How much higher is the deer kill from human hunting than the other four causes?
Answer: More than four times higher than any other source. In fact, human hunting was responsible for about twice as much deer mortality in northern Wisconsin than the other four causes combined.
The rates of mortality were human hunting 43%, starvation 9%, coyote 7%, wolf 6% and roadkill 6%.
If you added poaching (8%) the human kill gets even more significant…
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Photo Copyright Jim Robertson
By: Jonathan Wilson
January 15, 2014
For the second year in a row, the National Park Service is using the practice of bringing in sharpshooters to kill deer in Rock Creek Park in an effort to thin the local herd and allow park vegetation a chance to regrow.
The lethal method of controlling the deer population continues to draw strong criticism from some local residents and from groups such as the Humane Society, but the Park Service isn’t budging.
Stephanie Boyles-Griffin, the Humane Society’s senior director of Wildlife Response, says everyone can agree that not managing the deer in Rock Creek park would be a disaster for the deer and local citizens who enjoy the park. But, she says, there are better ways to do it than what the Park Service has proposed.
“We put men on the moon — we can manage animals like deer living in Rock Creek without having to kill them,” she says.
Boyles-Griffin says that long before the Park Service got final approval for its management plan, it solicited public opinion and got more than that from her group. The Humane Society advocated for immunocontraception as a way to thin the herd — and even offered to pay more than half the cost — an offer that still stands.
“It just seems a little outrageous that they wouldn’t take a route that might take a little longer, but would let everyone achieve their management goals, but would make everyone happy and more importantly would be something NPS could be proud of instead of something they have to be ashamed of,” she says.
Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles of the National Park Service says her agency has a responsibility to manage the entire park. And she says getting deer down from more than 70 per square mile to 15 to 20 per square mile needs to happen fast.
“We’re in a crisis right now — and we need to quickly and effectively bring the population down to allow forest regenerate and to allow other plant life to flourish in Rock Creek Park,” she argues.
Anzelmo-Sarles says NPS has rejected immunocontraception thus far because no method that can be remotely injected has been proven effective over a multi-year period without leaving chemical residue or changing behavior in deer.
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http://wamu.org/news/14/01/15/park_service_not_budging_on_rock_creek_park_deer_culling_debate
Photo by Jim Robertson
Most of you remember the buck in Oregon who was hit by an arrow. Apparently the wound wasn’t too deep and the arrow worked its way back out. Here he is now; Buck showed back up just the other day at the home of the woman who worked so hard to keep him safe throughout the rest of hunting season. I’m sure for her, this was the best Christmas gift she could ever hope for!!
October 7, 2013
A judge in Indiana has ruled that the state’s DNR overstepped its authority in 2005 when it banned deer hunting preserves.
The decision of an Indiana judge may soon allow hunters in the Hoosier state to hunt at fenced deer preserves. According to the Indianapolis Star, Harrison County Circuit Court Judge Evans ruled that the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) went beyond its authority in 2005 when it banned the operations. The judge reasoned that since deer at these facilities are privately owned, they cannot be regulated by the DNR. The issue is a controversial one in Indiana and many other states, but plaintiff Rodney Bruce says it is a major victory after years of legal battles.
“There were only four (high-fence preserves) active in the state until yesterday,” Bruce said earlier this week. “With this ruling, others can open now.”
Bruce, who owns the 116-acre Whitetail Bluff in Harrison County, has already sunk over $100,000 into legal fees since 2005. His hopes are that the DNR will evaluate the judge’s ruling and not file for appeal. Supporting him is the National Federation of Independent Business, which advocated for a high-fence hunting bill earlier this year.
The issue of preserve hunting has split opinions among hunters. While many sportsmen see high-fence facilities as an opportunity for quality hunts, others are concerned that these operations could spread illnesses such as chronic wasting disease (CWD). Opponents of hunting preserves say that these facilities often move animals between states, which could put Indiana’s native herds at risk. Other hunters believe that hunting within a preserve brings up certain ethical issues.
Preserve owners counter these points, saying that their facilities are large enough to constitute fair chase and security measures prevent captive deer from escaping. Currently more than 380 licensed game breeders operate inside the state, producing roughly 6,000 deer per year.
A DNR spokesperson has said that the department is disappointed in the decision and the agency will be reviewing its options.
Image courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
COLUMBUS — Ohio is slightly extending the hours during which young hunters
Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson
can take white-tailed deer during the two-day season this weekend.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says youngsters can hunt deer from 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset on Saturday and Sunday. The hunters must have a hunting license and a deer permit. They’re required to wear hunter orange and be with an adult who isn’t hunting.
Last year, young hunters checked nearly 9,200 white-tailed deer during the two-day season.
Despite news that wolves are starting to spread out to other states, after their re-introduction to the Tri-state area of the Northern Rockies, wolves are still extinct in most of their former range in the continental U.S. Yet, it seems there’s no shortage of deer; in fact ungulate populations have been booming since the near continent-wide extermination of wolves and other predators that left the lower 48 in ecological turmoil.
