Rebuttal to DWR newsletter,,,
Rebuttal to DWR newsletter,,,
I've copied this over from MM as per a request from 2lumpy,,
http://www.monstermuleys.info/dcforum/D ... 20802.html
"2lumpy wrote",,,,,,,,
Here is what I believe about Utah's Director of Wildlife Resources.
He wrote this:
http://wildlife.utah.gov/dwr/2011-deer- ... ssage.html
I believe this
(I'll paraphrase so I don't get sued for mis-quoting anyone.)
After attending three RAC meeting and listen carefully to the Director's spokesman tell us:
We have all the deer we can have.
If we raise buck numbers we'll remove does from the herd or they'll all starve to death.
Closing a unit to hunting will do absolutely nothing to increase the number of doe and fawns, it will only increase the number of bucks.
We have more than double the buck/ratio in some units than is necessary and is in fact detrimental to increasing the over-all number of deer.
After confirming they only do deer counts on 7 units. (total deer counts, they claim to count a few hundred deer on each unit to get a buck/doe ratio)
After they count only seven units and use that data to tell us there are no fewer deer on the Fish Lake, Pahvant, Boulder, Beaver, Monroe, and the Panguitch than there has been in the last 10 years and don't seem care how many we had in 1990s or before.
After telling us it takes time and when we asked the DWR how much time and he said 10 to 15 years. Then they admitted there had been more millions spent on the Monroe unit than any other unit for habitat restoration and they claim they killed the cougars back to far fewer than there are now. When we asked; “ if, as you claim, you’ve spent all these millions on forage, and killed all these cougars and we are still loosing more deer every year, how much longer do you think we should be patience. They answer; hunched his shoulders and said, maybe another 10 years. We believe what he was really saying was, we have no idea.
After claiming micro managing deers herds is unjustified biologically.
Then inferring that having primarily yearling bucks left to do the breeding, without providing mature bucks for does to select to bred with is MORE biologically sound.
After claiming neighboring State’s management systems are wrong and abject failures.
After the Board asked the DWR to develop a micromanagement proposal and their response was the circus they have put us all through the last ten days, in 5 different RAC meetings, in order to gen up anger toward the Board and non-supportive sportsmen.
After hearing the DWR say the DWR was not responsible nor accountable to anyone for the condition of the deer herds.
After miscalculating the antelope numbers on the Parker Mt.
After miscalculating the cow elk numbers/harvest on the Fish Lake, for the second time in 10 years.
After their over all misrepresentations, their half truths, their indifference, their refusal to respond to warning after warning of what the consequences of their recommendations would be on deer for the last 10 years and elk for the last 3 years.
After refusing to use the data from Forest Service and BLM wildlife scientists and government trappers that live on these unit year round.
After a history of hostility and resistance to the sportsmen that pay their bills (not all because there are a few sportsmen that have been rewarded handsomely for supporting the DWR).
I believe the Director's letter is too little too late, it is another effort to suppress and circumvent what needs to be done for our mule deer. While he may be a very nice person, he is wrong and he is still refusing to accept accountability and responsibility for the decline of our mule deer herds and he is still attempting to manipulate the Wildlife Board’s opinion on the matter. Where was the Director during the last 10 days, why did he let Anis take all the heat and only come out of his office after he has seen the commitment of the sportsmen from across the State? The fact that the North and the Central RAC voted for option one does not mean that sportsmen from those areas did not ask their RACs to support option two. The fact that these RACs voted 22 to 1 for option one does not in anyway mean that a great many sportsman in those RAC meetings did not support option 2.
Folks remember, this movement started last year, long before the hard winter and the lack luster hunt this fall. It has taken 17 years for the stars to line up. Currently there is a pro-active, responsive Wildlife Board, supportive legislators, open minded sportsmen, a concerned business community however, the Wildlife Board is about to change, the DWR have great influence on who the new members will be, the fire will burn out again in you sportsmen, the DWR know how to grind down your energy, they have the support of a large media staff, access to newspaper, televisions broadcast systems, leverage on other State and Federal Agencies. We have an large collection of unorganized, independent thinking, sportsmen, who, without contact or collaboration have risen up to sacrifice their time, their energy and their short term hunting opportunities to plea for a solution to these dwindling deer herds. I know a legislator, who, on his own, because of his own knowledge of the deer herds he hunts, has taken it upon himself to ask for a meeting with the Director, this legislator had no idea the other sportsmen in the State were as frustrated as he is. This movement has grown in individuals and families of hunters across the State by itself. It’s abundantly clear there are a handful of sportsmen benefiting from the DWR’s current deer management system, the rest of us are not, and we haven’t been for many years.
