I don't know why the deer population crashed

[Gilroy]

Just so many people talking about the lack of impact by hunters. They started the antlerless deer draw for a reason, the population was miserable. I remember talking to dad when we were out on a groundhog hunt, we just kicked a doe out of the soybeans. He said that when he was a kid there were tons of groundhogs but no deer, you just never saw them. We would have been out hunting about 1999, he would have been talking about 1972 when he was a young teen.

The idea that bears and wolves are destroying the moose population but hunters have no impact or that European Hare numbers are down because of disease and that hunters are doing nothing to the numbers is insane.

I agree we hunters are pretty good about blaming everyone but ourselves but history shows we are the real culprits in a lot of damage done,think buffalo herds
killed by the millions,carrier pidgeons,wiped out, caribou herds decimated.

Even the jack rabbit situation compared to 35 years ago has changed so much,most of us can remember seeing jacks all over the place,even along Steeles Avenue in the GTA. I am not saying hunters are the sole cause of jack numbers dropping but they sure did help.Some of the poor attitude came with these hunters from their home countries in Europe,go there today and you will see very little game left.Even the songbirds end up on the barbeque.

[finsfurfeathers]

I agree we hunters are pretty good about blaming everyone but ourselves but history shows we are the real culprits in a lot of damage done,think buffalo herds
killed by the millions,carrier pidgeons,wiped out, caribou herds decimated.

Even the jack rabbit situation compared to 35 years ago has changed so much,most of us can remember seeing jacks all over the place,even along Steeles Avenue in the GTA. I am not saying hunters are the sole cause of jack numbers dropping but they sure did help.Some of the poor attitude came with these hunters from their home countries in Europe,go there today and you will see very little game left.Even the songbirds end up on the barbeque.

So how do you explain the snow goose crisis? With pretty much unrestricted hunting their numbers grow and grow. With your thinking they should of been exterminated by now. Oh wait their wintering habitat is what is supporting their numbers and hunters are hardly making a dent.
So yes hunters have an effect however not nearly the influence habitat makes.
I'll ignore the ethic slur as that's just low brow thinking you got there.

[gbk]

I agree we hunters are pretty good about blaming everyone but ourselves but history shows we are the real culprits in a lot of damage done,think buffalo herds
killed by the millions,carrier pidgeons,wiped out, caribou herds decimated.

Even the jack rabbit situation compared to 35 years ago has changed so much,most of us can remember seeing jacks all over the place,even along Steeles Avenue in the GTA. I am not saying hunters are the sole cause of jack numbers dropping but they sure did help.Some of the poor attitude came with these hunters from their home countries in Europe,go there today and you will see very little game left.Even the songbirds end up on the barbeque.

The idea that bears and wolves are destroying the moose population but hunters have no impact or that European Hare numbers are down because of disease and that hunters are doing nothing to the numbers is insane.


I was thinking should i reply should i not- but hey,why not?

We us hunters should ALWAYS respect game,and game population trends,and we all know -"more" or "less"MNR helps us staying in check.
As far as hunters wiping out buffalo herds or the passenger pigeon issue-we also know,this has pretty much nothing to do with SPORT hunting -what WE all DO !
So, why beating ourselves to death by blaming "hunters"-us for something which has nothing to do with us ? Market hunting has been outlawed many years ago.........So why feed antis?
As far as hunters have an impact-i do not challenge this ,but just blaming us, hunters ,for the dismay of the moose,or the caribou or else-is just plain "pushing"an agenda ,or just"cabin"fever setting in.
As far as the European Hare situation-i am not sure how that comes in the "picture "with the market hunters on the posted picture-especially that we all know by now ,thanks to some posts on this forum,that the European Hare does not matter!!! Because they are non native species,they have been introduced,so that is OK.
My opinion ..........

[trimmer21]

Hunting being the most heavily regulated activity in North America and Europe,I reject,categorically, any notion that over hunting is at the root of modern wildlife population declines. When was the last time anyone ever saw a $10K fine levied for a criminal offense? Criminal poaching in Africa are having a far more detrimental affect on game populations than any amount of hunting,yet,there's virtually no enforcement agency willing to enforce CITES regulations until AFTER the damage is done. We're all painfully aware of the effects climate change is having on the environment,but,leftist governments seem to think that taxing the crap out of the economy to the point of collapse will,somehow,rectify the situation. Well,maybe they're right if they succeed in bankrupting all the industrial polluters,they'll wind up shutting them down. Well,I guess that's one way to handle the issue.

