Thursday, August 25, 2005
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: A modest conpromise for quality deer management
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
Bill Cochran's Outdoors
Recent columns
- Hunters and anglers still in the conservation business
- Drum fishing on Virginia’s Coast comes in two colors
- Elk advocate finally gets his day
- Turkeys are plentiful, so why are hunting regulations so tight fisted?
- Column archive
Bill's Mailbag
Bill's Field Reports
- Eagles are up; black rail are down
- A. Willis Robertson great name for new DGIF headquarters
- Field reports archive
Resources
When the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries considered scores of proposed hunting, fishing, boating, trapping and non-game regulations during a marathon, 9-hour meeting in Richmond last week, one thing missing from staff recommendations was something called QDM, which stands for quality deer management.
The concept encourages hunters to fill their freezer with venison from does and let the small bucks walk so they have an opportunity to mature into wall-hanging trophies. DGIF biologists have endorsed QDM but they have done little to enforce it other than to enact liberal doe limits.
Earlier this year, officials had rolled out an “earn-a-buck” concept, where a hunters in some areas would be required to kill a doe before he was free to shoot a buck. That idea was dropped when enforcement questions surfaced.
A modest, but stalwart, group of deer hunters from Shenandoah County has advocated a mandatory ODM program for several years under the banner of the Shenandoah Valley Branch of Quality Deer Management Association. They asked for a regulation that would require a buck to have four points on one side or a 15-inch spread before it is a legal target.
While DGIF officials encourage voluntary compliance to QDM by hunt clubs and landowners, and have such a program in place on some of the public land it manages, its position has been that hunters aren’t ready to advance much beyond that.
“Unless you have tremendous support for this, it probably likely won’t succeed,” said Bob Duncan, chief of the department’s wildlife division.
How much support would be necessary?
The latest survey, which was taken this year, revealed that in Shenandoah County 62 percent of the hunters questioned favored QDM.
That’s not enough, Duncan said. Officials have set the bar at 67 percent.
“We know this is a coming thing,” he said. “This is a major decision because it recommends a major change in deer management. Our goal -- the staff’s -- is to do the right thing.”
In the QDM corner this session was Dennis Campbell, Mid-Atlantic Regional Director of the Quality Deer Management Association. Campbell is a well-known lobbyist and hunting advocate from Waynesboro.
“We aren’t asking for it statewide; we are asking that Shenandoah County be a model,” he said.
What the QDW advocates got was a compromise. The DGIF board proposed that one of the bucks in the two-buck limit that applies for Shenandoah County must have four points on one side.
“For some of the guys it (the proposal) was a big disappointment, but it’s a first step,” said Campbell.
This proposal, and others, will be subject to public comment the next several weeks then a final vote in October. If approved, it would be law during the 2006-07 season.
Once hunters see what QDM can accomplish they will readily embrace it, Campbell believes. It just needs a chance.
A big question: is the proposal potent enough to make a difference?
“We see it as a step in the direction of QDM,” said Duncan. “We are only going to get one chance to do this right. I don’t want to take too big a step all at once. I don’t think we can neglect the 38 percent" who oppose it.
The hunting, fishing, boating, trapping and wildlife diversity proposals made the by the DGIF board will be discussed at a series of public hearings across the state this month and next. The dates and locations can be found at the bottom of the Cochran Field Reports or on www.dgif.virginia.gov where online comments can be made. The proposals will be up for a final vote in October.
