Smattering of topics that I gleaned from my most recent issue of “The Wildlife Professional”.

*Bet you didn’t know that horseshoe crabs are harvested for the main purpose of providing bait for conch and eel fisheries.  Delaware Bay has the world’s largest number of horseshoe crabs, and limits have been tightened to prevent overfishing of this unique crab species.

Ronnie Garrison, 2007

*The Burmese python invasion of the Florida Peninsula is bordering on epidemic.  With an estimated 30,000 constrictors in the wild, Florida FW&S officials are encouraging employees to get formal training in large reptile handling.

*Almost 10% of the world’s whooping crane population died in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas over this past winter.  Drought conditions dried up the marshes where the birds call home and their prey – blue crabs – can be hunted by the long legged birds.

Photo courtesy of FWS.gov

In a future post, probably early next week, I’ll address some pro- and anti- arguments for hunters going lead free in coming years.

Check out the Hog Blog in the meantime, one of Phillip’s hot ticket items is his perpetual discussion of the lead issue in ammunition.

Here’s the latest article that I wrote for the Realtree website.  My co-authors were Colter (as usual), my NC State grad student advisor Chris DePerno, and Dr. Chris Moorman (current coordinator of the Wolfpack’s Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences program).  With all the hype about food plots, planting new-fangled fruit specimens, and enhancing wildlife habitat with foreign plant species, this article will hopefully show that natives are still the best choice if managed properly.  Here is the link to the article.

Colter, my primary Realtree article writing buddy, posted this one a couple days ago.  You might remember last year, when I went and helped out on a deer collection near the coast in North Carolina.  Colter, the graduate student on that project, wrote this article on kidney fat and femur bone marrow health indices for white-tailed deer.  Check it out.

Photos courtesy of Colter and the Realtree article which is linked above.

Photo courtesy of Mississippi Wildlife and Fisheries

Jonathan Shaw, an NCSU graduate, wrote a great article on Realtree’s website discussing deer warts (cutaneous fibromas).  Although not terribly common, once a hunter has encountered a deer bearing these awful growths it becomes hard to forget.  Certainly not a pretty sight, but part of nature nonetheless.  Read the article for an in-depth look at what causes “deer warts” and recommendations for human safety related to consumption of infected venison.

I wrote this article along with C0lter Chitwood about a month ago as part of a 3 piece series addressing age, genetic, and nutritional components of antler development.

Some of you guys and gals might firmly believe that you are influencing the quality of the antlers in your population by employing certain harvest restrictions.  More than likely (and yes, you might have one of those special situations were it might be working), you are actually seeing a different phenomenon at work.

It might be habitat improvement, lower deer numbers, or just adding age to your bucks, but chances are…you are not making a detectable change to the genetics of your deer.

Follow the link to read the article.

Part 5 will be the final installment of my research review of the Southeast Deer Study Group 2009.

*At the Naval Support Facility at Indian Head, Maryland, bowhunters (screened by education requirements and a proficiency test) are the sole regulatory measure on the property for white-tailed deer.  Collected over 18 years, data shows that archers failed to recover 162 of 908 deer shot with bow and arrow.  This equals an 18% wounding rate.

One common argument among bowhunting purists is that crossbows are not a primitive weapon.  Well, in terms of efficiency, there was no difference between compound and crossbow shooters.

As with everything (especially work it seems), a very small percentage of the overall hunters successfully harvested the majority of the deer.  These hunters enjoyed a success rate of over 90% when releasing an arrow.

*Hunters are always curious about how rare triplets are in white-tailed deer.  I can say for sure that I have seen one doe with triplets in my 12 years of hunting.  It was early season and the nanny had 3 spotted fawns by her side, so I am pretty sure that was the case.

In Texas at the King Ranch, 14% of adult females were not pregnant, 24% had single fawns, 62% twins, and only 0.7% of does bore triplets.

In terms of sex ratio, yearling females that were successfully bred had an 80% male fawn sex ratio, and old females had a 64% male fawn sex ratio.  Middle aged nannies had more evenly balanced fawn sex ratios.

Remember, these numbers are just one site in the country and not necessarily representative of the area you are hunting, but interesting numbers nonetheless.

*Lastly, from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, 44 of 60 fawns died prior to being recruited into the adult white-tailed deer population.  Deer were radiocollared and mortality estimates showed that 41 of the 44 fawns were killed by either bobcats or coyotes (35 being coyote predations).  2/3 of deaths occurred during the fawn’s first 3 weeks.

The Savannah River Site is very atypical of what happens in most natural white-tailed deer populations, but the problem of fawn predation is so severe at the property that the white-tailed deer population is actually in a state of decline.  Coyotes certainly get a bad rap in certain regions of the country, but it appears that “Wiley Coyote” is definitely to blame in this case.

And we press on…

Some interesting data out of a study in Louisiana.  Although 43% of the collared deer were harvested on a QDM cooperative (many properties co-managing for quality deer herd), it was found that deer had relatively small home ranges compared to the general literature.  Males had a 347 acre average home range and females only 65 acres.  In Louisiana, on carefully managed forestlands and bottomlands, it appears that small landowners (250-500 acres, I know it still sounds big to most of us) can successfully practice QDM.

