I guess if Black Bear Blog readers had their chance, they would just as soon put Al Gore on an iceberg and set him adrift, somewhere…..anywhere. The latest not-so-scientific Black Bear Blog poll showed 58% of readers (at total of 73) thought Al Gore should be sent sailing.

Just as interesting though is that 39%, a total of 39 readers, want the polar bear listed as endangered - not threatened but endangered. As far as anything in between, there wasn’t a lot of interest.

Here are the results of the Polar Bear Poll!

Should The Polar Bear Be Further Protected With Endangered Species Act?

* List the bear as Endangered.: 31% (39)
* List the bear as Threatened.: 6% (7)
* Leave well enough alone.: 6% (7)
* Put Al Gore on an iceberg and set him adrift.: 58% (73)

Total Votes : 126

Thanks for participating and check out the latest poll to the right.

Tom Remington

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“There must be at least 100 does for every buck I see in the woods now!” How many times have you heard that exclamation? If you’re like me, more than you care to. Hey, look! We all do our share of complaining, of which the vast majority of it is just complaining out of lack of success or basic knowledge of what you’re seeing, or better yet, what you’re not seeing.

Is it biologically possible to have 100 doe deer for every one buck? Er, um, well……I guess it could be done but I think it would have to be under controlled circumstances with a deliberate intent to skew the ratio far out of balance. I might even be wrong on this and would wager a guess it wouldn’t be a very healthy population of deer if it did exist.

The truth is, none of us completely understands deer management and in this case managing to sustain a desired sex ratio. I’m not a scientist, biologist or a magician. I have stayed in a Holiday Inn before but I honestly don’t think that qualifies me to be an authority on deer management. What I would like to do is try to get hunters to understand a little bit better about the complexities and realities of whitetail deer management and managing for desired buck to doe ratios.

I must also point out that in the wild, managing whitetail deer varies considerably, not only from region to region but state to state and even within the wildlife management districts or units within each state. Much of my information comes from managing deer in Maine. The reason for this is I think I have a better understanding of Maine’s deer management programs, I grew up in Maine and I’m getting most of my information from Maine wildlife biologists. Maine also has a decent history of producing some very large deer and this interests hunters everywhere. How deer are managed in your state could vary drastically from that of Maine. As you will see, there are just so many variables and each of those variables is forever changing adding to the challenge of deer biologists to figure this science out.

So, where do we start? Let’s start in the Garden of Eden. W…..H…..A……T!?!? Why not? God looked into the Garden of Eden (GOE) and said, “Hey, I did okay. That place will support 100 deer and I’ll call that ‘carrying capacity’” So he stocked the GOE with 50 adult male deer and 50 adult female deer. He called that a buck to doe ratio of 1:1.

I suppose God knows best but as humans we have to ask if that is the ideal ratio? Not everyone agrees with that assessment and I’m sure it can and does vary nationwide but I have heard or read where anywhere from 1 buck to 1 - 5 does is an acceptable ratio depending on the desired outcome. I think it depends on a lot of circumstances but for the intent of this discussion, let’s say achieving a 1:1 ratio is what we’re looking to do.

When spring rolls around all 50 adult female deer fawned. Probably the GOE has ideal habitat, etc., after all, the Big Guy does things right, and under those conditions most mature does will have two and sometimes three fawns. Let’s keep it simple because I confuse easily. Each doe had one fawn.

This is the GOE so there is no mortality - you know the lion lays down with the lamb thing. By mid to late summer there now are 150 deer, 50 of those are of course the fawns. Once again for simplicity sake, let’s divide the new born deer 50/50, meaning 25 were males and 25 were females.

To get a further grasp on this you need to know that the 25 female deer born that first year will not breed during their first rutting season. In theory, if the original 50 adult does all fawned one deer apiece again the following spring, there would be 200 deer and we would also still have a 1:1 sex ratio. Being that we are in the GOE, no adult deer died of old age.

The following rutting season, the first year’s does are now of breeding age. Assuming the original 50 does are still able to breed, we now have 75 adult does that will fawn in the spring. By fall there are now 275 deer, still pretty close to a 1:1 sex ratio.

I hope you see where this is going. It won’t take too long under the ideals of the GOE to be overrun with too many deer. But this of course is fantasy.

God gave man dominion over the animals so he set up a hunting season so man could eat and he could keep the number of deer at carrying capacity (100 deer AND a ratio of 1:1, this is important). God reasoned and concluded that he couldn’t just let man take any deer at any time, so he devised a plan so that he would have to take some females and some males and it had to be done in such a way so as to as closely as possible maintain a deer herd of 100 deer - 50 males and 50 females. And so God created the Any-Deer permit system.

All was great until man sinned. Winters were thrust upon Mainers, coyotes began eating deer and bears were hungry too, tired of only eating apples and black berries. Disease became an issue for us to deal with as well as people who didn’t think the laws really pertained to them, so they took whatever they wanted for game and said to heck with everyone else. Man had to work by the sweat of his brow and so he began cutting his trees down to sell to support a family.

Thrown into this mix, God really came down hard on his creation and allowed for the evolution of the politician and as such a value of dollars and no sense was also put on deer and deer hunting. Things began to get messy.

God challenged the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and told them to figure out how to take care of the deer and that’s what they’ve been trying to do ever since.

It wasn’t easy trying to figure out how many deer to allow to be taken and of what species. A bit of trial and error took place until over time records were kept and then MDIFW could get a better understanding of success rates, participation of hunters, recruitment, mortality, etc.

Let’s go back to the less confusing time in my little history lesson when hunting the deer became part of the equation. After the end of the first hunting season, if all went well, we ended up in reality with 100 or so deer. The majority of those deer were mature and of those mature deer we calculate that about half are bucks and half are does. The remainder of the herd are a mix of fawns - again, close to half males and half females. This is our “post hunt” calculations.

