2011-2012 Season Preliminary Results
Since the inception of the Schiff Deer Management Program, we have been able to effectively balance very agressive deer hunting with the other public uses of Schiff Nature Preserve and McVickers Brook Preserve. We harvested 66 deer this season, 49 of which were does. This missed our goal of 100 by quite a bit, but at first glance the total hours spent hunting was roughly the same as the past two seasons. No surprise, but this season turned out to have the lowest harvest rate since Schiff started fully managing the program. In 2009-2010 we harvested 85 deer and 2010-2011 we harvested 103.
The ratio of does to bucks harvested was on target to hopefully lower the deer population on our properties and reduce the impact they have on native forest regeneration. Of the 17 bucks harvested, 9 were button bucks and the remaining 8 were mature, antlered bucks. Although the overall numbers were down quite a bit, I think we can be proud of another very successful deer management season!
More analysis will follow in a final report.
Harvest totals update
- 2009 – 2010 – 58 deer harvested
- 2010 – 2011 – 75 deer harvested
- 2011 – 2012 – 46 deer harvested
NYT Article on Poor Mast Year
I was inspecting a huge oak in Chester earlier this Fall. Photo by Julie Gause
So, the poor mast year seems to be a phenomena throughout the Northeast. Click here for the New York Times article.
How much harder is hunting this season?
All of the hunters I talk to say that hunting is more difficult this year. I wanted to know how much harder, so I ran the numbers for the past three seasons up to the beginning of 6-day firearm season (i.e. including fall bow/crossbow, and the miscellaneous muzzleloader season).
As it turns out, it has been tremendously more difficult this year to harvest a deer. Over the past two seasons, our hunters spent an average of around 35 hours per deer harvested. This year, it is taking them close to 60 hours hunting per deer harvested. This means that on average, hunters are spending 1.6 times more hours hunting to harvest a deer this season! Here are the actual numbers:
- 2009 – 2010 season, 36 deer harvested, at an average rate of 34 hours spent hunting per deer harvested
- 2010-2011 season, 51 deer harvested, at an average rate of 36 hours hours spent hunting per deer harvested
- 2011- 2012 season, 25 deer harvested, at an average rate of 59 hours spent hunting per deer harvested
Hunting is necessarily going to become more difficult and hunters are going to have to spend more time to continue to be effective. The upshot is that the herd is getting healthier and the does and bucks that are taken are going to be larger. We should also be able to move to a quality deer management approach to ensure our herd is healthy and in balance over time.
The first few weeks…
Deer Harvested the First Three Weeks of Hunting Season, 2009-2010, 2010-2011, and 2011-2012
We are almost three weeks into the season and have been able to harvest nine deer, which works out to about the average amount of deer harvested for this time of year over the past three seasons; last season our performance was much better, and the season before slightly worse.
I think there could be several potential reasons for this. First, it seems like it is a worse mast year than last year. This could be affecting the movement patterns of deer which our hunters will have to adjust to. Deer may not be coming to the same prolific oak trees and may be focusing browsing somewhere else so the same hunting locations last year may not be the best locations this year. We are using deer feeders again this year which will hopefully counteract some of the effects of a poor mast year.
Second, as many of you probably know Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease is in the area. This may have killed off some of our herd, but I haven’t seen any evidence of it. Since nighttime temperatures are starting to get cooler, the midge that is a vector of this disease should die off and the deer that haven’t yet been stricken by it should be ok.
Third, we haven’t had quite as much hunting pressure from our hunters these first several weeks. Perhaps because of the full moon during opening weekend, warm weather,, or hectic schedules, we haven’t had quite the equivalent number of hours hunted for this point in the season.
Finally, we may be starting to see the effects of our relatively massive harvests the past two season. I think this is probably unlikely as our properties seem to act as a sink for surrounding deer herds.
Eventually as the herd gets smaller, hunting will become more challenging on our properties. At the same time, hunting has clearly made the herd healthier as evidenced in larger does and bucks and healthier (and more) fawns. We will be conducting our scientific forest health monitoring again in 2012 with Dr. Michael Van Clef to determine if our hunting is positively affecting forest health.
Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) is in Harding Township
The sudden die off over the last seven days has been extraordinary and may affect all the major deer herds in the Morris County vicinity,” Platt said.
Feeders taken in
Given the impending tropical storm, I decided to pull in all of our feeders. I hope to get them back out and filled by the beginning of the season.
In about two weeks I am going to be meeting with a deer biologist from the Division of Fish and Wildlife to discuss our program and the optimal placement of the feeders. I’ll be emailing a map to all of you that shows the location of the feeders.
Stay safe!
