DOE HUNTING: OLD TRADITIONS DIE HARD

CWD Adds Urgency to Doe Harvest

By Tom Fegely

I received some of my first lessons in deer hunting and deer management at the Thanksgiving table more than 50 years ago.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, that once-a-year gathering at Grandad’s house would spark an interest in deer that would last a lifetime. I was about 6 or 7 years old when I first began listening to the table conversation as my dad and uncles reminisced about past hunts and looked ahead to days afield yet to come.

Where I lived deer were far from abundant at the time, which is why everyone in the little village of 88 people, it seemed, packed their bags and headed to “deer camp” for the opening of buck  season, which always arrived the Monday after Thanksgiving. I can recall feeling a “fever” of sorts, as I listened to tales from past hunts. When friends and neighbors drop by for dessert or a “toast” later in the day, the conversation would again turn to the upcoming season a few sunrises off.

Standard among the annual pre-season gabfest were tales of bucks seen in the area and plans for heading to deer camp in “the mountains” first thing Saturday or Sunday morning. Also sure to sneak onto the agenda each year was the argument over the merits and perceived merits of doe hunting – disagreements and misunderstandings of which even then caused more than one whitetail biologist to throw up his hands in despair.

Indeed, whenever the talk shifted to doe hunting I could see tempers flare a bit. But what I remember best is the overall consensus among hunters “back then” was that, with occasional exception, does should be off limits to hunters.

Fast forward to today and the same disputes over the degree to which does should be hunted are heard, not only in my home state of Pennsylvania but in many states west and, in particular, east of the Mississippi. Despite sometimes massive winter kills in the North Country’s remote regions, no one except deer biologists seemed to understand that overabundance of deer was the chief reason for the deaths. Nature, not man, delivered its own method of “management” and early March hikes into the backcountry would find the spring seeps and hemlock groves littered with carcasses.

Now another complex matter with doe hunting at the core is making news as word of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), one of and possibly the most threatening of diseases whitetails are known to contract, hits the headlines. I’ll discuss this infectious and deadly disease later in the article.

IN THE NAME OF TRADITION

Some hunters will never be convinced that too many does spoil the necessary balance between deer numbers and habitat. To them the killing of a doe means fewer fawns born the following spring and eventually fewer bucks for the bag.  

Besides, what will you tell the guys down at the factory when they ask: “Get your buck yet?” Few hunters, even though they enjoy the venison, will venture to answer: “No, but I got a big doe.” The twisted logic is not new by any means. Tradition is of strong influence in many deer hunting states and lessons passed from dads and uncles to daughters and sons maintain a tight grip on the younger generation of deer hunters. Just how much influence on today’s deer management policies are linked to beliefs of the forepart of the last century?

One wildlife scientist says it’s stronger than most of us imagine, considering that opinions on doe harvesting may reach back 75 to 100 years or more in some places. Then, says Gary San Julian of Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, early biologists were charged with convincing hunters and the general public NOT to kill antlerless deer so that populations could increase.

“(Biologists) did their job a little too well,” San Julian believes. “What they said was true back then but today in many parts of the deer’s range, populations have exceeded their cultural carrying capacity.”

Now wildlife managers find themselves in the unique position of overcoming decades of “education” of hunters whose ideas on shooting does have been passed down from generation to generation. Just as my initial beliefs about the evils of doe hunting came from my father and uncles and their thoughts similarly reached back a generation or two, some of today’s hunters refuse to grasp hold of the modern day situation.

CONSOLATION PRIZES

“For many years does could not be harvested legally,” explains San Julian. “When they became legal they were consolation prizes for hunters who could not get a buck and had to settle for a doe to put venison on the table.”

Socially, many hunters confused ego with good biology. For a hardcore bunch “taking a doe” was not thought of as “manly,” the Penn State wildlife resources professor notes.

Hence, does simply did not “measure up” when it came deer hunting accomplishments. Things are little different today with some hunters, although it’s refreshing to note that my experience as the outdoors editor of a major eastern newspaper for the past 26 years hints that about two of three deer hunters today have come to comprehend the need to harvest does – sometimes in rather dramatic fashion. Take, for example, Pennsylvania’s thrust to drastically reduce doe numbers this year. As of last October hunters had purchased more than 895,000 county doe permits from an allocation of 922,000, reflecting a change of attitude among the Keystone State’s 900,000-plus deer hunters.