If my assessment of the Director and the DWR are inaccurate and biased, why, after hours and hours of effort at the RAC hearings by the DWR’s presenters, after 60 to 80 people have questioned and re-questioned the DWR’s representatives at these hearings, after the public has responded by speaking directly to and sending hundreds of letters to the RACs, does the Director encourage sportsmen to attend an informal, media biased, anti-micromanagement facilitated personality, to be instructed on how to once again pressure the Wildlife Board to cave into the DWR’s resistance to doing what is necessary for our declining mule deer herds.
Yes, please sportsmen, fill the Wildlife Board meeting on Dec. 2, 2010. It matters, these Board members need to see and know what you know and hear with you’ve seen these last 10 years. If the only people that show up at this meeting are those that are demanding no change or option one your deer herds are toast. It will take another 20 years for the stars to line up again, another 20 years for another generation of sportsmen to rise up again, another 20 years for the Wildlife Board to have enough members willing to make the hard but correct decision for mule deer.
Do not let this opportunity to pass. Please SHOW UP AND SPEAK UP. I will make a difference.
Would someone please post this on the Utah Wildlife Forum and the Muley Madness Forum. Thanks for your efforts sportsmen, lets get started rebuilding our deer herds, right now!
DC
http://www.monstermuleys.info/dcforum/D ... 20802.html
"2lumpy wrote",,,,,,,,
Here is what I believe about Utah's Director of Wildlife Resources.
He wrote this:
http://wildlife.utah.gov/dwr/2011-deer- ... ssage.html
I believe this
(I'll paraphrase so I don't get sued for mis-quoting anyone.)
After attending three RAC meeting and listen carefully to the Director's spokesman tell us:
We have all the deer we can have.
If we raise buck numbers we'll remove does from the herd or they'll all starve to death.
Closing a unit to hunting will do absolutely nothing to increase the number of doe and fawns, it will only increase the number of bucks.
We have more than double the buck/ratio in some units than is necessary and is in fact detrimental to increasing the over-all number of deer.
After confirming they only do deer counts on 7 units. (total deer counts, they claim to count a few hundred deer on each unit to get a buck/doe ratio)
After they count only seven units and use that data to tell us there are no fewer deer on the Fish Lake, Pahvant, Boulder, Beaver, Monroe, and the Panguitch than there has been in the last 10 years and don't seem care how many we had in 1990s or before.
After telling us it takes time and when we asked the DWR how much time and he said 10 to 15 years. Then they admitted there had been more millions spent on the Monroe unit than any other unit for habitat restoration and they claim they killed the cougars back to far fewer than there are now. When we asked; “ if, as you claim, you’ve spent all these millions on forage, and killed all these cougars and we are still loosing more deer every year, how much longer do you think we should be patience. They answer; hunched his shoulders and said, maybe another 10 years. We believe what he was really saying was, we have no idea.
After claiming micro managing deers herds is unjustified biologically.
Then inferring that having primarily yearling bucks left to do the breeding, without providing mature bucks for does to select to bred with is MORE biologically sound.
After claiming neighboring State’s management systems are wrong and abject failures.
After the Board asked the DWR to develop a micromanagement proposal and their response was the circus they have put us all through the last ten days, in 5 different RAC meetings, in order to gen up anger toward the Board and non-supportive sportsmen.
After hearing the DWR say the DWR was not responsible nor accountable to anyone for the condition of the deer herds.
After miscalculating the antelope numbers on the Parker Mt.
After miscalculating the cow elk numbers/harvest on the Fish Lake, for the second time in 10 years.
After their over all misrepresentations, their half truths, their indifference, their refusal to respond to warning after warning of what the consequences of their recommendations would be on deer for the last 10 years and elk for the last 3 years.
After refusing to use the data from Forest Service and BLM wildlife scientists and government trappers that live on these unit year round.
After a history of hostility and resistance to the sportsmen that pay their bills (not all because there are a few sportsmen that have been rewarded handsomely for supporting the DWR).
