APR's good for hunter recruitment but not for retention?

[james_walleye]

James, you have to realize there are groups popping up all over who want APRs statewide and point to Zone 3 as the reason. You're right, they don't know how different Zone 3 is than the rest of the state, but they point to every picture of a Zone 3 buck they can find as the reason to implement APR's everywhere.

Just to clarify......I'm for APRs and tired of arguing with anti Apr folks who haven't a clue about zone 3 hunting.......

[tfran123]

"Nowhere is that ratio 6:1", it is if you don't include buck fawns as bucks. By most definitions they are anterless even though they are male.

[TruthWalleyes]

Please reference hard data and not just anecdotal feelings to support your claim for 347, I would like to see some hard data so we can actually believe that this theory is true, otherwise it's just opinion.

I have friends that hunt there as well (Preston) they said the same thing.

Man did i deserve that!! Lol

Beautiful country over there! I just love getting opportunities to walk into new woods - ya never know what you'll see...But you can almost guarantee you'll have to cross a few darn fences lol

P.S. If your buddies in preston don't know already...They should be at the bowling alley gun season opener morning for Buffet Bacon covered in meat gravy!! (You don't want to order the special for the next few days though )

I think part of me just goes down there for the opening morning buffet after a hard 2 hours of sleep

[B. Amish]

"Nowhere is that ratio 6:1", it is if you don't include buck fawns as bucks. By most definitions they are anterless even though they are male.

you don't get it.

carry on with your 6:1 nonsense backed by absolutely nothing.

[tfran123]

It's not nonsense, you are over counting based on fawn counts - pretty simple really and I'm sorry you struggle to grasp it.

Read a little bit on this and you'll understand where I'm coming from or just ignore it, doesn't matter to me . . .

[22lex]

[quote=TruthWalleyes

P.S. If your buddies in preston don't know already...They should be at the bowling alley gun season opener morning for Buffet Bacon covered in meat gravy!! (You don't want to order the special for the next few days though )

[B. Amish]

http://www.nrahuntersrights.org/Article.aspx?id=3146

Quote:

C.W. (Bill) Severinghaus was arguably the greatest deer biologist and deer researcher of the 20th century.

Quote:

Technically, if we used more precise birthing ratios our adult buck to adult doe ratios can never exceed 1 buck for every 2.23 adult does. That is fact and established by the Severinghaus research of 1955.

[Getanet]

It's not nonsense, you are over counting based on fawn counts - pretty simple really and I'm sorry you struggle to grasp it.

Read a little bit on this and you'll understand where I'm coming from or just ignore it, doesn't matter to me . . .

Where should I read where our buck to doe ratio in MN is? I would love to read a reasonably unbiased source if you could point me to one or two.

I don't know how you can look at harvest counts and come to any conclusion what the buck to doe ratio in MN is. The numbers are much closer to 1:1 than 6:1 when it comes to the harvest of males to females.

[TruthWalleyes]

The Buck to Doe ratio is 1:6.38

[tfran123]

I've read Severinghaus's stuff before, but thanks for passing it along. Problem is we've been talking apples and oranges. He counts buck fawns as males - I wasn't. I've been pretty clear on what I call breeding bucks, those 1.5 and older. So his typical scenario is 1 adult buck, 2 does and 2 fawns (one being a male). You'd say 3:2, I'd say 4:1 - hope I said that right. And we've been throwing out ratios, I'm not saying 6:1 is some magic number where we sit, but it's a skewed figure no doubt and thusly the reason I think MN needs to get on board with a more balanced herd.

Just curious, what is the single most reason you dislike APR? No wrong answer, just curious.

[B. Amish]

oh wow. so this whole time when describing buck to doe ratios, you've been describing antlered to antlerless ratios, but somehow trying to pass it along as buck to doe ratios to prove something about our herd and the need for apr's.

mmmmmkay.

[tfran123]

How's that reading comprehension working out for you? Need me to re-post or can you go back and read for yourself?

[tfran123]

"Nowhere is that ratio 6:1", it is if you don't include buck fawns as bucks. By most definitions they are anterless even though they are male.

Did you miss this one earlier?

[B. Amish]

My counters:

1. Is a 6:1 doe to buck ratio healthy? I don't think so and that's what you've got when the gun hunters disproportionatly take more little bucks. This is true in most non-apr areas.

