are people shooting more then one deer?

[Neighbor_guy]

To answere the "But Why???"

We kill what we will eat. If I put 2 deer in my freezer I have meat for my daughter and me for a year. Come august things get lean and Archery deer is a welcomed sight. Any deer I kill has to have a destination pre-determined before that trigger is pulled or arrow is released.

The dnr says we can kill 5 deer per guy plus 2 per guy in the early firearms hunt for a total of 7 deer per guy. In my party that would be 21 for a 120 acre area, that holds about 12 - 16.

If we fallowed the guidlines we would have no future on our land. We manage best we can and will limit ourselves to between 3 and 7 deer per year depending on need and population.

I like to think people will not shoot 5-7 deer per year just because they can. I hope they have a use for them.

[Jameson]

 Originally Posted By: deadminnowcatcher

better yet instead of killing so many let a few walk by. Do you really need to kill 5 deer a year? I could kill a bunch but why?

Why? Because the MN DNR wants us to. It is an attempt to have a HEALTHY deer herd.

In lottery areas I do let many deer walk by. While hunting in intensive harvest areas on the other hand, if it's brown, it's down. I haven't bought beef for the house in nearly three years.

deadminnowcatcher, why not kill a bunch? In the areas where we are allowed to take multiple deer there are plenty of deer for the next person.

[Wanderer]

Yeah, I'll second that....

There are alot out there in certain areas. Many things have come together in the last decade to increase the carrying capacity of the land. The herd can support the multiple deer per person harvest.

Two bad years for survival and we're back to lower limits. Its not like we can "save up" deer for tight years. They'll either be there or they won't.

Life expectancies for deer are low. They replenish fast if conditions are optimal.

Just support the responsible use of all deer taken. Well, O.K., I will. You cerainly can view it any way you like.

[Thorn]

 Originally Posted By: Wanderer

Yeah, I'll second that....

There are alot out there in certain areas. Many things have come together in the last decade to increase the carrying capacity of the land. The herd can support the multiple deer per person harvest.

Two bad years for survival and we're back to lower limits. Its not like we can "save up" deer for tight years. They'll either be there or they won't.

Life expectancies for deer are low. They replenish fast if conditions are optimal.

Just support the responsible use of all deer taken. Well, O.K., I will. You cerainly can view it any way you like.

Hunters should ensure there's always going to be venison to eat.

Minnesota has the public/hunter input mentality that the DNR must base it's guidelines to go by. To me, if you just think they'll be there or they won't makes me think some of the public just wants to be lazy hunters. If we loose the herds it's because hunters chose to.

One thing I found odd is that for all disease testing the process gets finalized in Iowa. The lead testing didn't. Iowa did test for their state and OK'd it. MN dropped the ball and succombed to an animal rights activist who had no toxonomy background. I wrote both Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the DNR director of MN and had no respnse back.

Point being did enogh hunters do anything in response?

If not they deserve to loose. It is our duty to ensure conservation first.

Can we loose a season because of a bad winter? If that happens it will be because not enough deer were harvested in previous seasons. There's alot of habitat but there's also alot more deer nowadays to wipe it out. Throw in a drought and then you're looking at some species of plants being eatin out of existance and alot of starving deer. I think that's also happening in the metro zones too.

I belive, in the TB zone they'll be allowed to kill 'em all the way through August without a permit if you're a resident.

Since bovine TB first was detected in cattle in 2005, 18 deer have tested bovine TB-positive.

The Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine does initial screenings on the deer to detect likely positives. These are then sent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, for confirmation.Laboratory results are pending on the 1,028 additional deer taken since January 2008, but preliminary results indicate that eight additional deer may be infected. All of the confirmed positive deer as well as the suspect deer are adults and were in alive in 2005 when bovine TB was first discovered in the area. The prevalence of the disease in wild deer still remains low and is restricted to a small geographic region.

While aerial sharpshooting has concluded, ground sharpshooters will resume their efforts April 21 and continue through at least the end of April. A special rule allows landowners, tenants and their designees to take deer without a permit through Aug. 31. Special and expanded hunts also are being planned for fall 2008 and winter 2009.

you know that old saying...smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

[Wanderer]

 Originally Posted By: Thorn

[To me, if you just think they'll be there or they won't makes me think some of the public just wants to be lazy hunters. If we loose the herds it's because hunters chose to.

you know that old saying...smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

To the first part: Maybe it was a lazy way of saying things are cyclical. We are being spoiled with opportunity now. The herd count is high - too high in my opinion.