I believe the Director's letter is too little too late, it is another effort to suppress and circumvent what needs to be done for our mule deer. While he may be a very nice person, he is wrong and he is still refusing to accept accountability and responsibility for the decline of our mule deer herds and he is still attempting to manipulate the Wildlife Board’s opinion on the matter. Where was the Director during the last 10 days, why did he let Anis take all the heat and only come out of his office after he has seen the commitment of the sportsmen from across the State? The fact that the North and the Central RAC voted for option one does not mean that sportsmen from those areas did not ask their RACs to support option two. The fact that these RACs voted 22 to 1 for option one does not in anyway mean that a great many sportsman in those RAC meetings did not support option 2.
Folks remember, this movement started last year, long before the hard winter and the lack luster hunt this fall. It has taken 17 years for the stars to line up. Currently there is a pro-active, responsive Wildlife Board, supportive legislators, open minded sportsmen, a concerned business community however, the Wildlife Board is about to change, the DWR have great influence on who the new members will be, the fire will burn out again in you sportsmen, the DWR know how to grind down your energy, they have the support of a large media staff, access to newspaper, televisions broadcast systems, leverage on other State and Federal Agencies. We have an large collection of unorganized, independent thinking, sportsmen, who, without contact or collaboration have risen up to sacrifice their time, their energy and their short term hunting opportunities to plea for a solution to these dwindling deer herds. I know a legislator, who, on his own, because of his own knowledge of the deer herds he hunts, has taken it upon himself to ask for a meeting with the Director, this legislator had no idea the other sportsmen in the State were as frustrated as he is. This movement has grown in individuals and families of hunters across the State by itself. It’s abundantly clear there are a handful of sportsmen benefiting from the DWR’s current deer management system, the rest of us are not, and we haven’t been for many years.
If my assessment of the Director and the DWR are inaccurate and biased, why, after hours and hours of effort at the RAC hearings by the DWR’s presenters, after 60 to 80 people have questioned and re-questioned the DWR’s representatives at these hearings, after the public has responded by speaking directly to and sending hundreds of letters to the RACs, does the Director encourage sportsmen to attend an informal, media biased, anti-micromanagement facilitated personality, to be instructed on how to once again pressure the Wildlife Board to cave into the DWR’s resistance to doing what is necessary for our declining mule deer herds.
Yes, please sportsmen, fill the Wildlife Board meeting on Dec. 2, 2010. It matters, these Board members need to see and know what you know and hear with you’ve seen these last 10 years. If the only people that show up at this meeting are those that are demanding no change or option one your deer herds are toast. It will take another 20 years for the stars to line up again, another 20 years for another generation of sportsmen to rise up again, another 20 years for the Wildlife Board to have enough members willing to make the hard but correct decision for mule deer.
Do not let this opportunity to pass. Please SHOW UP AND SPEAK UP. I will make a difference.
Would someone please post this on the Utah Wildlife Forum and the Muley Madness Forum. Thanks for your efforts sportsmen, lets get started rebuilding our deer herds, right now!
DC
-
MuleyMadness
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Re: Rebuttal to DWR newsletter,,,
DC,
Don't know who you are, but you make some great points. I don't agree with everything said, however I do love your 'sick and tired' of the crud attitude and want change/improvement. I'm not one that has much faith in Option #2, but I admit things needs to improve. Hope I'm wrong, but will certainly try and support a change and hopes it's RIGHT and GOOD.
Don't know who you are, but you make some great points. I don't agree with everything said, however I do love your 'sick and tired' of the crud attitude and want change/improvement. I'm not one that has much faith in Option #2, but I admit things needs to improve. Hope I'm wrong, but will certainly try and support a change and hopes it's RIGHT and GOOD.
-
MuleyMadness
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- Posts: 9997
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Re: Rebuttal to DWR newsletter,,,
How about this as a MAJOR problem to DEER.
Study: Deer-vehicle crash effect underestimated
November 26th, 2010 @ 11:04am
By Associated Press
LOGAN, Utah (AP) -- A five-year study on the effects of winter feeding on mule deer suggests that wildlife experts may underestimate the effect of deer-vehicle collisions on herd productivity.
The national study by the Utah State University-based Jack H. Berryman Institute shows a rise in the number of deer-vehicle crashes.
Also increasing are the number of human deaths or injuries in those crashes.