Take Oklahoma for example. According to their “local OKC weekend hunting news”:
Oklahoma’s gun season opens Saturday. The rut is expected to be going strong across the state in the coming days. State wildlife biologists in Okla. expect the peak of the rut in most areas of the state to happen sometime before Saturday’s opening.
Barring any major weather events that keeps hunters at home, Saturday will be the biggest deer hunting day of the year. More deer are taken on the opening day of gun season than on any other. The rut, the mating season of deer, is triggered primarily by moon phases. However, the rutting activity that hunters see has more to do with the weather.
The first time Oklahoma hunters checked in 100,000 deer for all seasons combined was 13 years ago. Since then, there have been only three years that Oklahoma’s deer harvest has not exceeded 100,000.
Wildlife biologists estimate deer hunters take about 10 percent
Photo by Jim Robertson
of the deer population during hunting seasons. This gives Oklahoma an estimated deer population about one million.
Approximately one million deer in a state as small as Oklahoma. And exactly ZERO wolves. 100,000 deer killed during hunting season, and it’s not even a dent in the deer population. Natural processes have been ousted and ignored–hunters there would freak if they if they saw a wolf. I can just hear their screams of, “Those wolves are going to eat all our game…” It’s the same story that’s going on across the country. Hunters don’t want healthy deer or elk populations, they want a surplus to justify their “harvests.”
Canadian Blog
by Barry Kent MacKay,
Senior Program Associate
Born Free USA’s Canadian Representative
<http://www.bornfreeusa.org/weblog_canada.php?p=3936&more=1>
Saving the Deer of Invermere
Photo Co Jim Robertson
Part 1: There’s No Paradise on Earth, but…
Published 11/13/13
When I drove into Invermere, population near 4,000, in the Columbia River
Valley of the interior of British Columbia, I was both enchanted and
worried. Animals totally fascinate me (and that includes human animals, as
I’ll discuss in a future blog) and I greatly enjoy seeing them, drawing and
painting them (I am a wildlife artist, too), photographing them, interacting
with them, and being in their presence. It’s just the way I am; not everyone
is like that. We’re all different. Diversity itself is as natural as a
beaver’s dam, a robin’s song, or the wide-eyed, innocent expression of a
baby screech-owl.
But, of course, the beaver’s dam may flood a roadway; the robin’s song may
awaken an exhausted shift-worker; and there could be a trace of blood and
fur or feathers on the beak of the baby owl. I get that.
Still, what I saw in Invermere was a community that I could envy, where a
dusky grouse strode boldly up to us, where a pileated woodpecker met us near
the door of a home we visited, and where mule deer wandered on lawns, in
parks, and on sidewalks, even crossing roads.
We tend to think that wild animals “should” be afraid of us-should flee-and
deer usually do, unless left alone. These deer were different (although not
unlike mule deer I’ve seen in California). Indeed, I met my first mule deer
when I was six years of age. She walked up to me at Mount Wilson Observatory
near Los Angeles, reached down, and chomped off the top half of the banana I
was eating. Was I terrified? Nope. I ate the second half. But that’s me. I
have touched a wild beluga whale, have had chickadees alight on my shoulder,
and have had foxes, who have never met a human, trot up to give me a sniff.
Animals fear us, but not necessarily instinctively; we give them ample
reason.
I was in Invermere with my Toronto-based colleague, Liz White, to help
support a “no” vote in a referendum that asked Invermere’s residents if the
town’s deer should be baited to enter a large, square frame, where they
would be trapped until men arrived to collapse the trap around them, holding
the panicked, struggling animals down. Then, a metal bolt would be driven
into their brains, sometimes after many botched tries-ultimately rendering
them unconscious so that they could be bled from the back of a truck into a
pail, until dead. (That’s not how the ballet was worded; it just asked if
the deer should be culled.) Doing that would, citizens were told, prevent
the things about deer that concerned them.
We tried to expose the truth, which is hard to do with a population that’s
unaware of wildlife population dynamics, with both real and imagined
concerns about the deer. With our colleagues, local citizens banded together
as the Invermere Deer Protection Society (IDPS). We methodically canvased
every part of town (about 1,000 houses), speaking to approximately 300
people about why culling does not work. It seemed that the majority of
people supported us. But, when the vote was held on November 2, only 26%
agreed with us and voted “no.”
Do we stop there? No. As I will explain in a future blog, the canvasing
reinforced formal studies in why people act illogically. Based on figures
from the cull in Cranbrook (see
<http://www.bornfreeusa.org/weblog_canada.php?p=3833&more=1> here and
<http://www.bornfreeusa.org/weblog_canada.php?p=3487&more=1> here), it’ll
cost the good folks of Invermere more than $600 per deer removed, with, as I
suspect they will discover, no significant improvement.
