News Antler Restriction Takes Aim At Improving Deer Herd

Antler Restriction Takes Aim At Improving Deer Herd

Antler Restriction Takes Aim At Improving Deer Herd
July 26, 2005 |

This fall, hunters in Barbour County will be taking part in an experiment that aims to greatly improve Alabama’s whitetail deer herd. Beginning with the 2005-2006 deer season, a new antler restriction will be tested in Barbour County, limiting deer hunters to harvesting bucks with at least “three points on one side.” “The goal of this experiment is to allow more bucks to mature before being harvested,” said Barbour County Farmers Federation Wildlife Chairman Kenny Childree.This experiment is an extension of a quality deer management program (QDM) implemented in the Barbour Wildlife Management Area (WMA) beginning with the 1999-2000 hunting season. The program allowed bucks to be harvested only if they had at least three points on one of their antlers. Ideally, this means the bucks would have at least five or six points, making them at least 2 1/2 years old. The restriction was designed to allow more bucks to mature while making rules easier for conservation officers to enforce and for hunters to follow. “Unlike similar restrictions in other states, which may require the antler structure to reach a certain width, the Barbour WMA restriction simply requires a hunter to look at the antlers,” Childree said. “With the optics available on scopes today, it is easy to see the points on an antler from early morning to even after dark, and most hunters can count to three.”Alabama Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Wildlife Biologist Bill Gray, who oversees the Barbour WMA, surveyed hunters who used the Barbour WMA prior to the implementation of the QDM program. He reported in a 2004 article for Alabama Wildlife Magazine that initial support for the plan outnumbered opposition two to one, and the satisfaction rating for the program after five years had risen to 83 percent.”As you might expect, with a restriction we have in place designed to exclude more than 90 percent of our yearling male deer from being harvested, the number of yearling male deer harvested in the Barbour Wildlife Management Area has fallen about 500 percent,” Gray said. “At the same time, the harvest of mature bucks, bucks at least 3 1/2 years old, has increased 370 percent.”Before and during the test period of the quality deer management program, Gray and his staff collected detailed data on the deer harvested from the area. According to this data, 70 percent of the antlered bucks harvested in the five years prior to implementing the program were yearling bucks. In the first five years of the program, yearling bucks were only 21 percent of the antlered bucks harvested. Gray also found that the number of man-days, or days spent hunting per deer harvested, had decreased. The number of man-days per 2 1/2-year-old or older buck harvested on the Barbour WMA was cut nearly in half, and the number of man-days per 3 1/2-year-old harvested had fallen by 75 percent. The number of man-days per doe harvested dropped slightly as well.”The numbers are very positive,” said Steve Guy, director of the Alabama Farmers Federation’s Wildlife Resources Division. “Everybody wants big deer with big racks, but the deer have to get more age on them in order for that to happen. The deer management program on the wildlife management area has really increased the number of older bucks with larger racks by going to this antler restriction.””Coming out of the several informational meetings about this, different people have told me each time that this is a no-brainer,” said Childree. The new antler restriction will go through a five-year test period in Barbour County before a final decision is made on whether to make it permanent, but Childree predicts it may not take that long for other counties to adopt similar policies. “A lot of counties are chomping at the bit for something like this,” he said. “This isn’t something that was just thought up in Montgomery and forced on us. The hunters and landowners of Barbour County asked for this. If deer hunters will be patient, they will see that this will be a great improvement. As they say, ‘Good things come to those who wait.'”

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