Logan's Herald Journal reported Friday that the federal institute also found that more people die in head-on collisions with deer than with any other wildlife species.
USU Cooperative Extension wildlife specialist Terry Messmer says the study followed 100 radio-collared mule deer.
It found that 30 percent of deer mortalities were from vehicle crashes.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Study: Deer-vehicle crash effect underestimated
November 26th, 2010 @ 11:04am
By Associated Press
LOGAN, Utah (AP) -- A five-year study on the effects of winter feeding on mule deer suggests that wildlife experts may underestimate the effect of deer-vehicle collisions on herd productivity.
The national study by the Utah State University-based Jack H. Berryman Institute shows a rise in the number of deer-vehicle crashes.
Also increasing are the number of human deaths or injuries in those crashes.
Logan's Herald Journal reported Friday that the federal institute also found that more people die in head-on collisions with deer than with any other wildlife species.
USU Cooperative Extension wildlife specialist Terry Messmer says the study followed 100 radio-collared mule deer.
It found that 30 percent of deer mortalities were from vehicle crashes.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
-
stillhunterman
- 2 point
- Posts: 197
- Joined: Sat Mar 20, 2010 1:15 pm
- Location: SLC, Utah
Re: Rebuttal to DWR newsletter,,,
Agreed. Some good points made. Seriously though, until the wildlife agencies start making choises that are for the biological good of the herds and not the hunters in the west, I fear the muley may been going the way of the California Condor...and in not so distant of a future.MuleyMadness wrote:DC,
Don't know who you are, but you make some great points. I don't agree with everything said, however I do love your 'sick and tired' of the crud attitude and want change/improvement. I'm not one that has much faith in Option #2, but I admit things needs to improve. Hope I'm wrong, but will certainly try and support a change and hopes it's RIGHT and GOOD.
Geeze, maybe I need more coffee today!
-
derekp1999
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Re: Rebuttal to DWR newsletter,,,
I think we're to the point where ANY action is going to be better than staying in our current way of doing things. At least there is awareness now and some people out there willing to be the "squeaky wheel." Hopefully for my great grand children we get this thing figured out.
“The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.”
-Albus Dumbledore
-Albus Dumbledore
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stillhunterman
- 2 point
- Posts: 197
- Joined: Sat Mar 20, 2010 1:15 pm
- Location: SLC, Utah
Re: Rebuttal to DWR newsletter,,,
I sense your frustration, I truely do, it's mine as well. However, some things done haphazardly ARE dangerous. The DWR set in motion LAST YEAR a 5 year deer plan that took a lot of time and effort to put together, with the deer herd in mind, as well as hunters. It hasn't even gone a single year before the politics of the WB moved once again against the DWR and told them to develop these options. That plan has built in safegards for units (yes, micro units) that fall below objectives. For once, I wish the WB would let a plan run the course, and then it can be analized and tweaked for the better. Can you even remember the last time Utah has allowed a plan to run its course?derekp1999 wrote:I think we're to the point where ANY action is going to be better than staying in our current way of doing things. At least there is awareness now and some people out there willing to be the "squeaky wheel." Hopefully for my great grand children we get this thing figured out.
Option two will cut 13,000 tags STATEWIDE, not unit by unit, right off the bat before it even starts. Those are tags that will probably NEVER come back to Utah hunters.
The squeaky wheel has already been heard, and we as hunters must continue to follow up and let our concerns be heard. This is a complicated issue, and my head hurts from all the info it has absorbed over the last year....I wish us all good fortune, and as you stated, our future generations as well...
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derekp1999
- 4 point
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Re: Rebuttal to DWR newsletter,,,
It's about 50:50 frustration & sarcasm because I don't think any of us realize how drastic the measures would have to be to help the herd instead of attempting to mitigate it by micromanaging the hunting pressure. It's going to take the failure of this plan (and probably then next couple) to really figure out what needs to be done. I like the idea of allowing areas to burn (as mentioned in another thread posted) and bring back the desirable forage, that's been used in other parts of the country effectively... but that's just one of several ideas that we kick around in these forum threads that would perform better than the proposed plans.stillhunterman wrote:I sense your frustration, I truley do, it's mine as well.
And I do agree that the 5 year plan in place should be allowed to run it's course. They thought it was adequate when it was approved, why the quick change of heart?
“The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.”
-Albus Dumbledore
-Albus Dumbledore