Hunters want to see more game before they back higher harvests

They came, they heard, but will they listen?

Two weeks ago Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials invited sportsmen to comment on three major proposed hunting season changes for 2006.

Testimony overwhelmingly opposed increasing the regionwide harvest of whitetail does, opposed increasing the harvest of cow elk in some hunting districts and opposed changing mountain lion hunting from a quota system to a permit system.

Biologists tend to make their proposals based on scientific principles. Hunters made their comments on personal field experience.

A major problem with deer and elk management is the lack of reliable population and harvest data. After 75 years of scientific wildlife management, biologists have failed to craft a method to accurately estimate deer and elk populations in forested habitats such as Northwest Montana.

Scientific statistical data for game management is very inadequate. Game population and harvest surveys are very limited and intermittent. So good decision-making is impaired without good supporting data.

Sportsmen were asked to comment on changes in hunting seasons based on old data. Harvest data gathered from the 2004 hunting season and preliminary data from 2005 were not available.

Some of the recommended proposals seemed inconsistent with the limited data available.

Wildlife officials want to increase the cow elk harvest in the South Fork. Yet recent bull elk harvest levels in the South Fork are less than half the harvest level of 12 years ago. This does not suggest an elk herd so large that hunters should begin to kill the cows, the reproductive part of the herd.

Wildlife officials want to increase the harvesting of does in Hunting Districts 103 and 104 west of Kalispell. Yet their data indicate harvest levels during the last five years are only half the harvest levels of 12 years ago. Again, current harvest levels, even with long doe seasons, do not suggest a large deer population.

It seems the crux of the whitetail doe harvest issue is disagreement on the current size of the deer herd.

For 40 years, the biological term "carrying capacity" was the bedrock theory for determining wildlife populations of deer and elk. Carrying capacity considers the food, water and cover characteristics of deer and elk habitat to determine how many animals can be sustained on that habitat.

Montana wildlife officials seem to have abandoned that old biological concept in favor of a new biological concept that places more reliance on game population trends.

That concept tracks population trends rather than overall population of the herd. The new theory is that if the deer population is trending upward, you can increase the harvest.

Sportsmen support that concept only if the habitat has reached the carrying capacity.

Sportsmen like to see game habitat fully stocked before harvesting does and cows.

Wildlife officials acknowledge that many of our hunting districts had higher deer and elk populations in the 1980s and early 1990s. But they are uncertain what caused that upswing in population and are uncertain that we can ever reach those populations levels again.

But hunters are clearly willing to forego additional game harvest opportunities to attempt to rebuild deer and elk herds.

For many hunters, seeing lots of game is as important as harvesting an animal. Hunting is much more than just killing an animal. Hunters want to see more game before they will support increasing doe and cow harvests in northwest Montana.