A Reader Asks The Tough Questions

Here at WildernessObsession, we've been lucky enough to have contact with some of the foremost experts in their fields, and organize some great Q&As with these experts. Sometimes, our readers feel like we leave a few questions unanswered, and let us know. This concerned NB citizen was no exception. Here's what she said and Rod's answers to her hard hitting questions.

Comments: I believe Mr. Cumberland should also touch down on the fact that BAITING in this province is greatly influencing the deer herd. Not only is "baiting" luring whitetails into the settlements(rural hunters find it completely acceptable to bait and shoot deer from their BACK YARDS in my area anyways) but it's also killing way too many small bucks off of apple piles! I know people who actually start putting out "beef finisher" to feed whitetails in their back yards, even before HUNTING SEASON ENDS!!! Deer lived without being "fed like pets" for thousands of years, so why is it "allowed" to continue, when facts prove that feeding/baiting disturbs the natural habits of deer? There is, and has been NO MANAGEMENT of our deer herd in this province, since the 80's. This together with herbiciding and over-logging, tough winters, shooting BABY BUCKS OFF APPLE PILES and vehicle collisions, are the contributing factors to the dwindling numbers. As a hunter, I am disgusted and asha med of o ur NB government and it's representatives, who just stand back and "listen to the public" but still choose to do nothing.

Rod's Response:

I appreciate your comments on the above topic. I was a senior editor of a “baiting and feeding” paper written by the Wildlife Society back in 2009 or so and I have spent a considerable amount of time explaining and defending positions on both sides of this coin. You can read this paper on the internet if you google search it.

For starters, we need to separate out baiting, feeding and other forms of wildlife food. Baiting is quite different from feeding. Baiting involves a small amount of food (5 gallon bucket or a half-grain sac of apples, etc.) placed out in deer habitat for a short period of time – typically during a harvest season. Feeding deer – whether using artificial or natural foods – is done at much higher amounts, and for longer periods of time and DOES have behavioural effects on deer. Most of what you mention is feeding deer, and not baiting. The biggest difference is that baiting (while utilized by deer when it occurs within a deer’s home range) is not done LONG enough or at LARGE enough quantities to greatly affect deer behavior. Feeding deer DOES affect deer behavior – because of the quantities and the length of time it is done for.

I quite prefer baiting. It is not hard work and has several benefits. First, while it doesn’t affect deer behavior much, it can lure a deer within bow and arrow range long enough a hunter may get a good, humane and lethal shot. We as hunters should be all about the ethics of our humane use of wildlife, and holding a deer within our competency distance long enough we can make a good, effective shot is in my books much wiser than a “hail Mary” at unknown distances on a moving target. Second, in a province where hunters need to identify deer (because we have to identify “visible antlers under the bucks only and antlerless deer system) baiting provides the opportunity for identifying your target before you shoot.

Third – we live in the Acadian forest. We don’t have the luxury of hunting in prairie conditions, farmland, or even the open oak hickory forests of the northeast. All these habitat types that comprise the majority of huntable ground in North America have great visibility in the fall. On the contrary, the boreal and Acadian forests grow thick underbrush, and anyone who has hunted the woods of NB know the odds of seeing a bear, or even a buck for that matter in these conditions is low – especially as deer densities decline in these habitat types. I have argued on behalf of northeast bear hunters for years that without the opportunity to bait, bear harvests here will plummet and our ability to effectively harvest bear removed. Bear are a big predator of deer fawns, and this would translate into direct losses to the deer herd without baiting for bear. While I much prefer to still hunt the woods of NB and harvest a buck under these conditions, I also archery hunt, and have shot 12 deer using it – and most often by baiting.

Anyone who uses trail cameras knows that baiting – while it brings deer in slightly more frequently to a particular area – has little control over the feeding habits of most bucks – regardless of age. Every so often you may get a deer to regularly visit a bait pile, but most bucks will do so after daylight hours, and usually only for a short period of time. Even if a few sites do bring young bucks in more regularly, does this dramatically increase the harvest of “young” bucks? Let’s look at the NB deer harvest data and age structure of it. If this was to occur (a higher harvest of young bucks) we’d see the proportion of yearling bucks in the harvest increase steadily. If you look at the actual data – yearling buck harvests in NB are nearly always around 50-60% of the total harvest. If you look even closer, you’ll see the BIGGEST factor that changes the proportion of yearling bucks in the harvest is the severity of the previous winter – because THIS FACTOR ALONE has far more influence on buck loss and survival than any amount of baiting. When we have a tough winter, we experience BIG fawn loss, and the following year when the surviving fawn bucks are now yearlings, the yearling component in the harvest declines. Conversely, when we have easy winters, fawn survival is high, and the following season, percent yearling bucks in the buck kill jumps. Check out the NB buck data and see if this is not correct.