The “No Doe Hunting” signs once seen on the borders of private farms and forest lands across much of the East, the Northeast in particular, are now rare.

Although attitudes and actions change slowly, game agencies are noting enlightenment among open-minded deer hunters who no longer label the doe the “sacred cow.”

THE CWD SCARE

The concept that the overabundance of any species sooner or later suffers from the heavy hand of Mother Nature is today understood by a growing number of hunters. Take, as prime example, the decrease in the popularity of trapping, thanks to the success of animal rights organizations in the courts. It’s resulted in a rise in beaver, fox, coyote, muskrat and other furbearing animals whose numbers are no longer kept in check by their being trapped. Slow, lingering deaths from rabies, mange and other fatal afflictions now befalls species whose numbers are simply too high. When man does not control, nature takes its toll.

So, too, will deer populations be ebbed by nature’s hand in places where habitat can no longer support their numbers. The “cures” may include everything from winter starvation and increased road kills to hemorrhagic diseases and, now a frightening spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD), which has received its share of necessary attention for the past year and more.

What effect has overpopulation of whitetails had on the spread of CWD?

CWD is a complex disease – with similarities to Europe’s widely-publicized mad cow disease – that is neither viral nor bacterial. The end result is microscopic ruptures in the brain cells accounting for profound behavioral changes and certain death. Deer and elk suffering from the disease quit eating, drool, roam with their heads held down, walk in circles and possess an incessant thirst. Their emaciated condition provides the disease with its name.

Studies show that white-tailed deer may be the most likely of the cervids to contract the disease. Being social animals, they’re in constant contact with one another while feeding and traveling. Infections can be passed by behavior as common as touching noses or stepping in each other’s urine and feces. The more deer come in contact with another, the greater the chance of CWD spreading. Hence, the more overpopulated a region, the greater the chance for a disease of any sort to take hold.

It wasn’t until last November 2001 – when Wisconsin became the first state east of the Mississippi River to find CWD in the wild – that other states began to take the threat seriously. In late February more infected deer were discovered in Wisconsin, triggering a highly-controversial move to open a 361-square-mile area to a series of week-long summer hunts in the region west of Madison where 18 wild deer with the wasting disease were found. That area has increased to more than 440 square miles after more deer were found with CWD.

Wisconsin has an estimated 1.6 million whitetails with as many as 70 or more deer per square mile in some places. The overpopulation and close contact of the animals could trigger an epidemic in the central and eastern U.S., some biologists believe.

The shift of emphasis in recent months from western states to Wisconsin has also made other deer hunting states sit up and take notice. In midsummer the Northeast Association of Fish & Wildlife Agency Directors agreed to impose “an immediate moratorium on the importation of all live cervids into any northeastern state.”

Some states, such as Wisconsin and New York, have banned feeding deer as the “artificial” congregation sites serve to bring more animals in close touch with one another.“When wildlife populations are artificially congregated, the chance of disease transmission is increased,” San Julian says of game farm animals. “In wild populations the animals are dispersed.”

When and where deer exceed their carrying capacity, any disease passed by contact will spread more readily. Even diseases spread by other vectors, such as the well-known epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) passed by biting flies and resulting in deer bleeding to death internally, occur in proportion to herd sizes. Before CWD, EHD was dubbed “the best known and most spectacular among white-tailed deer diseases.” Others include blue-tongue (another hemorrhagic affliction), foot-and-mouth disease, viral encephalitis, anthrax and others.

QDM TAKES A STAND

Things, however, are looking up thanks to game agency biologists now getting the respect they deserve. Quality Deer Management (QDM) is self-described as “a management philosophy/practice that unites landowners, hunters and managers in a common goal of producing biologically and socially balanced deer herds within existing environmental, social and legal constraints will help.”

QDM does not take a “trophy” management approach but rather a science-based “quality” position in managing deer on private and public lands. The core of the QDM concept, to no one’s surprise, is the control of doe numbers.

“Because CWD spreads through direct contact, it is important to remove as many animals as possible before infected individuals can disperse to adjacent areas and infest those populations,” said Brian Murphy, an authority on QDM, in reference to the Wisconsin situation and its massive, indiscriminate killings of deer of both sexes and all ages.