First, I really want to thank you for all of your comments. I do appreciate hearing what you have to say and urge you to continue to make your voices heard. I also believe that most everyone on this forum is an avid hunter and has passionate feelings about hunting. I know we won’t always agree but I do respect your thoughts and opinions, they are very valuable to me. I’ll try to elaborate on some of the excellent points you brought up in your responses.
Yes the Natural Resources Commission did approve the proposed deer rule. There were some concerns expressed by the Commissioners about the safety issues with high power rifles but there was little doubt that some action needed to be taken to reduce deer numbers. They also understand that if we can reduce deer numbers to our goal then these seasons will go away.
Now for some questions/issues you brought up.....
Probably the key question asked was by BOWMAKER who asked why I think we need to reduce deer numbers and why back to the 1997 level. It is probably the key question in the deer management program.
Deer management in Iowa may be characterized as balancing the public’s demand for hunting and viewing opportunities with the need to keep deer numbers compatible with agricultural interests, public safety and ecological limitations. The DNR’s objective is to maintain a stable deer population that balances the above demands. In many areas of the state deer numbers are currently too high. But how many is too many? For some people, one deer is too many for others there are never too many. Finding and maintaining a balance has always been and will always be the primary challenge of Iowa’s deer management program.
To gauge where we are on the “balancing beam” we hold public meetings and talk to various user groups such as the Iowa Bowhunters as well as the Farm Bureau. We also conduct formal surveys. We survey landowners and hunters to determine how they feel about deer numbers. In 1988 and 1996 the majority of both hunters and landowners felt that deer numbers were acceptable. However in 2002 over 50% of our landowners felt deer populations needed to be reduced. In 2003 we surveyed our hunters and found that 44% said that deer numbers were too high. It seems to me that the picture is pretty clear when nearly half of your hunters report that deer numbers are “too high”.
Our goal is to have a population capable of sustaining a harvest of 140,000 deer. This is about where we were in 1997. We hope that it is low enough that landowners will not have excessive damage and high enough that hunters can have a good hunt with quality deer. A good hunt to me means the opportunity to take one any-sex deer with a gun and one any-sex deer with a bow. I think there will still be opportunities to take extra antlerless deer in urban areas, parks and probably in some counties with low hunter numbers and high amounts of deer habitat.
Will this “ruin” Iowa as one of the top trophy deer states? I doubt it. If you look back, the mid 90’s is when Iowa started to “top the list” in the numbers of P&Y and BC entries. However how good of hunting we end up with depends upon Iowa’s hunters.
ONECAM hit the nail on the head: “the key (is) to educate hunters and land owners to shoot more does and open up hunting access in the problem areas”.
I believe we can have even better hunting than we did in the 90’s if we can get more hunters to pass up the small bucks and take a doe instead. If more hunter adopt this philosophy then I believe more landowners will be willing to “share” the opportunity to hunt with others. Maybe that is optimistic on my part but I think that hunters who adopt this philosophy will have an easier time finding places to hunt.
“Access” was mentioned several times and I wholeheartedly agree! Like I said in my first post, the DNR will be trying a pilot program this fall in 4 counties in southwest Iowa to recruit landowners to allow hunters to take antlerless deer. This program is an offshoot of last year’s “deer hunter registry” where over 800 hunters signed up saying they would hunt antlerless deer if they were asked. (Although not many connections were made the fact that that many hunters signed up showed there is interest.) Now we need to see if we can get more landowners involved. The pilot program will try to contact landowners and get them to commit to meeting with potential hunters.
Another option to improve “access” that the DNR purses is acquiring more public hunting land. We have also discussed ways to “lease” hunting access from private lanowners as some other states have done. Either of these options require money. Right now ALL of the funding for Iowa’s programs come from YOUR licenses. Cutting license costs simply means buying less public land and less opportunities for you. In my opinion DNR programs benefit ALL Iowans... and ALL Iowans should pay for these programs. Missouri dedicates 1/10 of 1 cent of the sales tax to natural resources... why can’t Iowa?!?
The final question I will try to answer (in this post as it is getting too long) is how do we know how many deer there are and how many were killed? The most honest answer I can give is that we don’t know... at least not exactly. What I try to do is to use the best scientific and statistical techniques to “estimate” how many deer there are and how many are killed. We do aerial surveys in the winter and spotlight surveys in the spring to “gauge” how deer numbers have changed after the season. We also collect data on car deer accidents (and adjust these numbers for the number of miles traveled on Iowa’s highways). We estimate deer harvest by using post season harvest surveys mailed to a random sample of hunters from each season. (I would prefer check stations but have not been successful in getting them implemented. The latest deer bill does require us to develop a “deer reporting” system but it can not be a “ physical check station”. We can only require hunters to report using a phone, post card, the ELSI system or the internet. So things will be changing.)
I use computer models to “simulate” deer numbers based upon the harvest and survey data and biological data from survival and productivity we acquire from research projects. These models work fairly well at a large scale (a wildlife management unit of 4 – 6 counties). County antlerless quotas are then set based upon the model along with feedback from local conservation officers, biologists and the public.
Well again this post is very long. Thank you for taking the time to read through it. As I stated last post I do not want to “interfere” with your discussions. I will answer your questions and provide info if you request and it is useful for the group. Thanks for your support of the deer resource in Iowa!
wjs