Remember that through all of this we want to sustain as close as we can to a 1 buck for every doe ratio. We are assuming (I hate to use that word), that all or at least nearly all of the adult female deer will fawn in the spring. Under ideal conditions, we could go ahead and figure out how many Any-Deer Permits to issue. We combine that with the number of licensed hunters we know we are going to have. With established success rates of the hunter, we think we are pretty good at figuring out how many deer will be taken during the next hunting season and how many will be female and how many male and approximately what ages those deer will be - in other words fawns or adults. This is called “pre-hunt” calculations.

If this was all we had to calculate, I might be smart enough, at least through trial and error, to keep the deer herd somewhere near on target. But, alas, this is not to be.

Lee Kantar, deer specialist and wildlife biologist at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, has been extremely helpful in providing me with information about how all this works. Let’s just say he’s been very patient as well. He told me that in Maine the average of male to female deer born in the spring is slightly in favor of the males. In other words, if 100 new fawns were born this spring, just over half would be little bucks, the rest does. He also describes the “pre-hunt” calculations this way.

1st realize that every year as part of our permitting process we calculate the pre-hunt sex ratio of bucks to does for each WMD. If the buck to doe ratio is skewed, in other words if it deviates from essentially 1 buck to 1 doe than we will adjust the doe permit levels to bring the population back to equity. Keep in mind that buck and doe mortality rates are different with bucks have much higher rates. So populations are always somewhat skewed.

Another thing Kantar points out is that when you have a WMD that is way under population objectives, you can’t be managing for a 1:1 sex ratio. You reduce or completely eliminate the taking of any female deer until population objectives are reached.

There are some things that the magicians and MDIFW can rely on to be relatively consistent. Some of those things they have established by keeping accurate records since the first day that God handed over the deer management to them. As some examples, they can get a pretty close estimate on how many people will buy a hunting license and go hunting. They can estimate because of record keeping, what percentage of those hunters will actually bag a deer. They know that with “X” number of Any-Deer Permits handed out, there is a certain success rate that goes with that. They also know what percentages of the deer taken with an Any-Deer Permit, will be fawn male deer, fawn female deer, adult does and adult bucks. They know these things because they keep accurate records.

Other known things will be the data they collect from samples taken during hunting season at tagging stations. We also know that they are constantly collecting data from their winter monitoring stations and field observations through the year. They have to have as much solid unchanging information as they possibly can. The more, the easier their job in managing this herd AND sustaining that desired sex ratio.

Are you confused yet? Well, I am but I’m trying to make some sense out of this. It gets even more complicated.

Mind you that even though I categorize this information as being a “known” bit of information, it does vary. Here’s an example. As I said, MDIFW has a pretty good idea how many licenses they will sell for deer hunting. From that they estimate how many will take a deer. This comes from comparisons of previous years’ data that tells what the success rate is. What they don’t know and can’t control is hunter participation. Simply buying a license is no guarantee that 1) a hunter will bag a deer, 2) that the hunter will hunt the same amount of time as previous seasons or will even hunt at all, and 3) what factors would increase or decrease hunter effort, like bad weather or good weather or ideal tracking conditions, etc.

A mathematician, should be able to take all this information I’ve given to this point and come up with a algorithmic formula that would tell him how many Any-Deer Permits to give out for each WMD based on objectives. We know we want to maintain 100 deer in the Garden of Eden with a sex ratio of 1:1. How hard can that be. If nothing else, we can make a trip or two into the Garden just before hunting season and do a head count, then we’ll no for sure how many does to take and how many bucks, right? Fantasy!

Well, the algorithmic formula isn’t that far fetched but the information used in that formula gets more and more complicated. Let’s quickly recap. We started out with 50 does and 50 bucks which grew to 150 deer. We know that a bit more than half of the new-born deer were males, the rest females. So we have roughly 75 male deer now and 75 females not all of which are adult and of breeding age.

We got to figure out how to end the hunting season with 50 bucks and 50 does.

If we have statistics that tell us how many people will hunt, those same statistics will tell us how many will shoot a buck and how many will shoot a doe, or better defined here as an antlerless deer. Of the antlerless deer taken, statistics will tell us approximately how many are mature does (breedable), how many are fawn males and how many fawn females.

I think it is fair and reasonable to state that because of good record keeping, it is easier to use the methods and tools I’ve described, to keep a deer population in check, increase it or decrease it, whatever the goals for a certain Wildlife Management District are.

Well, that was simple! Not quite. We’ve only just begun really. We have to add to this magical algorithmic formula an array of variables and unknowns. I probably won’t cover them all but I’ll get enough to help you better understand and get a picture of where I’m coming from.

I look at it from two perspectives. What kills deer and what makes them thrive? Most of these factors are things we cannot control, are ever changing and difficult at best to predict but all play an important role in knowing how to manage the herd. Let’s take a look. First the things that make deer thrive.

Deer thrive best in an ideal habitat. In Maine, the habitat will vary greatly. We all know that if deer have the right kinds of foods and ample supplies, they will grow big and healthy. When there’s ample food, some magical little voice inside the female deer will tell them it’s alright to have more than one deer (I’m just kidding of course. The doe deer can’t consciously make that decision and there is no little voice).

To some degree deer will biological adjust how many deer they have depending on the health of their surroundings. On the opposite end of that, the health of the fawns will depend on the same surroundings. More on the negative aspects of this in a bit.

In Maine, we know that deer need places to go and hang out in the winter that provides them with as much natural protection from the elements as is possible as well as some food, although not the most nutritious. These, or course, are called deer yards or deer wintering areas.