Even more interesting was a quilt patch work design of clearcut timber harvest employed on the properties.  Imagine each dark checkerboard square being forest and the lighter colored square being clearcut.  This silvicultural harvesting strategy is dynamite for white-tailed deer.

In Tennessee, varying silvicultural treatments were applied to mature mixed hardwood stands and deer forage abundance was measured afterwards.

The best food-producing practice was a retention cut followed by burning at over 1000 pounds per acre of deer forage.

Next: shelterwood cut followed by fire (640 lbs./acre)

Of lesser benefit, but still producing good deer browse:
-retention cut with herbicide and fire (295 lbs/acre)
-retention cut with herbicide (290 lbs/acre)
-fire alone (335 lbs/acre)
-shelterwood but without fire (300 lbs/acre)

The control site only produced 140 pounds of deer browse per acre.

So what’s the message…oversimplified, CUT and BURN!!!!

One very interesting study was conducted on environmental effects on whether or not a particular year will be harsh in regards to hemorrhagic disease.  Based on hunter check stations, deer were examined for growth interruptions in the hooves – a diagnostic trait of chronic hemorrhagic disease survivors.

A side note…hemorrhagic disease comes in 2 strains.  Acute outbreaks can kill within 24 hours of infection.  Chronic can persist for some months before the deer builds up an immunity to the infection and regains its health from the bout with the disease.  The cracked hooves are lingering effects of a successful battle with the chronic affliction.

Photo courtesy of NCWRC

Lining data up with weather data, researchers showed that bad outbreaks correlated with higher winter and summer temperatures and with dry months of June in terms of precipitation.  Less rain can result in wider mud flats where the midge vectors can breed and propagate and predispose the deer to physical stress because of less than ideal habitat conditions in drought.  Higher temperatures are thought to increase hemorrhagic disease occurrence because the substrate of ponds and sloughs where the midges overwinter are not cold enough to kill the vectors.

More to come tomorrow…

Kentucky did a great job reintroducing elk, and hopefully I’ll be able to participate in one of their elk hunts with a little luck in coming years.

So heck, why shouldn’t Kentucky tackle one of the largest freshwater fishes next!  Kentucky Game and Fish is conducting a public survey right now on public approval of reintroduction efforts for the alligator gar in the sloughs of the Mississippi River and Lower Ohi0.

If you any interest in bowfishing, you know that alligator gar is one of the sport’s most heralded trophies.  If a population can be established, archers may be able to stop halfway to Texas in the near future and pursue the same enormous fish that prowls Texas and Louisiana waters now.  Gator gar are  a native predator in its ecosystem – a predator that biologists hope will get a handle on exotic carp species, like the Asian carp.

Head to the Kentucky Department of Game and Fish website to fill out the simple survey. I filled it out in less than 2 minutes earlier this afternoon.

To continue on summarizing some of the research and surveys presented at the 2009 Southeast Deer Study Group in Roanoke, Virginia…

On urban managed hunts:

*In Maryland, using shotgun hunters in a strictly managed hunt situation (set hunt dates, pre-selected hunting stands, mostly [>90%] antlerless harvest) on county parks between Baltimore and Washington D.C., over 80% of residents supported managed hunts as a control for white-tailed deer populations where non-lethal means were not viable.  When the media tries to sell an anti-hunting public, they are being…well, the media.  In one of the most affluent, educated regions of the country, at least 4 out of 5 people still supported hunting as a means to control deer p0pulations.

Follow the link to learn more about how to participate in Maryland’s managed hunts on state and county lands.

*Eccologix, LLC, was formed in Upper Makefield Township, a suburb of Philadelphia, PA.  Using door to door advertising, the group recruited small acreage landowners (mostly 2-10 acres) to allow bowhunting in an effort to curb exploding white-tailed deer populations in subdivisions, etc.  The effort has been with great success.  In 2007, just 33 certified archers (proficiency test, back-round check, etc.) harvested 443 deer.  Data from the Pennsylvania Game Commission indicated that roadkills dropped 44% from 2006 to 2007.  Participating landowners remarked that the hunts resulted in little to no inconvenience and 90% rated their experience as ‘very satisfied’ to ‘exceptional’.

I thought Eccologix, LLC, came up with a great acronym to describe their hunters.  SURE – Sincere, Unselfish, Responsible, Ethical.  This is a great model for other suburban human populations that are struggling with how to handle burgeoning white-tailed deer populations.

One last thing for this installment of SEDSG, hunter licenses have declined 11% since 1991.  Women hunters constitute 9% of all licensed outdoorspeople, but their numbers have grown 9% during this period of overall decrease.  Catering to women hunters and focusing on the recruitment of the fairer sex may be one of the most effective ways to save floundering hunter recruitment.

Slide over to Camogirl’s Blog and read her latest article which addresses this very issue of hunter recruitment and women hunters.