When sportsmen take to the woods Saturday, it’s the past that will play the biggest role in whether or not they’re successful.
That’s because, lacking a crystal ball, DEC’s experts are forced to base their forecasts on what’s already happened: Snowfall, reproduction rates, and the November 2007 deer take.
About the only variable will be the weather and even that’s likely to affect the hunters more than the deer.
“Unless it’s very, very warm, when they’ll reduce their movement to keep cool, deer really don’t care,” said Jeff Piel, Region 4’s deer specialist for DEC.
“Rain, snow, it doesn’t matter to them. If it’s miserable, more hunters will tend to stay home. But even if that happens, the pressure, the numbers tend to even out over the season.”
Forecasts for Saturday show temperatures in the low-50s with a chance of showers. Sunday is expected to be cooler—and drier.
With takes of 2.4 bucks per square mile holding steady for Schoharie County for 2006 and ’07, that part of the equation looks good as well.
In general, Mr. Piel said, through biology and management, deer numbers have been seeing a “moderate increase” in this part of Region 4.
Though the severe winter of 2001-’02 sent numbers crashing, especially in the Catskills, he said weather-related losses in the herd last winter showed nothing unusual.
“They were about where we’d expect them to be,” he said.
“One of the largest factors in winter kill tends to be how long deer have to deal with snow depths of 10-15 inches because that’s something we can quantify. Last winter, that didn’t seem to be a factor.”
By the same token, Mr. Piel said, reproduction rates—namely how many does are carrying twins—seem to be constant.
“Twins are a reflection of the doe’s size,” he explained, “and that, in turn, reflects food resources. For the most part, the does are easily conceiving twins.”
When making predictions for any deer season, Mr. Piel said DEC looks at the past year’s figures and trends.
But they won’t get a solid handle on how many deer are really out there until hunters start bringing them in.
In an effort to address that, DEC asks interested bowhunters to keep a log of deer and other wildlife they see while they’re in the field.
Those tallies, though, won’t be available until spring.
Mr. Piel said DEC also tried to start a program similar to the Christmas Bird Count, but for deer, in the central part of the state, but “that didn’t go over too well.”
The idea was that citizen volunteers would travel a fixed route on a regular basis, keeping track of the deer they saw.
“We’re always looking for different ways to boost our knowledge,” Mr. Piel said.
“It’s our Holy Grail…if we could get a better handle on how many deer are out there. That’s the one thing people always want to know.”