[bigbucks]

Some somewhat random related thoughts & observations:

"The "if it's brown it's down" mentality will continue to persist. It needs to be a rule in order to work."

This is a quote that I don't agree with at all. Most of the brown it's down guys are AT LEAST 50 & many much closer to 70. They aren't going to hunt that much longer & most of those that do are going to see their harvest abilities decline considerably.

Look at all the posts earlier in here talking about lots of kids passing on young deer. This desired result of APR is going to happen without APR, it just isn't going to happen quite as soon as some WANT it to. Much of life is about compromise. I don't have a problem with APR in Zone 3 it DEFINITELY is a whole different kind of hunting just because of terrain & fertility.

Farm country CAN undoubtedly support a lot of deer, but the farmers that have to support the deer don't want to pay for a huge population. I don't blame them for that. I wanted my Dad to leave his corn in until after gun season so I could see more deer. It made ZERO economic sense to do that, so this year with the great harvest conditions it was gone.

If virtually NO yearling bucks get shot, naturally kids will get some, that's going to bump the carrying population of the deer herd in all areas a lot.

I agree that almost all of the percentages thrown out have VERY little fact behind them.

While I agree that MANY opponents of APR basically practice it anyway, I being one, I don't think "MOST" opponents of APR do practice it anyway.

Whoever talked about the party that chewed out a kid for shooting too small of a buck. I think most of us would have very little respect for that party & consider them to essentially be morons.

[rkhinrichs]

ok question. some people have said move the gun season out of the rut. might be a good option.

Here is a idea i havent heard yet.

1. Bow/Muzzy season no APR. Gun season APR rules apply all over the state.

What do people think? remember just an idea to talk about.

[lakevet]

Some somewhat random related thoughts & observations:

"The "if it's brown it's down" mentality will continue to persist. It needs to be a rule in order to work."

I believe often people who criticize "if it's brown it's down" don't realize a couple of things:

1) A "brown it's down" hunter shoots the first legal DEER whether buck, doe or fawn. They are equal opportunity venison eaters. They shoot the most balanced ratio of deer out of the herd of any hunter group.

2) A "brown its down" hunter is a trophy buck hunters best friend as they do the population control work that keeps the rest of society happy. Remember 40% of us according to the MN DNR refuse to shoot does. That 40% belong in the trophy hunter group or the group described below.

What many people should say is actually "its got antlers its down". Behind this is the mindset of "gotta get a buck,any buck" ingrained by the DNR policies started in the 1970's to successfully rebuild low deer populations. And also reinforced peer pressure and egos. "You didn't get a buck? I got mine you whimp!" " What? you shot a little bambi!"

Unfortunately this "gotta get a buck any buck"mindset persists long after deer populations rebounded. They exert harvest pressure specifically on the buck population. They pass on many antlerless deer that a "brown its down " hunter would shoot and tag, thus saving more bucks and balancing the herd more than any other group.

lakevet

[PurpleFloyd]

ok question. some people have said move the gun season out of the rut. might be a good option.

Here is a idea i havent heard yet.

1. Bow/Muzzy season no APR. Gun season APR rules apply all over the state.

What do people think? remember just an idea to talk about.

no

[PurpleFloyd]

The carrying capacity of the south central ag land is nowhere near what it is in zone 3 and with the crop cycles the potential for deer like the horn hunters want is much lower. If you look at the DNR data the zone 3 areas averaged something like 5-9 bucks harvested per square mile. Around here it is 0-.6 bucks harvested per mile. That says a few things- one, you just don't sit in your stand and watch the bucks go by until you see the right one because there are not enough deer period to give that type of opportunity and the habitat wouldn't support it if we did. Second, there are also 0-.5 does taken per square mile so it is clear they are also not overly abundant and the evidence shows the ratio is not out of balance.

During periods where the harvest was such that there was a large amount of corn in the fields during the hunt the big bucks had plenty of places to hide and if you hold to the theory of not shooting them young leads to bigger bucks in a few years, then when the weather finally let the corn be harvested before the season there should have been an abundance of big deer but the reality was that the herd was much like the other years when they had corn to hide in.

