Thread: Deer Population Growth

Originally Posted by HarryMax

So aside from folks shooting hinds at every reasonable oppurtunity - what else can we do?

It's complicated. Shooting more hinds certainly will not hurt - but it also may not help. There are density-dependent fecundity effects where releasing acute feed competition may increase the breeding rate in the population (e.g. more first year hinds breed that otherwise would not have) - resulting in no population reduction. Shooting stags under the guise of "population control" can fall into this category - making the problem worse rather than helping.



Hunters shooting every hind seen in a certain area may result in a reduction in the population however it would be self-limiting - at a certain population level and with behavioural adaptation, even if enough effort was applied to become additive mortality (rather than compensatory as above), the encounter rate of hunters with hinds would drop off - you'd never entirely remove deer, only reduce to a certain density. Which may or may not be enough to achieve a change in outcomes, depending on your defined objective. It would be interesting to see it applied and studied.

Originally Posted by gimp

It's complicated. Shooting more hinds certainly will not hurt - but it also may not help. There are density-dependent fecundity effects where releasing acute feed competition may increase the breeding rate in the population (e.g. more first year hinds breed that otherwise would not have) - resulting in no population reduction. Shooting stags under the guise of "population control" can fall into this category - making the problem worse rather than helping.



Hunters shooting every hind seen in a certain area may result in a reduction in the population however it would be self-limiting - at a certain population level and with behavioural adaptation, even if enough effort was applied to become additive mortality (rather than compensatory as above), the encounter rate of hunters with hinds would drop off - you'd never entirely remove deer, only reduce to a certain density. Which may or may not be enough to achieve a change in outcomes, depending on your defined objective. It would be interesting to see it applied and studied.

as William Wallaces father said about the english.."we dont have to beat them,we just have to keep fighting them"
we dont want to whipe them out,but we need to keep the cream off the top and take a fair hunk of milk too...trim milk levels are good all around but make for harder hunting....

Originally Posted by gimp

It's complicated. Shooting more hinds certainly will not hurt - but it also may not help. There are density-dependent fecundity effects where releasing acute feed competition may increase the breeding rate in the population (e.g. more first year hinds breed that otherwise would not have) - resulting in no population reduction. Shooting stags under the guise of "population control" can fall into this category - making the problem worse rather than helping.


Hunters shooting every hind seen in a certain area may result in a reduction in the population however it would be self-limiting - at a certain population level and with behavioural adaptation, even if enough effort was applied to become additive mortality (rather than compensatory as above), the encounter rate of hunters with hinds would drop off - you'd never entirely remove deer, only reduce to a certain density. Which may or may not be enough to achieve a change in outcomes, depending on your defined objective. It would be interesting to see it applied and studied.

Some interesting ideas there and having a clear objective is obviously very important (to be clear I'm not advocating for entirely removing deer but I am interested in the populations being managed more effectively)

In terms of this sort of thing being 'applied and studied' - isn't all this data being gathered in the US with their management of animal numbers which goes back into available tag numbers etc ?

Cheers

Originally Posted by HarryMax

Some interesting ideas there and having a clear objective is obviously very important (to be clear I'm not advocating for entirely removing deer but I am interested in the populations being managed more effectively)

In terms of this sort of thing being 'applied and studied' - isn't all this data being gathered in the US with their management of animal numbers which goes back into available tag numbers etc ?

Cheers

The US has a lot of scientific literature which can be applied and learned from, however there are also fundamental ecosystem differences and diametrically opposite objectives in wild animal management which mean blanket comparisons are rarely valid

Originally Posted by gimp

The US has a lot of scientific literature which can be applied and learned from, however there are also fundamental ecosystem differences and diametrically opposite objectives in wild animal management which mean blanket comparisons are rarely valid

https://www.yellowstonepark.com/thin...nges-ecosystem

Originally Posted by gimp

...



Which may or may not be enough to achieve a change in outcomes, depending on your defined objective. It would be interesting to see it applied and studied.

In discussion with people better informed than I it seems there may be some understanding of this already? An oft made observation from DoC people I've spoken with is along the lines of " ... rec hunting just can't reduce the numbers to the level required to allow habitat recovery...". That position is apparently informed by 'analysis' of monitoring data that provides estimates of animal density and vege condition, which in places shows that even at very low numbers introduced browsers are a problem.

Like you said .... complicated.

Originally Posted by Maxx

In discussion with people better informed than I it seems there may be some understanding of this already? An oft made observation from DoC people I've spoken with is along the lines of " ... rec hunting just can't reduce the numbers to the level required to allow habitat recovery...". That position is apparently informed by 'analysis' of monitoring data that provides estimates of animal density and vege condition, which in places shows that even at very low numbers introduced browsers are a problem.

Like you said .... complicated.

yes but bloody DOC believe their own spin blindly

[a "don't shoot the fallow" policy.]. Give them time they all start bleating on about too many animals but some still won’t let hunters have a go.

Originally Posted by Maxx

In discussion with people better informed than I it seems there may be some understanding of this already? An oft made observation from DoC people I've spoken with is along the lines of " ... rec hunting just can't reduce the numbers to the level required to allow habitat recovery...". That position is apparently informed by 'analysis' of monitoring data that provides estimates of animal density and vege condition, which in places shows that even at very low numbers introduced browsers are a problem.

Like you said .... complicated.

....what about the biomass browsers removed...say...300 years or so ago?

DoC and Twig and Tweet's version of "original" and "habitat recovery" is always tainted by their inbuilt bias.