Luckily, the referendum is not binding. So, we have something to build on: a
means to show a less costly and more effective suite of options. The night
of the poll, we were already planning for the work ahead-and, by the next
morning, we had already met with IDPS members to strategize.
Oklahoma hunters have already checked in 30,500 deer this season. However, that pace is slightly behind last year.
As a general rule, deer aren’t moving much around during most of the muzzleloader season, but that will soon change with the beginning of the rut, the time of year when whitetails become less cautious. Deer are now starting to move more during the day, and some bucks already have been seen trailing does.
Okla.’s 16 day deer gun season, the biggest hunting season of the year, begins the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Almost 200,000 hunters in Okla. participate in the deer gun season.
Archery deer season remains open thru Jan. 15th. [So, you can expect to see more of those arrow-impaled deer wandering around for another 2 months….]
The Okla. Dept. of Wildlife Conservation has extended the deadline for the agency’s guided youth waterfowl hunts to Nov. 21. The youth hunts are open to hunters ages 12 to 15 who have completed the hunter education course. An adult guardian must accompany the youth hunter. Many of the states wildlife refuges have guided hunts.
Wildlife Photography © Jim Robertson
Now the only question that remains is, what cruel kill method is NOT allowed in Wisconsin?
I can think of only a few offhand:
-Grenade launcher
-Flame thrower
-Nerve gas
-Chemical weapons
Hell, why doesn’t the state DNR just nuke itself every fall (starting with this one) and be done with it? That should take care of their deer, rabbit, squirrel, duck, geese, sandhill crane and wolf “problems” once and for all.
__________________
Assembly unanimously passes crossbow hunting bill
By Paul A. Smith of the Journal Sentinel
Nov. 9, 2013
In an era of deep political divisions, Wisconsin legislators can agree on at least one thing: increased crossbow hunting opportunities.
On Oct. 27, the Assembly unanimously passed an amended version of AB 194.
The bill would create a crossbow hunting license and a crossbow hunting season. Hunters of all legal ages could purchase the license.
Under current state law, only hunters with physical disabilities and those age 65 and over are allowed to hunt deer with crossbows.
The crossbow hunting season would run concurrent with the archery deer season.
The amended version creates a three-year trial period during which the Department of Natural Resources will monitor harvest rates by crossbow hunters. The Senate approved the bill in September.
The Assembly vote was 91 ayes, 0 no.
The bill now awaits the signature of Gov. Scott Walker. If the governor signs it as expected, the crossbow hunting season will take effect in September 2014.
Wolf season update: As of Friday, hunters and trappers had registered 201 wolves in the 2013-’14 Wisconsin wolf season, according to the DNR.
Harvest quotas were filled in five of the six wolf management zones.
Trappers have taken 82% of the wolves; the balance have been killed by hunters with firearms.
Zone 3 in north central and northwestern Wisconsin remains open. Nineteen wolves had been registered in Zone 3 as of Friday morning; the quota is 71.
The zone will be open to wolf hunting and trapping until the quota is filled or Feb. 28, whichever comes first.
Given the fast pace of wolf kills since the season opened Oct. 15, the season could be over before the Wisconsin gun deer hunt begins Nov. 23, as well as before wolf hunters could begin using dogs Dec. 2.
The DNR had sold 1,837 resident and 11 nonresident wolf hunting and trapping licenses as of Friday. It authorized the sale of 2,510 licenses through a lottery.
State wildlife managers set a kill goal of 251 wolves for the season.
Hunters and trappers are responsible to know the status of zone closures. Information is available at dnr.wi.gov and by phone at (888) 936-7463 .
Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/sports/outdoors/assembly-unanimously-passes-crossbow-hunting-bill-b99137922z1-231303281.html#ixzz2kGrLqn3p
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About 500,000 hunters will each try to kill one of Minnesota’s roughly 1
Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson
million deer Saturday on the opening day of the state’s firearms deer season.
It’s the state’s most popular outdoors event aside from the spring fishing opener, and unlike other types of hunting, deer hunting is holding its own, if not growing, in Minnesota.
As of Monday, license sales were ahead of last year’s pace. In 2012, nearly 522,000 firearms tags were sold, the most since at least 2000.
For the past several years, roughly 98 percent of all tags have been purchased by Minnesotans. Much of the reason for that, wildlife officials say, is that deer hunting is as much about family traditions as shooting a deer.
Still, it is a hunt, and more than 100,000 deer are expected to be taken.
The state’s total deer take for the year largely will be determined by how hunters fare Saturday and Sunday. Seventy percent of the kill occurs during opening weekend, according to the Department of Natural Resources.
Last year, 186,000 deer were killed during the fall archery, muzzleloader and regular firearms seasons, and with population levels and license restrictions generally similar to last year, the agency forecasts a similar take this year.
Exposing the Big Game 