tags.

How many deer are taken on the property durring hunting season should definitely be a question that comes up before issuing ag damage tags.

[Laturkeyhtr]

DAve, I understand you line of reasoning there and agree. However, I am not sure that what GF is talking about is ag damage permits.

GF, would you care to elaborate on your comment:
There's just something a little cockeyed when a landowner ends up using damage control permits to thin out a herd that he has deliberately attracted to his own property in the name of QDM.

[Renegade]

I tend to agree with GF's above quote when taken at face value. And I think he's referring to dmap permits, but it comes down to an issue of the have's and the have not's, and I don't fault anyone for having what I don't. It's just the luck of the draw in life.
But you have to remember that dmap tags are a management tool to help landowners meet their own land's deer population desires. And since PA has a majority of private land in which most are small tracts of fragmented land, most probably under 15 acres, not everyone can take advantage of the dmap program in a negative way. I think he's referring to some large acerage landowners. The criteria is you can get 1 tag for every 5 acres of "cultivated" land and 1 tag for every 50 acres of "non-cultivated" or woodland, which is most of PA.
Here are the rules and FAQ's for the dmap program. http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/lib/pgc/deer/final_2009_dmap_application.pdf
http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?a=465&Q=176746&PM=1

Now that is a tool for those who feel they have too many deer on their land. For those who feel they have too few, it's simple. Stop hunting it or make it more alluring for the deer. Too many feel that other landowners should raise deer for them to shoot.

[Laturkeyhtr]

Renegade, our DMAP program offers tags in a similar manner, but they actually start out with a doe tag per 100 or more acres. After a few years of data collection (minimum simple how many, not the biological type data) they may reduce it.

Right now our co-operative has approx. 5800 acres in the program and we get one tag per 80 acres. The sad thing, two many of the landowers don't shoot their quota. We have never met the states recommendation! However, I try to make up some of the difference on my families part by shooting all that we possible can. :D And we don't have any trouble either eating them or finding willing households for them. ;)