Ideas gathered at these meetings will help the conservation department develop hunting regulations that have popular support.
The Missouri Department of Conservation wants to know what Missourians think about deer management. To find out, the agency has scheduled 16 public forums in January and February.
Meetings in this area are:
-Waynesville, Jan. 28 at Waynesville Middle School, Parker Fine Arts Building, 1001 Historic 66 West
-West Plains, Feb. 11 at the West Plains Civic Center, 110 St. Louis St.
Missouri’s deer herd is estimated at 1 to 1.5 million. It supports an annual harvest of nearly 300,000. Missouri Conservation Department Resource Scientist Lonnie Hansen said the agency has put hunting regulations in place over the past few years to allow landowners to manage deer numbers on their land. He said one goal of the state’s deer-management program is to ensure that deer hunting opportunities meet hunters’ expectations for quality and quantity. Another important goal is to prevent the number of deer-vehicle accidents and deer damage to crops and other property from reaching unacceptable levels.
To ensure that it can meet these goals in the future, the conservation department continually considers and tests hunting regulation changes that enable it to regulate the number of does – female deer – taken by hunters each year.
“Doe harvest is the key to controlling deer numbers,” said Hansen. “It takes only a small number of bucks to mate with female deer and keep a population growing. Taking does out of the population is the only effective way to prevent a herd from growing or reduce its size when necessary.”
Hansen and other state officials are concerned by demographic trends among deer hunters. As a group, they are aging. As baby boomers drop out of the deer hunting population, the number of deer harvested can be expected to decrease. Deer harvest data also show that older hunters are less likely than younger ones to shoot deer, leading Hansen to expect further declines in deer harvest. To offset these trends, the conservation department is looking for ways to change the deer herd’s population dynamics. The most effective way to do that is to increase the doe harvest.
For the past four years, the conservation department has been testing a regulation designed to increase the percentage of does in the harvest each year. The goal is to develop a method of shifting the sex ratio of the deer herd permanently toward an increased percentage of does. Then, if the deer harvest declines in future years, they will still be able to keep deer numbers in check.
The regulation currently being tested prohibits hunters in 29 counties from shooting bucks that do not have at least four 1-inch points on one side of their antlers. The idea is to force hunters in the test area to pass up shots at some antlered deer and increase the odds that they will see and shoot antlerless deer, most of which are female.
“The regulation has not shifted as much harvest pressure onto does as we had hoped,” said Hansen. “It has increased the doe harvest a little in some counties, and it is having the secondary effect of producing more large-antlered deer in the pilot area. A lot of hunters are very happy about that. In fact, a lot of hunters in other areas say they would like to see the four-point rule in their areas.
But we need to keep fine-tuning our regulations to ensure that hunting remains an effective deer-manage
ment tool.” Whether to continue or expand the four-point rule is one of several questions the conservation department wants Missourians to answer in the upcoming public meetings. The agency also is considering shifting some of the five deer hunting segments – youth, urban, November firearms, muzzleloader and antlerless – to other times in the fall. Again, the goal would be to increase doe harvest and meet growing hunter interest in managing for older bucks.
“We are considering moving the antlerless portion of the firearms deer season into October,” said Hansen, “setting the opening of the November portion on the weekend before Thanksgiving and moving the muzzleloader portion to late December.”
He said these changes could increase the number of deer taken by hunters before the rut, when many deer-vehicle accidents occur. It also could allow more breeding to occur before large numbers of bucks are harvested. That would allow big bucks to pass on their traits to the next generation of deer before they were removed from the gene pool.
“These changes provide benefits for all deer hunting groups,” said Hansen. “Firearms hunters would still get to hunt the rut and would have the Thanksgiving holidays to hunt. Many could hunt deer in October, when weather is milder. Archers would get an extra week of hunting in mid-November, and muzzleloader hunters would have a better opportunity because deer would have time to settle down after the November portion.”
Hansen said presenting season timing options during public meetings will help the conservation department gauge public support or opposition. If implemented, the changes would not go into effect until 2009 to give hunters enough advance notice to set vacations.
“The final decision about changes to deer hunting regulations will be made by the conservation commission based on citizen preferences and scientific data,” said Hansen. “We consider these meetings an extremely important part of the process. No hunting regulation can succeed unless it has widespread popular support, so we need to find out what people will support and what they won’t.”
Deer management background information to be presented at the meetings will be available at www.missouriconservation.org in early December. Missourians can express their thoughts about deer management in writing by sending mail to Missouri Department of Conservation, “Deer Management,” Resource Science Division, 1110 S. College Ave., Columbia, Mo., 65201.
The conservation department last held public meetings on deer management in 2003.