In short, when deer have an abundant and varied diet, ideal weather conditions, few stresses and a healthy habitat to carry out all these things, they will prosper and prosper quite rapidly if allowed.

Now to look at what kills them or negatively affects their health and survivability. The obvious negative factors are to take the positive ones I’ve just given you and turn them around. When food becomes scarce, the weather is extreme with limited habitat, including wintering areas, compounded with stresses from predators, including man, things can begin to turn south.

But there are more negative things that can affect the deer herd. There’s disease, poaching, out of balance species of predators, man’s influence on habitat through development and forestry practices and other natural occurrences like plant disease and fungi, ticks, chronic wasting disease (not found in Maine) and more.

When we look at every possible aspect of what influences the deer, both negatively and positively, we quickly see that most of it is never constant. As a matter of fact, much of it is the opposite. If the guys and gals at MDIFW are intelligent enough to devise an algorithmic formula under ideal conditions, just think how difficult it is when these conditions are rapidly changing right before our eyes.

Below, I am going to give you a bit of information that I find fascinating. If you’re like me, you’ll have to read it more than once to get a decent enough grasp on the concept to be able to ask the question, “Am I, in fact, making this management of deer too complicated?” *Note* anything surrounded by [ ], I added for clarification.

Now, this is something–depending on how much hunting pressure a herd has it can only become skewed [sex ratio] to a certain point based on differential mortality of bucks and does and recruitment rates. In Maine pressure is relatively low to moderate compared to most whitetail states. On average our annual buck mortality is around 45%, many states are more in the 60 to 70% range.

Now you can test the skewed sex ratio deal. If you take a population of 1000 deer, 500 adult bucks and 500 adult does and then apply known mortality rates to the bucks and does, then apply known production, fawn mortality, and recruitment rates to this population, after 5 years the sex ratio will remain the same. So for example in a population where annual adult buck mortality is 45%, annual adult doe mortality is 25%, fawn mortality is 40%, and the recruitment sex ratio is 112:100 males to females (Maine data), then this population starts out even with an adult sex ratio of 1 to 1, after year 5 the buck to doe ratio increases to 1.2 does to 1 buck and stays that way every year after.

You can apply different known mortality rates from Maine data and try to skew the ratio. I took an extreme value of annual adult buck mortality of 67% (Heavily hunted population), an adult doe mortality of 25%, a fawn mortality rate of 51% and after 5 years the sex ratio works out to 1.7 does to 1 buck.

Biologically it is hard to make the case for adult buck to doe ratios being more skewed than 2 does for every 1 buck. You start to get skewed when you have high annual buck mortality and extremely low doe mortality. Also keep in mind that we manage on a fairly large landscale, so locally and in smaller areas different things could be happening.

This is all very well and good and as I said, fascinating but it depends on one important aspect. You have to believe the data MDIFW is providing and the formulas they use. If you don’t have that trust, none of this really matters. Is it perfect? No and I think Kantar or any of the other biologists would say so but it seems to work quite well. Can sex ratios become skewed in Maine? I believe they can but given the information provided to me, this would mean that MDIFW biologists would have to have completely lost track of what’s going on within any of WMDs and ignored it. Kantar himself gives reasons why a sex ratio would become out of whack - high buck mortality, low doe mortality.

When I began this piece, it started with a fictitious quote saying that there must be 100 does to every buck seen by hunters. Perhaps biologically, you have come to better understand that this probably isn’t true. Lee Kantar took some extra time to provide me with some reasons why we might not be seeing the number of bucks that we would like to.

Now why do people observe more does (sometimes a lot more does) than bucks in the field? A number of things are at play here:

1. Bucks and does use habitats and forage differently at different times of the year. Large bodied deer (bucks) can afford to forage on food that is less nutritious than does, in other words larger deer can eat more low quality food to maintain body condition while smaller bodied deer need better forage to maintain and increase body mass. So females are seen along field edges and openings where they may find better nutrition versus the woods or swamp buck.

2. It is more common to observe groups of deer (many times a social group of related deer–i.e., adult female with yearlings and fawns) versus a single deer (buck)–although buck bachelor groups form as well.

3. An observed group of antlerless deer will likely include fawn bucks, sometimes yearling bucks where antlers are not apparent.

4. Bucks are notorious for being dodgy. We have done deer drives in exclosures with known numbers of deer and never see all the deer. Research has been conducted on large exclosure where they have gone into the fenced area and harvested all the deer using all kinds of methods. Getting every last one proves extremely difficult, and in a classic experiment in the mid-west, after they thought they had killed all the deer, they eventually found one last deer-a mature buck.

5. During the hunting season, especially in areas where there is lots of hunting pressure, the sex and age dynamics of the herd is being changed before your eyes. The greatest cause of buck mortality is hunting and that mortality is often condensed into a 4 week period where the herd dynamics are rapidly changing. So those are a few points.

I would like to once again point out that I am not an “authority” on deer management. The intent of this writing is to help hunters, particularly those who insist buck to doe ratios are extremely out of whack, a chance to better understand what it is they are seeing, not seeing and why.

I probably have missed some aspects of this debate and may have even misrepresented some but I believe the time and research I put into this article it is accurate. It is not intended to be a research or study document, just information that I hope will compliment your knowledge of Maine’s whitetail deer management and whitetail deer in general.

Tom Remington

buck to doe ratio, lee kantar, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, whitetail deer management, wildlife biology

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Maine is tucked up into the far northeast corner of the United States. On its southern boarder is the Atlantic Ocean. Her eastern boarder touches with New Brunswick, Canada and to the north and northwest, Quebec, Canada. About the only boarder of the state that mimics a straight line of any kind is the western boarder that looks over into the state of New Hampshire.

