Deer Management for Forest Landowners and Managers

David S. DeCalesta, Michael C. Eckley, David S. DeCalesta, Michael C. Eckley

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429574634
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biowissenschaften
• Subtopic: Ökologie

This book is designed to help landowners and forestry professionals develop, implement, and monitor programs to manage both deer and forests with emphasis on resolving deer impact issues. Chapters cover management strategies through identifying and setting goals; managing deer populations and deer impact on land; economics of forest, deer, and impact management; human dimensions of deer management; and developing and implementing integrated management plans. The book presents an integrated, quantitative approach for managing deer populations and impacts so users can manage forest resources sustainably.

1

Introduction

David S. deCalesta

Contents

Manager Summary

1.1Introduction

1.2Primer on Information/Documentation of Needs for Deer Management

1.3Caveat

1.3.1Management Philosophy

1.3.2Unforeseen Economic and Ecological Impact of Maximized Deer Density

1.3.3Landscape-Level Management

1.3.4Ecological and Human Factors Affecting Deer Density and Management

1.4Tenet, Premises, and Practicalities

1.5Principal Tenet of Deer Management

1.6Premises

1.6.1Practicalities

1.7Role of Values and Culture in Deer Management

1.7.1Requirement for Integrated Deer and Forest Management

1.8Adaptive Management

References

Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

T.H. Huxley (1903)

Manager Summary

Managing deer at densities required to sustain forest resources of interest to landowners is complex and difficult, owing to the multiple interactions between deer ecology and human dimensions—all must be addressed and integrated into comprehensive management plans. Multiple factors must be addressed, such as values among differing stakeholder groups, landscape and time scales, and financial and human resources available. Important components include monitoring, managing vegetation, managing hunters, and managing access and permits for harvesting antlerless deer. All must adjust to changing conditions (adaptive management). No one size fits all, as there are multiple categories of forest landowners besides the typical, and they include small woodlot owners, quality deer management adherents, forestlands leased for deer hunting, forestlands in human residential areas/public lands without hunting, and cooperatives. The book concludes with nine case histories illustrating successful deer management over a variety of the typical and special cases, including documentation of a case history that failed because it did not integrate ecology and human dimensions.

1.1 Introduction

The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) is the most-researched and published wildlife species in North America, with thousands of scientific articles and three books (Taylor 1956, Halls 1984, Hewitt 2011) devoted to their history, ecology, and management. McCullough’s (1979) study of deer population dynamics is a cornerstone for understanding how deer populations grow (and decline). McShea et al. (1997) published a comprehensive treatise on management of overabundant deer populations. Frye (2006) detailed the conflict, controversy, and difficulty of managing white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania as affected by multiple stakeholders. This book draws upon these resources and the research and management experiences of the book’s authors.

This is a “how-to” book for managing impacts of overabundant deer on forest resources. The book is arranged in five sections. Section I presents the ecological and human factors identified and quantified from research that influence deer density and deer impact on forest resources that are integrated by the unifying concept of carrying capacity. An important reality of comprehensive deer management is that actions based on ecological factors must be enhanced by application of human-based actions for success in deer management. Section II describes a framework for assessing deer density and impact as related to factors in Section I and details a process for establishing goals and objectives for deer management. Section III details a process for integrating ecological- and human-based factors into management activities, which includes incorporation of adaptive management for adjusting these activities based on assessment of progress toward goals. Section IV describes five “special” deer–forest management situations (small woodlot management, quality deer management, lease hunting management, residential/public forestland management without administrative support for public hunting to resolve deer impacts, and deer–forest management cooperatives) outside the realm of traditional management for forest products. Section V presents nine case histories representative of typical and special forest management situations.

The Northeast Section of the Wildlife Society (2015), in a white paper on managing impacts of overabundant deer, identified 11 components of management plans to address the issue. Although written in the context of deer management in developed (residential) areas, the components are a good starting point for describing steps for deer management and are referenced to specific chapters in this book.

1.2 Primer on Information/Documentation of Needs for Deer Management

1.Identify deer impacts (addressed in Chapter 15)

2.Define objectives to measure progress to alleviating/eliminating negative deer impacts (addressed in Chapter 16)

3.Collect data on deer impacts (addressed in Chapter 17)

4.Review management options (addressed in Chapters 1, 16, 25)

5.Invoke decision-making process (addressed in Chapters 1, 25, and 26)

6.Develop and implement a communication plan (addressed in Chapters 22 and 23)

7.Ensure state wildlife agencies … authorize regulated harvest where special hunts may be needed (addressed in Chapters 12 and 24)

8.Identify permitting requirements (addressed in Chapter 24)

9.Implement management actions (addressed in Chapters 25 and 26)

10.Monitor changes in deer impact levels (addressed in Chapter 17)

11.Review and modify management options (addressed in Chapter 26)

Missing from needs identified in the white paper for deer management are: (1) emphasis on management planning/conduct at the actual management level (individual private/public forestland), as discussed in Chapter 9; (2) identifying and meeting needs of hunters (Chapters 10 and 23); (3) assessing and implementing financial and human resource needs for deer management (Chapter 19); and (4) addressing spatial and temporal factors in deer management (addressed in Chapter 3).

1.3 Caveat

Before we get started, it is important that we adjust our perspective on deer management to address three major disconnects between resource agencies charged with managing deer and managers who actually manage deer. The disconnects relate to: (1) management philosophy, (2) negative impact resulting from managing for maximum deer density, and (3) landscape-level deer management.

1.3.1 Management Philosophy

One of the notions of the developing field of wildlife management early in the twentieth century, as promulgated by Aldo Leopold (1933), was that of managing for a sustainable surplus (harvestable crop for game species). The emerging philosophy was: the higher the abundance of the game species, the better.

The concept was visualized as a bucket of water, which when full represented the maximum number of individuals existing forage and other life requirements would support in a local population. Mortality factors representing “leaks” in the bucket were predation, parasites, and diseases; forage and other cover requirements; overharvest by hunting; and accidents. The combination of mortality factors was seen as countering the contributions of reproduction and especially recruitment to population numbers with the result that the habitat was not carrying as many individuals of the target population as possible and not optimizing the huntable surplus. Reproduction and recruitment were thought of as compensating for the leaks, especially if the magnitude of the leaks could be reduced by management, for example, aggressive reduction of predators, improvement of forage including supplemental feeding, and reduction of hunter harvest of doe deer.

Elimination of historic predators, improvement of forage conditions, and limiting harvest with hunting regulations were highly successful deer management steps after the near-extirpation of deer at the end of the nineteenth century. But the resultant population explosion of whitetail deer beginning in the 1920s resulted in unforeseen economic and ecological impacts on forest resources. As McCullough (1979) stated regarding deer management and the surplus concept, “the concept of surplus has, indeed, become a real problem” and “an obstacle to further advancement of the art.”

1.3.2 Unforeseen Economic and Ecological Impact of Maximized Deer Density

The problem with the initial philosophy regarding game management was that the emphasis was on maximizing population density (maximum sustained yield; MSY) and did not address the unanticipated negative impact on forest vegetation caused by high deer numbers. As we will see in the following cha...