So, to your second part: YUP!

[BLACKJACK]

 Originally Posted By: harvey lee

From the looks of many of the posts, the hayday for deer hunting is upon us. I remember many years ago, one could only shoot 1 deer. One really needs to enjoy the opportunities we all have at this time for deer hunting as one day, we will be back to shooting less.

I agree Harvey!!! As far as I'm concerned the deer hunting is as good as its ever been!!! It gets to be a long season in zone 4 when you may have only one doe permit for five guys.

[Thorn]

ATTENTION:

Being cyclical has been the demise of many good creations.

Does it really provide good science for consrvationist/hunters?

Cyclical definition- please see, "Whatever"

----------

Although, I did keep my old .22 Ted Wiliams my Grandpa used to shoot deer with. I heard MN is might allow .22 for deer.

Not saying it's a good thing, but ya know..it's cyclical.

[Wanderer]

So we should work to rid any ebb and flow as the master race? The owners of ecology? All things to be manicured as we see fit.

Anything less would be unacceptable?

I found that under "Whatever" in another dictionary.

Nothing stays the same, change is inevitable. Worry about what you can control and accept what you cannot.

How did "WE" make the herd numbers explode as conservationists? Wasn't it due in a large part (not all) to many consecutive mild winters that dropped "winter kill" to neglible numbers?

How much land use has changed around our town outside of more development? The fields are still farmed the same as 20 years ago. There aren't any new wood lots. I don't recall any MDHA projects being cited in the area. What was it that helped make that population raise to making 10-20 deer sightings a possiblity in 2 miles of driving somewhat routine?

I would love to enlightened, afterall thats what I'm here for!

[Neighbor_guy]

10-20???? A guy can look out the window at dinner and see a dozen around here . If anyone could shoot any breeding age does instead of killing every antlered deer in sight that might help a little. Boom!!! right over the bow!!!!

You are right though. There is a lot more standing corn and un cut final alfalfa crops sitting in the feilds than there used to be. In agg lands deer are everywere. But some of the areas that are open to Intensive harvesting cant sustain that kind of preasure.

I do think that much of the regulations are more about thining the heard to eliminate the car hits and people on the fringe having their gardens eaten.

[Thorn]

Change is inevitable?

I think that's what the Pilgrims were telling the indians.

First- There has never been an animal drivin into extinction by hunters.

Second- Without conservation managment there would be more. Being un-cyclical is the Golden Rule, just ask Evel Knevil, Theadore Rosevelt, Aldo Leupold, and Ted Nugent.

Third- At the onset of the first regualations, corrective management was implemented to provide sustainable resouces.

Let's keep it that way. Shooting a big ol' buck with tines as tall as the tops of the pine boughs is cooler than eating a dried up biskit but, let's keep the valuable resouces under sustainable accumalative populations that will keep on allowing liberal bag limits.

Fourth- Winter kill severelyy depleted the population along with lose of habitat and over harvest of does. Winter kill was never never never a single determining factor...ever. So just the same, a mild winter does nothing but allow a thriving population to bulge out the seems.

Today more lands are being bought to promote conservation.

WMA Partnership Since 1989, Pheasants Forever has donated over 5,500 acres of land valued at $5.8 million to Minnesotas State Wildlife Management Area (WMA) Program. These lands involved 88 different WMAs in 32 counties across the pheasant range. PF has also contributed over $770,000 in cash to help purchase WMA lands. In addition, PF chapters have provided $96,000 through the RIM Match program to develop native prairie, winter cover, and other needed habitat enhancements on WMA lands. PF has been successful in securing millions of state and federal dollars to help purchase WMA lands through such programs as the North American Wetland Conservation Act and the Habitat Corridors Project. PF has donated or helped fund over 27,000 acres of new public hunting land in Minnesota, and has been the biggest supporter of the WMA acquisition program.

1976 doe permits were being issued instead of just a bold faced deer tag. Hasn't changed since then, well not much.