Vermont is not very far away at all. At its farthest reaches of the Northeast Kingdom, the state is separated from Maine by perhaps only 25 miles of New Hampshire. Down south, the distance between Maine and Vermont at its widest point might stretch to 85 miles.

If you look at the map I provided, I drew a straight orange line across the northern boarder of Vermont, eastward into and across Maine. Mind you this line does not follow any longitudinal boundaries but is only for comparisons of geographic regions.

The reason for this is so that you can see that Maine and Vermont are not very far apart and that the southern part of the state of Maine appears to compare somewhat geographically with the entire state of Vermont. But does it?

For those who have been following, Maine just recently made public a report from the Northern and Eastern Maine Deer Task Force, a group commissioned to study why there are so few deer in northern and eastern Maine and what can be done about it.

Unfortunately for Maine deer hunters, this past winter was a bad one. Lots of snow that came early and often, piling the white stuff in excess of 200 inches in some locals. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is rating this years winter severity as high as 14% above what would be considered normal - that would be Wildlife Management District #1.

Consequently, MDIFW Commissioner Roland “Dan” Martin announced last week that Any-Deer Permits were going to be cut drastically for the 2008 deer hunting season. Maine, like several other states, uses the issuance of doe permits or in Maine, Any-Deer Permits, as perhaps the most important tool to regulate the deer populations to meet management target goals.

In the Department’s Agency Rulemaking Proposal, Commissioner Martin outlines his recommendation that 51,125 Any Deer Permits be made available to hunters this season in 13 of the state’s 29 Wildlife Management Districts, a decrease of 15,150 permits from last year and a reduction of seven management districts that were open to Antlerless Deer Permit holders last year.

While this is all taking place in Maine, only a stone’s throw to the west is Vermont, who also in an announcement last week, said they are going to double antlerless permits because they have far too many deer in most locations. Not only are they going to double the antlerless deer permits, they are also going to up the bag limit from two to three deer. How can this be? How can Maine have such a devastating winter that is going to result in slashing antlerless permits in virtually every Wildlife Management District and yet Vermont is looking to double theirs AND up the bag limit?

I grew up in Western Maine only 10 miles from the New Hampshire boarder and about 50 miles from Vermont. I am quite familiar with a lot of the geographic differences and I can tell you that at times winters in Maine and Vermont can be quite dissimilar.

Getting back to the line I drew on the map, everything in Maine north of that orange line is like no-man’s land. Heavily forested with mostly harsh to extreme winter weather every season. It was the southern districts of Maine that I wondered how different it can be than Vermont.

I fired off an email to Lee Kantar, deer specialist and wildlife biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. I gave him a link to the story about Vermont doubling permits and asked how much different can it be between Maine and Vermont? I have great respect for Lee and all the biologists at MDIFW. They work hard and do a remarkable job considering their limitations through budgets and the pressures of politics that are always a threat to good science.

Lee admitted he wasn’t well versed on Vermont’s deer management programs but did share some thoughts on the differences in geography.

Vermont does have a substantially different geography. They are about 75% forested and 25% of the land base is in agricultural - that is 1.5 million of 6 million+ acres. Maine with all its land has about 1.25 million ag acres and a lot more forest. That in general is a much different dynamic for Vermont’s deer. The Green Mountains run up the spine of the state and is national forest land, that in combination with their Act 250 law provides additional protections to their deer wintering areas that we do not have. They also have an overall milder climate.

Act 250, or the Land Use and Development Act, was created to better manage land use and growth in Vermont. One key aspect of Act 250 says, “provides habitat for breeding, feeding, resting, and shelter to both game and nongame species of wildlife.” This is also expanded out to say that you can’t put development into deer wintering yards.

Kantar shared a bit of information he received from some folks in Vermont about their winter.

It’s amazing how variable winter has been across the northeast. We’ve had a good bit of snow but also had major thaws in Dec., Jan., Feb., and March. Unless we have some late winter storms with deep snow persisting into April, we’ll be seeing our 4th generally mild winter in a row, excepting a few local lake-effect areas.

He says that Maine’s winter will no doubt go down in the history books as being in the top five in regards to wildlife mortality.

Kantar says that in Maine, each year they begin the process of trying to determine what has happened from the end of deer hunting season until now, to see what this is going to spell out for the deer herd statewide. They look at each Wildlife Management District separately through an entire host of available data.

When we start the management decision process for our any deer permitting it begins with a look at how each district has faired over the last 7 years, where our population is in respect to district goals and what does the balance of mortality and recruitment look like for each district. Has mortality and recruitment patterns changed over the last year?

This is a good time to point out that even though Commissioner Martin has announced plans to reduce Any-Deer Permits for next season, the projected cuts are very much subject to change. Many people don’t realize that parts of Maine are in a very critical time for deer to be able to survive the winter. A long, prolonged winter season, delaying green up and weather that is difficult on fawns that will be born, will determine how many fawns live and also the nearly starved deer, whether they will pull through or not.

Maine has 28 winter severity monitoring systems. With this data and data collected over the past years, biologists will calculate out a winter mortality rate, all based on historic and current events collected in their data. Kantar points out the winter severity will vary all across the state. For those of us who live or have lived there, we know that weather in Fort Kent can certainly be completely different in Dover-Foxcroft, Eastport or Bridgton.

Once a mortality rate for this year has been calculated, it is compared with the 15-year mean.

This means how does this year compare with the average winter. Is mortality above and beyond “normal”? In the 07-08 preliminary analysis we see that winter severity and therefore mortality was above normal across the state. In WMD 24 along the coast it was as little as 2% above the norm, while in WMD 1 it was estimated at 14% above the norm.

