Bonus changes?

[selinoid44]

I keep having people asking if they would humor the thought of lowering the bonus number in our county. My thought is no probably not. The reason I say that is it's a political/insurance thing. As long as those to factors are part of the equasion, it's not going to happen. Like I said in another post... the deer herd is probably reaching what 'they' want to call a management level. My 2 is . I hope Willie chimes in on this, I want to hear his thoughts or if he is hearing anything on quotas going down. Or if its ever been talked about.

 

[Willie]

I've not heard anything. Chad supposedly uses a formula for setting counties bonus tags. I know back 4 or 5 years ago the counties around Terre haute suffered a lot of deer loss from EHD and they did not drop the bonus numbers. The herd came back pretty good, so the most recent episode of EHD in Pike and Warrick they still didn't decrease the bonus numbers. The year that happened turned clock back for me (I hunt warrick) to the early 1980s in deer sightings. It is back as good as ever now..

EHD can decimate a herd a lot quicker than hunting..

I don't see them reducing bonus tags when the onus is on them by the legislature to reduce the herd.

A smaller herd is easier to manage so that is probably what they are looking at

I do understand that the DNR Fish and Wildlife wants to keep the OBR permanently.

Only a general uprising by deer hunters like they did on the first deer proposal will change that. That wont happen as too many deer hunters are one season only hunters and and OBR has absolutely no effect on them. The OBR is here to stay...

 

[Willie]

I think this is the protocol that Chad still uses............​

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.

 

[selinoid44]

Looks like they have 44 counties at 8. Our county which is Kosiuscko has 4 counties connecting to ours that are 8 bonus counties. 2 other counties that border us are 4 bonus one is straight south and one is south east. If you look at the population poll I did earlier, there are I think almost 68% of the hunters across the state that are seeing 4 or less deer per hunt. That to me says something is going on. The car vs. deer numbers are also down. I am a little concerned about what I'm hearing.
Thanks for the reply Willie.

 

[singlestacksig]

with the increase in hunters & seasons , they are most likely going to lower the quotas in some areas..

 

[Titanium Man]

with the increase in hunters & seasons , they are most likely going to lower the quotas in some areas..

That's being positive. I like the increase in seasons, as I have a lifetime license, but people are going to be finance driven no matter what.

DNR really jacked up next year's season, so it's a week after the prime deer rut time. The first full week will be the week of Thanksgiving, and I'm assuming the following week.

I guess Indiana gun season will elude me next year.

Sorry to threadjack.

 

[Willie]

State Farm, who issued the report that the deer/auto accidenst were down also made a statement that they believed it was due more to the economy and gas prices so peoplel were not driving as many miles.

TM,

It could have been a LOT worse if Deer Proposal #1 had went through..Thee firearm season will come in on November 18th..

 

[Bosshoss]

DNR really jacked up next year's season, so it's a week after the prime deer rut time. The first full week will be the week of Thanksgiving, and I'm assuming the following week.

In case you didn't know.( if you did never mind)
Deer season ALWAYS has started the first Sat. after Nov. 11.
This year was the earliest it could start and next year is the latest it can start. I don't know if this is changed in new deer purposals. Next year will be tuff hunting for a lot people with opening week having the holiday in it.

 

[singlestacksig]

In case you didn't know.( if you did never mind)
Deer season ALWAYS has started the first Sat. after Nov. 11.
This year was the earliest it could start and next year is the latest it can start. I don't know if this is changed in new deer purposals. Next year will be tuff hunting for a lot people with opening week having the holiday in it.

I just checked the new rules.. Firearms season has not changed...
maybe hunting will be better next year if less people are unable to make it out & maybe it will be cooler weather by then..
this year & last had really warm weather opening weekend..

 

[M4Madness]

DNR really jacked up next year's season, so it's a week after the prime deer rut time. The first full week will be the week of Thanksgiving, and I'm assuming the following week.

The prime deer rut time is ALWAYS before gun season, even when it opens on the earliest day possible (November 12). I consider the best days to get a buck to be November 4-8 each and every year.

As mentioned above, firearms season has always opened on the first Saturday after November 11. That means that opening day starts on November 18 one year, and counts down each consecutive year until it reaches November 12, then starts the countdown again. I'm sure that leap year affect that countdown somewhat.

 

[Willie]

I've always considered the peak of the rut in Southern Indiana as November 10th. I killed my buck this year on November 7th but he was all by his lonesome.

 

[selinoid44]

I agree with M4. I always structure my 2 week vacation starting on the last week of bow season. Sounds like thats subject to change this next year.