You claim there has been no management of deer in New Brunswick since the 1980’s. I’d take that a step further to be perfectly correct and state that there has been NO ACTIVE MANAGEMENT of deer in New Brunswick – EVER!! If you think about it…..deer were always here in low numbers back when the Europeans first arrived. What caused the increase in deer numbers? Did NBDNR all of a sudden decide to “grow deer”? NO. What happened then is the same thing that happens now – deer numbers are a direct result of our forest and agricultural practices – not of any type of magical or active “management”. When we began to make lots of small cuts across the province, we encouraged the growth of young hardwoods - the same hardwoods that deer happen to thrive on. As these cuts continued, and as agriculture expanded, deer numbers through the early part of the 1900’s increased – and quite dramatically. Deer numbers and harvests were at their highest levels in the 1960’s and then again in the 1980’s. Why was this? Was it due to “management”? NO once again. I would argue – and quite convincingly – that during these years we had nearly the perfect mix of habitat types – young unsprayed hardwood regen providing a pile of deer food, and still lots of mature cedar and hemlock for deer to overwinter in. THESE WERE THE GLORY DAYS. However, don’t forget that smack-dab in the middle of these bookends (the 60’s and 80’s) were the 1970’s – a period where deer numbers were lower than we have today! How did that happen? A series of severe winters …even before coyotes came into NB, resulted in huge herd losses. Only 4,300 deer were harvested in NB in 1973, but a mere 10 years later we were back up to harvesting 30,000 deer. Was that due to management? NO! again – easier winters and the production of copious amounts of food by chainsaw and skidders.

What has happened since the 1980’s? How we harvest the woods has changed DRAMATICALLY – gone are the men with feet on the ground and chainsaws. Now we use harvesters that operate 24-7 and cut huge tracts of land. Further, we intensively manage the regenerating stands. Plantations occur over 40% of the landbase (according to DNR regen figures) and these are sprayed very aggressively to kill all hardwood growth. We have been removing over 32 tons of deer food every single year from Crown land the past 30 years and the results are obvious. As well, we have unsustainably harvested cedar from Crown and private land both. Deer populations are definitely NOT managed – they are the fallout of our forest management and the past 20 years has shown clearly that our forest management at the industrial level is not conducive to deer. Many Crown land deer yards are vacant, and as a result, these have been offered to the forestry companies to clearcut. This means if and when deer numbers rebound, it will NOT occur on public land, because we’ve removed their wintering areas there.

All that DNR can manage – or has EVER managed - is the deer HARVEST. I did this aggressively from 2000-2007. We dropped the deer tags available from 18,000 down to below 3,000 to “save does”. My rationale was if we saved these deer, with a few good winters the older does would produce lots of fawns and the herd would grow. I also told the deer hunters of NB if we had good winters – I’d look like a genius. If we had bad winters – I’d look like a bum. Well, that was proven correct, and up until 2007 we had a string of good winters and the deer population DID GROW – we harvested over 10,000 for the first time in many years in 2007 (Rod the genius). However, we then were dealt two severe winters – the harshest winters in over 40 years in 2007-8 and 2008-9 and what happened? Right back to square one (Rod now the bum). All this to say you are right – we DON’T manage deer in NB…….but to suggest we ever did is just as false. I found out pretty quickly that I couldn’t manage deer – it was a futile task in this province. Deer hunting in the 80’s was awesome just because it was the perfect storm for habitat here at that time – not because we had our hands on the right throttles.

I’ll give you some extra fodder for consideration. Given the aggressive forest management (ie. Cutting deer yards, planting softwoods and herbiciding deer food) of our Crown land forests is not conducive to deer growth, and further, that we continually allow the harvest of their deer yards – unless we actively do SOMETHING to help the deer through the winters (such as plant food plots, or give tax incentives to private woodlot owners to NOT harvest their deer yards, OR stand up to the government/industry and tell them that they can cut NO FURTHER deer yards)……what is left for us simple folk to do? Maybe, just maybe - provide deer with some high energy food through food plots or baiting in the fall so they CAN get fat and hopefully make it past the number one mortality factor in deer management this far north – winter.

How do you propose we manage what few deer we have left?

Given the state of forest management in NB, I have said for years our only hope is management of deer on private lands. That MUST include harvest where deer are plentiful (nuisance tags on farms, etc.) and providing some type of continual and available foods in areas where deer overwinter. In short – private land management for deer. This includes growing food plots or active forest management that we know provides habitat for deer. That is why I have always been a big proponent of the Quality Deer Management Association and it coming to Canada. If you are a deer hunter - THIS is the future of deer hunting in NB.

2015-11-04 17:19:36

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