[Jameson]

...Around here it is 0-.6 bucks harvested per mile. That says a few things- one, you just don't sit in your stand and watch the bucks go by until you see the right one because there are not enough deer period to give that type of opportunity and the habitat wouldn't support it if we did. Second, there are also 0-.5 does taken per square mile so it is clear they are also not overly abundant and the evidence shows the ratio is not out of balance....

I like your perspective, but I'd argue that those numbers do show an out of balance population. Bucks have a higher natural mortality then does. They generally don't live as long even if man was not around. The bucks live a harsher life than the does and just generally don't live as long. So, in nature the ratio should be tipped slightly in favor of the does. The number presented are slightly in favor of bucks. If the doe number is .5 then the buck number should be like .3. If my numbers are correct (probably not, but somewhat close) then twice the number of bucks are being killed then should be to have a decent sex ratio in the deer herd.

[psepuncher]

...Around here it is 0-.6 bucks harvested per mile. That says a few things- one, you just don't sit in your stand and watch the bucks go by until you see the right one because there are not enough deer period to give that type of opportunity and the habitat wouldn't support it if we did. Second, there are also 0-.5 does taken per square mile so it is clear they are also not overly abundant and the evidence shows the ratio is not out of balance....

[PurpleFloyd]

...Around here it is 0-.6 bucks harvested per mile. That says a few things- one, you just don't sit in your stand and watch the bucks go by until you see the right one because there are not enough deer period to give that type of opportunity and the habitat wouldn't support it if we did. Second, there are also 0-.5 does taken per square mile so it is clear they are also not overly abundant and the evidence shows the ratio is not out of balance....

[tfran123]

Good information here but with respect to South Central MN are you saying that because of the lower densities that APR won't work? Just curious.

To me it's all about cover and with out the bluffs I'm assuming it's farming from fence line to fence line with very little wood lots to hold deer after the harvest. So in theory you could have sections of land that really have no good deer hunting but also have others that have a very good deer population - just less cover as an average.

[PurpleFloyd]

That is part of it. I am sure in theory it would work but in order for that to happen you would need landowners to have much bigger tracts of continuous land and you would have to move the hunt later in the year so that all of the crops were out on a consistent area and it would require a smaller number of hunters per acre which I hope no group is actually in favor of.

The whole notion of APR to me is fine in private situations where the owner has the ultimate say as to who hunts on his property and I also feel if the state wants to regulate how game is taken on state land as they do with fish it is also something that is in their power but for them to tell private citizens how they can act on their own private land just to satisfy the personal standards of other hunters is wrong.

And to bring up herd health without defining exactly what health implies to them is wrong in my book. In this are the deer we have are healthy and have no chance of crashing or dying off for any reason other than if a disease is introduced. The populate themselves to what the terrain hold and they grow at a very good rate from birth. None of that indicates that the herd is in any way unhealthy.

I do suspect , though that with the price of land where it is and the trend of dozing every abandoned farm and grove in order to maximize crop production,which leaves less places for mature bucks to hide and develop, that we will more than likely see fewer of them per square mile going forward and concentrating the areas where they do grow to narrower pockets of land.

[Jameson]

...I'd say his analogy is very spot on. What about fawns?

Let's not forget fawns are the general median of the population and not the general median of harvest. Given the fact that the population is below management goal levels, we have a more abundant habitat for carrying capacity. Thus healthier deer herd including survival rates. Mild winters less winter kill, less does to cause longer duration of rutting buck activity, hence doe permit requirements, etc etc etc....

all this was done before APR's....yep.

You want to talk about fawns? What about them? In the true farmland regions of MN, the areas that are lottery year after year, the areas that have very few deer per square mile of (all) land. Fawns! You want to talk about Fawns! We talkin about fawns????? FAWNSsssss!!!!

Most the land is farmed fenceline to fenceline, so when the hay is chopped during fawning season lots of them are chopped, too. With the lack of bucks not all the does are bred at the same time creating a spread out fawning time in the Spring thus increasing the coyote kill rate on the fawns. As Winter approaches the fields get harvested and turned over in a matter of hours leaving fields that resemble parking lots, pushing the deer into the little available habitat where fawns are the shortest deer and have a hardest time in reaching good browse in a a small woodlot that has had it's best plant species wiped out in the past by either too much deer browsing or cows.

If the fawns can make it to a year old and be born a doe they have a good chance at a long life.

We talking about FAWNS!!!