Then came along 2008. The DNR held their meetings [several in differnt areas] with intent of haveing public input, who went?

Must have been with some of the un-cyclical folks that wanted to make changes.

[Wanderer]

Well Thorn,

Thanks for being at the meetings and giving input. Seems like deer are a huge passion in your life. I like em too but I also like some other things.

I think we're in the same boat, but you're rowing harder.

I have been known to be a member of PF, DU, NWTF, BASS, NRA, yada yada yada. So maybe I'm helping a little in my lazy way. And I do think management is a requirement for healthy game pops. But you jumped on me for one comment you didn't like when I was agreeing with you anyway.

I think you overplayed my cyclical comment a bit, but I still maintain that cycles are natural and will continue to happen to some degree even though we try to massage out the peaks and valleys. You're setting yourself up for more frustration if you think you can be in total control of it.

With that, have a great day! I'll read your response if you have one, but I'm done commenting on this one.

[Thorn]

No comment on the First Second Third Fourth?

We agreed but you put a simple statement that's way overlooked by the masses of hunters. Not some, but the masses.

When the DNR holds their meetings to bring FORETHOUGHT into conservation managment and only less than a handful of the public attend, or don't send simple letters to their reps. that definantly throws a red flag.

Like who stood ground to fight for the right to hunt?

That's where I'm standing..not sitting on a fence.

I will promote hunting of all types and will carry the cyclical as far as I can just to ensure it's passed along to the next generations.

You asked to be enlightened, and all I got back in response was...yada, yada, yada.

drive safely.

[Neighbor_guy]

 Originally Posted By: Thorn

First- There has never been an animal drivin into extinction by hunters.

I am fairly sure that EVERY timber wolf in north america can trace its liniage back to the same few animals captured, bread in captivity, and released. Hunters did that.

The same can be said about Buffalo / Bison. They had to be captured and bread in captivity then released as well. Hunters did that to.

Hunters have sent a lot of critters to extinction. We just like to think we know better now.

[tedl]

be careful of what you call a hunter. The wolves numbers where brought down due to poison and a bounty. The Bison were devastated by greedy killers.

Animals go into extinction due to greed from poachers, not hunters!!

[B. Amish]

passenger pigeon

[Wanderer]

Somebody slap my hands for even coming back to this!

 Originally Posted By: Thorn

You asked to be enlightened, and all I got back in response was...yada, yada, yada.

There was no response to your points because there was nothing enlightening about them. I did enlighten myself by looking up your portfolio of posts in an effort to figure out where you were coming from. Well, apparently it was Texas.

I was curious as to what you knew about the immediate area that you and I live in. It seems very little. But you sure have the stats on Texas.

All I read in your posts is regurgitated stats from pens in the Big T. What do you really know about MN that you haven't read online or in a magazine? No - scratch that - I don't need a page full of quotes from somebody else.

You do have the potential to be a wealth of info after you've had some experience with the area and people you are preaching to (arguing with) and sidestep your self promotion, but that remains to be seen.

I understand now why more haven't chimed in on this exchange(besides being off topic, sorry guys) Your obnoxious, arrogant approach is blinding and deafening.

Now I'm done.

[Thorn]

Couldn't dispute the facts eh?...geesh get a life. Nothing obnoxious about being truthful. I've been hunting in MN for years. I just moved here 3 years ago.

The TX study has been going on for 30 years, and they use wild deer. Their holding pens are for some does to ensure what males breed them. Spike VS. Forked. It's widely known and it's usfulness has been passed on Internationally. Spikes are genetically inferior in antler production.

As for MN, they havn't changed their basic hunting regs in 30 years. The overpopulation does cause stress and that has caused a whole slew of problems.

Being cyclical has caught up, it is going to be the demise of alot of deer. Hence the subject shoot more deer. Being cyclical is more of the tudiness of let nature take it's course. Man was told in the beginnings of time on earth, that we are dominion over animals.

Leopold, Aldo: A Plea for Wilderness Hunting Grounds, 1925.

"[W]e seem ultimately always thrown back on individual ethics as the basis of conservation policy. It is hard to make a man, by pressure of law or money, do a thing which does not spring naturally from his own personal sense of right and wrong."