From here biologists must then figure out how to make adjustments to the allotment of Any-Deer Permits to compensate for calculated losses in order to stay within the management plan for each WMD. Obviously, the higher the winter mortality, the greater the compensation - meaning fewer Any-Deer Permits issued. These of course will vary WMD to WMD depending on whether each district’s plan is seeking to reduce, maintain or increase deer numbers.

If this sounds complicated, it’s not. This is the simplified version of deer management and the utilization of the Winter Severity Index calculations. Deer management is complicated, using factors some of us have never heard of, say nothing about understand.

Mr. Kantar answered my questions in a more than satisfactory manner but I still had a couple more questions that I wanted to get answers for that also pertain to deer management and directly to the severe winters. He promised to get back to me but here is what I wanted to know.

I wanted to know how the management of predators, namely black bears and coyotes, are figured into deer mortality rates and the winter severity index. This is not something that can be easily answered. Hunters all across Maine are fed up with coyotes killing off the deer. Many, myself included, believe there are far too many coyotes in Maine and would like to see something done.

What I would like to know and pass on to readers is how biologists monitor coyote and black bear populations and the role they play in the winter mortality rate we’ve just been talking about.

The second question concerns how to explain to hunters about buck to doe ratios so that it is understood? I’ve written about this before but mostly I feel as though it is falling on deaf ears and those that refuse to believe that buck to doe ratios don’t become 1 buck in 100 does.

Kantar promised to take two Tylenol and call me in the morning.

Tom Remington

deer management, deer mortality, land use and development act, lee kantar, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, northern and eastern maine deer task force, roland dan martin, vermont act 250, vermont deer management, winter deer survival, winter mortaliy rate, winter severity index

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The following is a link that will take you to a photo journal of Paul Cyr who traveled along with a group from Maine on a day of monitoring bears deep in their winter dens.

This is well worth the click to get over there as the pictures are quite incredible and the cubs at the age seldom seen by humans.

Thanks to Paul Cyr for sharing his photos and a link.

Tom Remington

bear cubs, maine black bear monitoring, winter denning black bears

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Essentially, it was LD823 of the Maine Legislature that created the Northern and Eastern Maine Deer Task Force. Their mission was to find out why there are very few deer left in Northern and Eastern Maine and make recommendations as to what to do about it. Before anything else is said, the 11 members of this task force where given a commission that others before them had yet to accomplish and the time put into this effort is to be commended. Thank you!

Having said that, brings me back to the main question I have had since I heard of the Deer Task Force’s commission and the task given to them. What can they do that nobody or entity before them has been able to accomplish?

It certainly didn’t take hours of hard work from any task force to know that two major obstacles face the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife in attempting to fulfill the deer population goals in the MDIFW Deer Management Program - loss of habitat and predators.

Although many more issues that do have some degree of effect on the deer herd were discussed, quickly winter deer yards and predators, such as coyotes and black bear, became the front issue. Let’s jump immediately into the final recommendations of the task force and then we can look back as some of what drove them to those conclusions.

*Note* - The full report of the Task Force can be found on the MDIFW website by clicking this link. (pdf)

Task Force Recommendations:

1. That MDIFW work cooperatively with landowners to protect deer wintering areas in Northern and Eastern Maine to gradually increase the deer population in conjunction with land carrying capacity. This recommendation was a majority vote as some felt that a forced land-use zoning regulation would work better.

2. That MDIFW establish a Deer Predation Working Group, in short, to figure out how it is going to control predators, namely black bears and coyotes, that are killing too many deer.

3. That MDIFW establish a Deer Research Working Group whose function will be to figure out better science in managing winter yards and the species.

Obviously, each of these recommendations come with much more detailed procedures for carrying out the recommendations.

Long before this Task Force met, Maine hunters have known what is causing the loss of deer in these affected areas. From what I read in the report, there certainly was not consensus on how to go about trying to protect deer wintering areas (DWA). Some advocate for a land zoning initiative that would force landowners that have DWA on their property to preserve it, tying their hands from full use of their property. According to representatives of the Maine Forest Products Council, landowners are opposed to land zoning for this purpose. They said landowners understand they have certain responsibilities “but are very resistant to zoning.”

John Gilbert of JD Irving says that of the 1.3 million acres of forest its company manages, 6% or nearly 82,000 acres are cooperatively set aside for DWAs. He says one of the problems facing deer management is that these are historically DWAs but the deer aren’t going there anymore. This makes them reluctant to be forced into setting aside such areas.

I think it was mostly agreed upon that any work with protecting and establishing deer wintering areas was a long-term goal and efforts wouldn’t yield positive results for some time.

One of the recommendations of the DTF was to use money from Land for Maine’s Future to buy up easements and land for wintering habitat.

On the issue of predators, part of what made this effort even more difficult than it already was, was because Maine was in the middle of a lawsuit filed against it by the Animal Protection Institute to stop trapping in Canada lynx habitat. Near the end of the meetings of the Task Force, Maine reached an agreement with API and thusly gave up many of the tools being used in the trapping of coyotes.

It has been said by trappers that earlier on when snaring was outlawed on coyotes, the major tool of controlling the coyote was taken away. Reports are that better designed traps might provide a better means of trapping the coyote but that has of yet to be revealed.

Between coyotes, black bears and bad winters, like this year’s, mortality rates on deer have skyrocketed. The Task Force made several recommendations for controlling and reducing bear populations. They included lengthening the bear season, increasing bag limits, among others, most of which require either legislative action or implementation through the MDIFW.

Probably the one most effective recommendation that could have some effect on predation is the recommendation of the Task Force that the MDIFW renew Animal Damage Control, a tool to use to target known areas of predator problems and work to reduce coyotes and bears.

