MOTIVATIONS FOR DEER HUNTING: IMPLICATIONS FOR ANTLERLESS DEER HARVEST AS A MANAGEMENT TOOL

Field: Agricultural and Biological Sciences (Life Sciences)

Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) management objectives in many areas of the Northeast have changed markedly during this century. In New York, for example, deer were extirpated from most of their original range in the late 1800's. At that time approximately 74% of the land in New York was in cultivation, leaving little deer habitat (Caslick 1972). Hunting of deer was markedly restricted from the early 1900's through the 1950's (Severinghaus and Brown 1956). During the 1970's and 1980's, however, a new situation developed in New York. Because of several converging factors, deer became overabundant in many locations. The most important factor was improved deer habitat resulting from land-use changes, particularly reversion of agricultural land to early and mid-stage succession. Despite the inception of a quota system to regulate harvest of antlerless deer in 1970, conservative application of the system and widespread land-use changes combined to allow growth in deer populations during the early to mid-1980's. Antlerless deer harvests in several areas of the state were not sufficient to meet deer-population objectives. The fundamental mechanism of deer management in New York State is the deer management permit (DMP) system. This system is based on allocation of permits allowing a hunter to harvest a deer of either sex in addition to 1 buck allowed with a regular big game hunting license. DMP quotas are established for geographic areas known as Deer Management Units (DMU's) based on an index of deerpopulation levels and population objectives (Dickinson 1982). Hunters apply for permits an ually, choosing the DMU where they wish to hunt, and are selected through a randomized computer-based lottery system. In some DMU's, 2 or more hunters must apply as a group for a permit. Effectiveness of deer management in New York depends on hunters' participation in the DMP system. It is not feasible to regulate deer populations on a statewide basis without harvest of adult female deer through recreational hunting (McCullough 1979). Either lack of DMP applicants or low harvest rates by DMP holders can limit the effectiveness of deer management. These limiting influences became increasingly pertinent concerns of deer biologists in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) as deer herds grew statewide, in some DMU's to well above the population levels determined by DEC as being optimum for the conditions in those DMU's. Recent trends of stable-to-declining numbers of hunters (U.S. Fish and Wildl. Serv. 1982, Brown et al. 1987, Brown and Connelly 1988), changing characteristics of hunters (Purdy et al. 1985, Purdy and Decker 1986), and DEC deer harvest records indicating decreasing success rates of DMP users lead to a pessimistic management scenario for the future. From the perspective of managing deer populations, the compounding effects of declining big game hunters (down 8% in 4 years) and declining success of those hunters in harvesting antlerless deer (e.g., from 40 to 30% over the last 6 years in central N.Y. [J. Proud, N.Y. DEC, Cortland, pers. commun.]) are self-