It's been wrong in MN for a long time. The population is way overabundant. And not to many people doing anything in the way of getting their OPINIONS taken at the DNR meetings or writing in simple letters.

Still nothing on the First Second Third Fourth?

[BLACKJACK]

 Originally Posted By: Thorn

It's been wrong in MN for a long time. The population is way overabundant.

thorn, there are large areas of SW and western MN where deer are NOT overabundant, a blanket statement like that is simply wrong.

I personally think the DNR does a great job of managing the deer herd in MN, I've been deer hunting here for 30 years and its as good as I've ever seen it. If you want a trophy, they're out there, you just have to go hunt one down. If you want numbers, there are some parts of the state where you can shoot more than one deer. Its up to you to make it a quality hunting experience.

[B. Amish]

 Originally Posted By: Thorn

Spikes are genetically inferior in antler production.

studies have suggested these smaller yearlings are the result of later

birthing dates, young age and/or inadequate nutrition

— not genetics — and that there is little to no difference

in antler score or mass once those bucks reach 3½ and

4½ years of age.

[B. Amish]

 Originally Posted By: Thorn

The TX study has been going on for 30 years, and they use wild deer. Their holding pens are for some does to ensure what males breed them.

Do you really believe the stuff that you write...?

Directly from the study that you are constantly referring too...

"In order to study and isolate nutritional effects and genetic effects, biologists need to control diet and breeding and objectively analyze results. This can only be done with penned deer. There are simply too many variables in the natural world to identify and isolate biological causes."

[Deitz Dittrich]

Ok boys... back on topic please...

[Thorn]

 Originally Posted By: BLACKJACK

 Originally Posted By: Thorn

It's been wrong in MN for a long time. The population is way overabundant.

thorn, there are large areas of SW and western MN where deer are NOT overabundant, a blanket statement like that is simply wrong.

I personally think the DNR does a great job of managing the deer herd in MN, I've been deer hunting here for 30 years and its as good as I've ever seen it. If you want a trophy, they're out there, you just have to go hunt one down. If you want numbers, there are some parts of the state where you can shoot more than one deer. Its up to you to make it a quality hunting experience.

To my best DNR googling.....

There is little question that fewer hunters would apply for the antlerless-only permits, and, as a result, dedicated meat hunters would have an increased chance of getting a permit. This may not be important over much of southern and western Minnesota, where permit numbers often exceed the number of applicants.

------------

There's deer there in them thar hills. Just not enough deer being killed. I think this was in 2000A.D.

[Thorn]

Shoot more deer!

[Thorn]

 Originally Posted By: B. Amish

 Originally Posted By: Thorn

The TX study has been going on for 30 years, and they use wild deer. Their holding pens are for some does to ensure what males breed them.

Do you really believe the stuff that you write...?

Directly from the study that you are constantly referring too...

"In order to study and isolate nutritional effects and genetic effects, biologists need to control diet and breeding and objectively analyze results. This can only be done with penned deer. There are simply too many variables in the natural world to identify and isolate biological causes."

And?...LOL what?

The control also showed during stress, It had proved that the genetics of the inferior spikes were alot more in decline than a than a superior buck.

[Thorn]

 Originally Posted By: B. Amish

 Originally Posted By: Thorn

Spikes are genetically inferior in antler production.

studies have suggested these smaller yearlings are the result of later

birthing dates, young age and/or inadequate nutrition

— not genetics — and that there is little to no difference

in antler score or mass once those bucks reach 3½ and

4½ years of age.

HUH?..LOL

In this study, antler production of fork-antlered yearlings and spike-antlered yearlings were compared annually until 4 years of age. Fork-antlered deer produced almost twice the antler mass each year as their spike-antlered counterpart. Results of this study are also published in the 1989 Texas Parks and Wildlife bulletin Effects of Genetics and Nutrition on Antler Development and Body Size of White-tailed Deer(PDF 945 KB) This study has been complimented and updated since 1985 by Dr. James Ott and R W. Scott and data presented at both the Texas Chapter of the Wildlife Society and the 1997 Southeast Deer Study Group entitled, Comparative Antler Characteristics of Spike and Fork-Antlered Yearling White-tailed Deer in Texas at 4.5 Years.