[Fox]

if there is a problem with the regulation it can be changed isn't that the definition of self correcting?
Taking an animal off one farm has no effect on the overall population unless its a high fence operation. Nature abhors a vacuum and if the habitat is good will be filled from an area of high density.

The definition of self correcting is that it corrects itself, a system where regulations are used and enforced is not self corrected but rather corrected by law.

Animals have home ranges, take a look at the map for eastern Ontario. WMU 65 goes from the 401 to the Ottawa river essentially along the 416 highway, this is a zone of approximately 1576855 acres, to think that the population density of this entire zone is the same is ridiculous, if there are too many deer in one area to justify an increase in the antlerless tag allocation means that every single one of those antlerless deer can be taken from an area without that population density, it does not mean that it should be.

The idea that bears and wolves are destroying the moose population but hunters have no impact or that European Hare numbers are down because of disease and that hunters are doing nothing to the numbers is insane.

I can't speak for the moose population but as far as jack numbers hunting is not making a dent at all. Fox you have an opinion and that's it, I have been chasing jacks with my dad for 35 years. The number of jack hunters declined long before the jack numbers did. It was not uncommon to see 3-4 crews out in my area every weekend chasing them, nowadays we don't see any. It's not because the population is so low either. Thankfully my dad still has it in him to chase them and I will continue too when he stops, unfortunetly my son won't. I don't know why the population is low but I can tell you this, in 20 years all a jack as to worry about is natural predators and dying of old age.

Tony[/QUOTE]

The "jacks" do have to worry about hunters, there may not be as many as there were before but there are still hunters hunting them.

The point of my post is to take a step back and recognize that shooting an animal will remove it from the population pool, there is a population from from hunters, it is simple math.

If this has any long term effect on the overall population is another matter, the different areas, the different animals, etc, all have an impact on the sustainable population of the species. European hares have the greatest chance to spring back, the gestation length is very short, the number of litters in a season is significant, the population turn around is possible but being a non-native species the MNRF will not reduce the season or the bag limit on them. Since they are a species that is invasive but does have natural predators (unlike in Australia) they are not going to do the damage that they did in those areas. If hunters wanted to bring those animals back they would stop hunting them on weekends and start hunting their predators, people keep talking about how high the coyote population is but the number of dedicated coyote hunters is going down due to the lack of value in the pelts.

[MikePal]

The idea that bears and wolves are destroying the moose population but hunters have no impact or that European Hare numbers are down because of disease and that hunters are doing nothing to the numbers is insane.

I can't speak for the moose population but as far as jack numbers hunting is not making a dent at all.

A European study has confirmed that;

Despite its currently declining numbers, the European brown hare is still common and one of the most important game species throughout the country. The dynamics of European brown hares seem resilient to even heavy hunting pressure, though local population dynamic data may be needed to ensure sustainable harvest. In Denmark hunting of European brown hares is generally assumed to be without regulating effect. The European brown hare is a typical grass steppe herbivore, and inhabits primarily open landscapes, including cultivated farmland, which is the predominant landform in Denmark. The species is rather sedentary, and has generally small home ranges. This site fidelity makes European brown hares highly susceptible to changes in their surrounding habitats, and the general decline in the European brown hare populations in Europe is mainly being attributed to changes in agriculture practice and land-use .
European brown hares are important prey primarily for mammalian predators. In Northern Europe, the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is the main predator on European brown hares, and foxes have been reported to influence the dynamics of several European brown hare populations substantially. Also, infectious diseases such as the European brown hare syndrome virus, pseudotuberculosis, pasteurellosis and coccidiosis are present in many European brown hare populations. Haerer et al, however, concluded that diseases were not responsible for the decline of brown hare populations in Switzerland. Similarly, Frölich et al. found that compared to red foxes, infectious diseases seemed to play a minor role in the dynamics of European brown hare populations in Germany.

[Fox]

if there is a problem with the regulation it can be changed isn't that the definition of self correcting?
Taking an animal off one farm has no effect on the overall population unless its a high fence operation. Nature abhors a vacuum and if the habitat is good will be filled from an area of high density.

The idea that bears and wolves are destroying the moose population but hunters have no impact or that European Hare numbers are down because of disease and that hunters are doing nothing to the numbers is insane.

I can't speak for the moose population but as far as jack numbers hunting is not making a dent at all. Fox you have an opinion and that's it, I have been chasing jacks with my dad for 35 years. The number of jack hunters declined long before the jack numbers did. It was not uncommon to see 3-4 crews out in my area every weekend chasing them, nowadays we don't see any. It's not because the population is so low either. Thankfully my dad still has it in him to chase them and I will continue too when he stops, unfortunetly my son won't. I don't know why the population is low but I can tell you this, in 20 years all a jack as to worry about is natural predators and dying of old age.