The Task Force in recommending to set up the Deer Predation Working Group, effectively shuffled some of its responsibilities to establish methods to reduce coyotes off onto that perhaps-to-be group. Gerry Lavigne, former Maine deer biologist and a representative of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, who sat on the Task Force, points out that this needs to be addressed. This in a letter addressed to the Task Force from Lavigne with his recommendations on it.

Finally, we note that the Deer Task Force failed to tackle one directive of LD 823. There is a provision directing the working group to: “establish methods of controlling coyote populations and set goals to manage the populations.” While the Task Force clearly deferred discussion of control methods to the proposed Deer Predation Working Group, the task of goalsetting
was never addressed. This is unacceptable, because serious efforts at predator control require the same attention to harvest intensity, data collection, and monitoring of efficacy as is required for other big game management.

The Dept. requires the use of management systems to guide harvest and other management actions for most hunted and trapped species, as well as for many non-hunted species. Yet, no management system has ever been implemented for eastern coyotes, since the Dept. initiated the management system approach 23 years ago! SAM believes the DIFW is long overdue for creating a management system for coyote that will guide recreational harvest, ADC activities, and public outreach, as these activities pertain to achievement of clearly defined population objectives. We urge the Dept. to accomplish this task without delay, and with the scientific competency it accords other important wildlife.

I think Lavigne nails it pretty close but I’m wondering, as I’m sure many more are as well, just how is this going to be accomplished? It’s easy to say the MDIFW needs to do this and that but we also must remember that by them giving in to the animal rights groups, many good effective tools used to keep coyote populations in check, were given away.

Trappers that I talk say they could easily target deer wintering areas with their snare traps catching the coyotes as they bear down on deer in the yarding areas. They say what’s left for tools is quite inadequate to do a good enough job.

I don’t want to sound like an excuse maker looking for ways to fail but I can’t say that I have any real suggestions either and I’m sure this has played a significant role in the past with those trying to find ways to deal with coyotes.

MDIFW will have their work cut out for them, especially when it comes to dealing with the public, namely the environmentalists and animal rights groups. Two issues talked about as possible methods of dealing with predators was opening up a spring bear hunt with a “cub clause” - meaning no bear with cubs could be harvested. In states that do have spring hunts, there has been opposition to them because cubs are involved.

Going along with that same social outcry, is talk of targeting denning coyotes in the early spring. This would involve destroying coyote pups while still in the den. This is not an easy task to locate dens and is highly controversial as animal lovers can only see that these are cute little puppies. This method has been discussed in Alaska in their efforts to control overgrown wolf populations. They have seen strong opposition to this method, yet again, they’ve seen strong opposition to anything they are trying to do to reduce wolf numbers.

MDIFW personnel think nothing of killing every fish in a pond in order to “reclaim it” and restock it with game fish, yet can’t deal with denning coyotes? One of the problems I think the department has had in the past is not taking a firm enough stand. They must stand behind their science in wildlife management, even if it gets grief from the public or a handful of noisy activists. If their science behind what the do is real and necessary, then they must, from a position of strength, stand firm. I’m not sure they can accomplish that. Surely they understand that giving a little here and a little there isn’t going to make the noisy ones go away?

The facts are, Maine has a serious deer management problem in the Northern part of the state and Downeast. This has been exacerbated by a record-breaking winter dumping in excess of 200 inches of snow in parts. It might not be too far fetched to claim that there are probably more Canada lynx in some of these areas than deer.

It’s tough to suggest asking hunters to give up their deer hunting opportunities but it might come to that. This of course would be tragic, coming at a time when some economic leaders are officially saying this country is in recession and MDIFW is cash strapped, struggling now to make ends meet. Losing valuable license fee money would just make matters worse.

One thing is for certain. I have faith that hunters and trappers are the real true conservationists and they’ll roll up their shirt sleeves and do what needs to be done to bring the deer herd back. We can’t control the weather but there are many more things that we can do, which might require a fight.

Tom Remington

Animal Protection Institute, Canada lynx, deer management, gerry lavigne, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, northern and eastern maine deer task force, severe winters, Sportsmans Alliance of Maine

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Below you will find a recent article written by Jim Beers. You’ll also find a short bio about Mr. Beers. His article helps readers to begin making a connection between the efforts of those manipulating the Endangered Species Act for personal agendas and those wanting to strip Americans of the Second Amendment rights.

I will also include two other parts along with Jim Beers’ article and bio. One is a bit of an introduction to his article and the last will be a response by someone who has read Beers’ piece.

This information raises some interesting questions about the connections of people once in high places moving to other organizations and landing in high places. You can draw your own conclusions.

First will be Beers’ bio, followed by his introduction, the article and then a response to that article.

Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.

Folks,

This is a copy of something I just sent to Charles Kay, a great biologist and friend. Since I just remembered that Charles is probably in Africa, I thought I would send this around.

Remember that the Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service under Clinton oversaw the theft of $45 to 60 Million from the hunting and fishing excise taxes. Those funds that were intended by law FOR STATE FISH AND WILDLIFE PROGRAMS were NEVER REPLACED AND OUR STATE AGENCIES NEVER REQUESTED THAT THEY BE REPLACED (don’t want to offend the boys and girls passing out all those federal grants). The stolen funds were used to pay for the capture, transportation, conditioning, and release of WOLVES IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK to ‘seed’ wolves in the Upper Rockies. That Director established The Defenders of Wildlife as the erstwhile federal “partner” responsible for “paying” for wolf depredations. This was and is merely a smokescreen to fend off complaints of the harm of wolves, only a small amount of livestock loss was ever remunerated and dogs and game herds and other losses were simply unavoidable casualties of this “war”. That ex-FWS Director went to work in a top job with The Defenders of Wildlife as soon as the law permitted (The National Wildlife Federation payed her a big salary while she had to cool her heels after resigning when the Republicans won the Presidential election). As you read the e-mails below, remember she still directs this wolf business for The “Defenders”, lobbies her former associates in FWS, and, I would guess, is a player in the upcoming election where if she is lucky (and we are not) she will be reincarnated in some other position in a “high place”.

