Thursday, October 16, 2008
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: Biologist says too many young bucks will die under state's earn-a-buck rule
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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Virginia’s new earn-a-buck regulation is designed to keep the deer herd in better balance by forcing hunters to kill more does, but what it likely will do is result in the slaughter of way too many juvenile bucks. That is the opinion of Walt Hampton, a former Department of Game and Inland Fisheries wildlife biologist.
The earn-a-buck regulation, specified for eight counties, and likely to be expanded in the future, requires that at least one antlerless deer be taken on private land in Bedford, Fairfax, Fauquier, Franklin, Loudoun, Patrick, Prince Williams and Roanoke counties before the second antlered deer can be taken. In all but Roanoke County, at least two antlerless deer must be taken before a third antlered buck is tagged.
The problem with the regulation, according to Hampton, is that it specifies antlerless deer be taken rather than saying does only. The antlerless population includes numerous young bucks, often called button bucks because their antlers are little more than an inconspicuous knob on their head.
“I’m afraid that the folks in these earn-a-buck counties can say goodbye to their buck recruitment. Since the department didn’t specify that female deer must be taken before antlered deer, the hunters will slaughter the button bucks,” said Hampton, who operates the Buck Mountain Rifle Works in Grayson County.
That happened a decade ago on Camp Perry near Williamsburg, Hampton said. “The result was that hunters shot the first non-antlered deer they saw, which was, the majority of the time, a button buck.”
Matt Knox, DGIF deer biologist, said he once bought into the concept of protecting button bucks, but no longer. Research reveals that passing up button bucks does not significantly increase the number of antlered bucks in the herd, he said.
“Getting an adequate doe kill is a lot more important than saving a handful of button bucks,” Knox said. “The reason we are instituting earn-a-buck in Virginia is that our primary and overriding need is to have more does killed. The button bucks killed are simply the coast of doing business.”
Knox said some clubs voluntarily enforce a ban on killing button bucks. That can have a negative impact by causing hunters to freeze on the trigger out of fear they might mistakenly kill a button buck and face a club fine.
“I find it somewhat insulting that the Game Department may think that our hunters are incapable of making the decision,” said Hampton. “It’s very difficult for a hunter in a hurry to pull the trigger to tell a doe from a button buck, but if that hunter will take a few seconds it really isn’t that difficult,” he said.
At Camp Perry, when hunters were instructed to follow a doe-only regulation, and were given instructions on gender identification, “the button buck kill dropped to nearly zero,” said Hampton.
“We are not planning on making any effort to educate or ask deer hunters to distinguish between a button buck and a doe,” said Knox.
It is just not worth the effort, said Knox, who pointed to research by Robert Downing, a deer population dynamics biologist once stationed at Virginia Tech. Downing concluded that passing up button bucks produces only a slight increase in the number of mature bucks: namely, 4 percent to 8 percent.
Knox agrees with Hampton on one matter. It is not that difficult for hunters to learn to distinguish between a button buck and a doe. Some hunt clubs that embrace Quality Deer Management require their members to make the distinction. The result, button bucks seldom are killed.
“But there is nothing wrong with killing a button buck,” Knox said.
As for identifying a button buck, Hampton has this to say:
“The button is a disenfranchised deer; his mother has run him off and the adult bucks want nothing to do with him. He is invariably the first deer into the field in the afternoon and when a hunter sees a lone antlerless deer, the first thing that should go through his mind is ‘button buck.’”
There also are differences in body size, neck thickness, head vs. ear size, said Hampton. Adult does have larger and longer faces than fawns. Among fawns, males can be sorted out by their flatter head and thicker neck. If you look closely enough you can see the “buttons” on male’s head.
Additional information can be found on the Web by searching Quality Deer Management.