Tony[/QUOTE]

A European study has confirmed that;

Is there a study that speaks to the population trend of these hares in Ontario?

The trend this year is to speak about the massive declines in the hare population from it's high, hunting in Denmark may not have had a measurable impact on the population but the key thing is that the population is plummeting here and if 1000 hares are removed in a season from a population then there are 1000 less hares to reproduce.

This is the same argument that people make about the moose, well 80% of the calves are killed by predators or the winter anyway so why can hunters not take them. Well, 80% of the population would die naturally, so a population of 10,000 calves, 2000 calves live until the next year. You take that same population of 10,000 calves and kill 10% by hunters you have 9000 going into the winter and 1800 surviving into the next year, it has an impact.

[gonduckin]

The definition of self correcting is that it corrects itself, a system where regulations are used and enforced is not self corrected but rather corrected by law.

Animals have home ranges, take a look at the map for eastern Ontario. WMU 65 goes from the 401 to the Ottawa river essentially along the 416 highway, this is a zone of approximately 1576855 acres, to think that the population density of this entire zone is the same is ridiculous, if there are too many deer in one area to justify an increase in the antlerless tag allocation means that every single one of those antlerless deer can be taken from an area without that population density, it does not mean that it should be.



I can't speak for the moose population but as far as jack numbers hunting is not making a dent at all. Fox you have an opinion and that's it, I have been chasing jacks with my dad for 35 years. The number of jack hunters declined long before the jack numbers did. It was not uncommon to see 3-4 crews out in my area every weekend chasing them, nowadays we don't see any. It's not because the population is so low either. Thankfully my dad still has it in him to chase them and I will continue too when he stops, unfortunetly my son won't. I don't know why the population is low but I can tell you this, in 20 years all a jack as to worry about is natural predators and dying of old age.

Tony

The "jacks" do have to worry about hunters, there may not be as many as there were before but there are still hunters hunting them.

The point of my post is to take a step back and recognize that shooting an animal will remove it from the population pool, there is a population from from hunters, it is simple math.

If this has any long term effect on the overall population is another matter, the different areas, the different animals, etc, all have an impact on the sustainable population of the species. European hares have the greatest chance to spring back, the gestation length is very short, the number of litters in a season is significant, the population turn around is possible but being a non-native species the MNRF will not reduce the season or the bag limit on them. Since they are a species that is invasive but does have natural predators (unlike in Australia) they are not going to do the damage that they did in those areas. If hunters wanted to bring those animals back they would stop hunting them on weekends and start hunting their predators, people keep talking about how high the coyote population is but the number of dedicated coyote hunters is going down due to the lack of value in the pelts.[/QUOTE]

Simple math????

So if I hunt coyotes instead of jacks I should be able to fill a wheelbarrow again in 5 years?

[finsfurfeathers]

So I'm about done with this thread. for the life of me I don't know why someone would portray hunting in such a negative way on a hunting site.
Instead of moaning about the negative impact hunters may have ( and I speculate it has more too do with ones own lack of success than another's success)
Try celebrating the accomplishments Hunters have made from the reintroduction of turkeys to the countless wetlands put back.
Lets keep this hunting forum a place to celebrate the tradition.
If you must be a negative Nellie keep it to the off topic section as it really has nothing too do with hunting.

[Gilroy]

So I'm about done with this thread. for the life of me I don't know why someone would portray hunting in such a negative way on a hunting site.
Instead of moaning about the negative impact hunters may have ( and I speculate it has more too do with ones own lack of success than another's success)
Try celebrating the accomplishments Hunters have made from the reintroduction of turkeys to the countless wetlands put back.
Lets keep this hunting forum a place to celebrate the tradition.
If you must be a negative Nellie keep it to the off topic section as it really has nothing too do with hunting.

Well you seem to pretty thin skinned to be on this forum,talking "ethnic slurs" and other garbage.I am from Europe for a start off and dont really care were you are from becasue that is not the issue.The issue is that we hunters do have an affect on wildlife populations.I have been to Portugal for instance,you will be lucky to see anything to hunt,period.All shot out over the years and yes song birds on the barbeque with beer after.That is a reality there.There are countless instances of over hunting all over the World map.Here in Ontario we have lost most of the Moose population and the deer are in decline in a lot of places.Our
cotton tail population is down,we no longer have pheasants,jacks are down.As I said before I am not blaming hunters for all of this but we are a big part.Having an overly positive attitude can be more damaging than a realistic negative one.