Hopefully you may find this worthwhile. FYI

Jim Beers

Subject: Re: Wolves and The 2nd Amendment

Charles,

I believe the entire predator “push” from grizzly increases in range and numbers; to limiting methods of take of cougars (dogs, on-sight as depredating, seasons); to federal requirements (in the works as grant requirements) to make cougars invading places like Iowa, Kansas, etc. Protected Native Species and not classified as unprotected so that any take is difficult; to keeping black bears on the Threatened List in LA and FL (and adding other states opportunistically) and claiming large tracts of Florida as “Florida Panther” Critical Habitat — all are seriously jeopardizing the future of our 2nd Amendment Rights. Not only will game numbers (and hence seasons and harvest and license revenue and ancillary expenditures) decrease: areas open to hunting will decrease and hunter participation will necessarily decrease. Then there is the SAFETY EFFECT. Hunters that leave a kill to get equipment to haul it out or to get help will increasingly return to a predator on the kill. Hunters using bows for big game or turkey hunters or predator callers, all sit still and watch INTO the wind. There will be more run-ins with un-harassed grizzlies and cougars and black bears as food dwindles or as rabies or other disease outbreaks ravage the increasing predator population. What hunter will dare to sit and call after hearing how some guy was attacked FROM BEHIND by a grizzly or jumped by a wolf (a wolf once jumped a Russian lumberjack from behind WHILE HE WAS RUNNING THE CHAINSAW!)? What parent will let their kid go our after school to hunt alone after reading these accounts of attacks?

All of this will shrink the number of hunters and urban hunters especially. While the rural residents (both hunters and non-hunters) will increasingly want, need, and use guns - the anti-gunners will have a big leg-up as fewer and fewer urban folks hunt and become less vociferous in challenging the take-away activities of anti-gunners and urban mayors. Bottom line is a shrinking contingent of gun users and gun defenders with a concomitant increase in the need for guns in a shrinking rural American population that is more and more subject to the imaginary whims of urban voting blocs. Result? More rural residents from families and retirees to resource-dependent businesses and other entrepreneurs leaving rural environs. As an old bureaucrat it looks good for federal growth and bureaucrats that will have less opposition to buying more and more of rural America for everything from re-establishing Native Pre-Columbian Ecosystems to establishing “Corridors” and “Roadless” “Wildernesses” as more rural areas are evacuated. The only “winners” will be bureaucrats, politicians, and the modern rich land-buying aristocrats.
The environmentalists and the animal rights radicals never “win” because they will never be “happy” until they are the only ones left and that will never happen. I am reminded of that great line by Eli Wallach as the Mexican bandit chief in The Magnificent Seven. As Yul Brynner invites Wallach to move on and leave the villagers alone, Wallach snarls “If God did not want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep!”. For too long we have been sheep.

Jim Beers

Subject: Wolfs and The 2nd Amendment

Hi Guys,

A friend forwarded me you URL today. My name is xxx I live in Powell, WY. Like you over there, our elk herds are rapidly disappearing. I am working on a freelance article commissioned by Predator Magazine. The subject of the article is the politics of wolf reintroduction. In particular, the connection between Defenders of Wildlife and Handgun Control, Inc, now known as the Brady Campaign.

As you likely know, Defenders is one of the main players in this ongoing circus. They have funded most of the court cases that have kept and will keep wolves listed for the foreseeable future. in 2004 they won two key decisions, one in Federal District Court in Oregon, one in Vermont. Basically these two judges found that so long as there are no wolves in Oregon/Washington, they are still endangered in our area. These decisions were based on the way the US F&W drew the wold management boundaries, and the way that the Endangered Species Act spells out management requirements. On the 28th of this month, the US Fish & Wildlife Service will “delist” wolves. The day after that, DoW et al, will file a motion for injunction which will likely be granted. In order for delisting to proceed, the wildlife management groups in ID, MT, and WY fish &game will have to appeal theses precedents in Federal Appellate court. If they are successful there, DoW will appeal that decision. According to my sources inside the WY F&G they expect that will take 2-3 years. By then the damage will be done. Unless the states can have the original decisions overturned in Appellate court, wolves will remain protected far into the future. As you know, we are already standing on the brink of “too late”.

Wolves cannot be reintroduced in eastern Washington, because DoW was able to have the Mountain Caribou in that area listed as endangered. So, wolves cannot be reintroduced there until the caribou populations have recovered. That will never happen because caribou don’t want to be there in the first place.

So here’s the Catch. The way that U&S F&G has drawn their boundaries between elk species, if DoW can manage to get the Rocky Mountain subspecies listed as only “threatened”, they can stop sport hunting of that subspecies throughout its entire range!!

What better way to cut the financial legs out from under both the NRA and State fish and game organizations.

The connection between wolves and anti-gun groups comes in the form of one Charles J. Orasin. For more than 15 years he was the rabid VP of Operations for Handgun Control, Inc. IN a flurry of Congressional hearings regarding shady fund raising practices in 2000, he disappeared from HCI and reappeared at Defenders of Wildlife as their VP of Operations. Should we believe that he just abandoned his life’s work to kill the 2nd Amendment to go save wolves and sea turtles?

If you look at the string of Federal Court rulings they won after he got to DoW you see and alarming pattern. Did you know that 10-12 years before the wolf planting recovery programs were started, elk were transplanted into areas that exactly match the original wolf reintroduction proposals? Never make the mistake of thinking that reintroduction of wolves has anything to do with “balancing” the ecosystem. For 6 years, the US Fish & Wildlife Service fought Wyoming’s management plan tooth and nail. Seemingly over night, they reversed their position. Why?

In 2003, I read an article that said the National Park Service was considering a study on the impact of wolves on ungulate populations. When you call and ask them about it now, you get a lot of er….uh….well… we ..ah.. never did the study….”Why not?” er …uh…well… we don’t see an impact high enough to warrant spending the money on it. Yet, The studies in Wyoming and Idaho tell a different story altogether. I believe it is the alarming results of state studies that flipped the US F&G literally over night.

The 2007 study done by the WY G&F shows that 4 of Wyoming elk hers are close to calf survival rates that will not support its population WITHOUT growing predation from wolves/grizzlies/lions.

Predator Magazine is the only publication that has the hair to have a go at putting out the news that the Endangered Species Act is being manipulated by DoW and their ilk, not to save species, but to do away with the 2nd Amendment. Most folks think I’m just a crackpot, conspiracy nut. But, WHY did MR. Gun Control go to work for DoW? Why did their strategy change so suddenly upon his arrival. I can find but one answer. I sent your URL to Ralph Lemeyer at Predator Magazine. He was asking me to find some wolf kill photos for the article. I think you guys have that covered! I hope we can get together sometime to compare notes.

Best Regards, and keep Hammerin ‘em!

Posted by Tom Remington

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Reader Richard sent this link along that everyone will find entertaining and and amusing of black bears and grizzly bears rubbing trees in Glacier National Park - all set to some funky, get down and boogie, music. Check it out!

Tom Remington

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Nearly three years ago environmental groups began demanding that the U.S. Government protect the polar bear by adding it to the list of endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. This suggestion is being based on a theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are warming the planet, causing ice in the arctic region to melt putting the bear at risk of survival. Some scientists back that claim while just as many refute it as only a theory based on poor models.

Over a year ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that they would consider listing the bear and would begin researching to determine whether the bear needs increased protection. Such a decision would be the first time that an animal would be listed based on climate speculation and not on hard evidence of loss of habitat, etc.

From the moment the USFWS made its announcement it seemed that environmentalists and Bush haters lined up believing that it was only a matter of time before the official announcement was made that the bear would be listed. Back in January I wrote an article saying that it didn’t really matter whether the bear was listed or not, there would be no satisfaction.

I have already come to the conclusion that unless the Bush administration, more specifically the Department of the Interior, determines that the world is coming to an end, the first to go are polar bears, that we should all double our taxes to protect them, sell off all our defense weapons, retreat from Iraq and have all the first born in the republican families killed, there will be no satisfaction.

I have read that according to federal law, the USFWS had one year from the time of their announcement that they were going to consider listing the bear, to make a final announcement. That one year time frame has come and gone and some continue their uncontrolled anger because bears aren’t protected yet.

You see, it isn’t a matter of being anxious to learn and understand the science behind the decision, whether the bear is listed or not, it’s about getting the bear listed so that Americans can be further controlled through increased taxation, limits on growth and a myriad of other stifling events that will transpire if the bear is protected in this fashion.

People, like Barbara Boxer, head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, have already made up their minds what it is they want - the bear listed. She and others are not interested in any science. In her mind Al Gore is next to godliness and has all the answers about climate change, say nothing about the fact he’s a failed politician and not a scientist. In short, she, like others, have made up their mind the bear will be listed and will settle for nothing short of that.

Yesterday, Boxer held a meeting, in which she wanted answers as to why the USFWS was taking so long to make their final announcement about the bear. Several were invited to testify, including Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who notified Boxer he would not be attending because he was named in a lawsuit about the listing of polar bears by environmental groups.

This infuriated Boxer and she let the public know about it. But she also made statements that back my claim that she has already made up her mind and would probably blow a gasket if Kempthorne were to announce the bear is doing fine.

Boxer and others want to blame Bush because he wants to drill for oil and gas, which Kempthorne says doesn’t matter. If the bear is listed, it doesn’t matter if oil drilling has begun or not, it would still be regulated by the Endangered Species Act. Boxer first indicates she wants the bear listed in this comment she made and was reported on MSNBC website.

“There’s a rush to drill, and no rush to list” polar bears as threatened, Boxer said.

She also expressed that the Bush administration has had enough time to list the bear.

“Two months ago, this committee heard testimony from legal and scientific experts about the consequences of melting polar sea ice on the polar bear,” she said.

Further evidence Boxer doesn’t really care about the other side of science in this matter, she laments even more.

“And sadly, despite the peer-reviewed scientific evidence; despite the opinions of scientists in our own government; despite the fact that we have a strong, successful law to protect imperiled species — the Endangered Species Act — the Bush Administration continues to break the law by failing to make a final decision to list the polar bear.”

So what’s the point of all this? Why do we have a USFWS? Is it because we can fund them with millions of dollars so that they can spend most or all of that money fighting lawsuits? It appears that as far as Boxer is concerned, the science is settled, the world is coming to an end and if the Bush administration doesn’t do things her way, she will fall down and begin banging her head on the floor.

By definition from the Endangered Species Act, the polar bear is not threatened. The population has doubled in recent years and science is now questioning the models that have been used in trying to predict what will happen to sea ice in the arctic. But all of this really doesn’t matter now does it? Science isn’t important. Nothing is important when a persons mind is already made up.

Perhaps the USFWS will have an announcement by early summer. It will be real interesting to see how this all goes and if I don’t get my way on this, you better watch out or I’ll resort to temper tantrums.

Tom Remington

Al Gore, arctic sea ice, climate change, Dirk Kempthorne, endangered species act, global warming, polar bears, sen. barbara boxer, senate committee on environment and public works, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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