Grow a beard and wear a straw hat.I'm going to Strouds, my non-resident ass with a lifetime license is gonna kill da F out of them.
Wildlife Council Meeting: 9/17 @ 4:30P - District 4 HQs
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A great man, some consider him a genius, once declared, “You can’t kill ‘em if they aren’t there.” I’ve got faith in you. Killing the last is a far greater challenge than killing the biggest.I'm going to Strouds, my non-resident ass with a lifetime license is gonna kill da F out of them.
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I can't quit laughing.. That's a good saying.
Don't worry. I'll make sure it's a button buck so it's not technically a future Stroud's buck..
WoodCoDep
Junior Member
I just don't understand the mentality of closing or cancelling the season, or can't understand why in the hell it even keeps being mentioned. I love to deer hunt as much as the next guy and want there to be a sustained herd and better numbers in the future. But why would closing season or even limiting tags guarantee that. It won't. Some places have been hit hard, some places haven't. I have a small piece of property that fits both of these categories. Can people not make their own decision whether filling tags is the right thing to do or not? Sure most likely i won't fill doe tags this year. But bet your ass I'm still going to be out there trying for a good buck or going just to get out of the house. And I'll be taking my kids any chance I get. Why should the state or even a small pocket of people in a concentrated area of the state get to tell me I can't do that..BS lol. Also poachers are gonna poach, season or not deer will still get killed. Just my opinion and it won't be changing.
I mentioned it in the strouds thread. I grew up hunting deer in ottawa County in the 90s, we would often go weeks without a deer sighting. That is what got me hooked, being out with nature and just enjoying what it was. Deer was a bonus, any deer. Add anything beyond a spike and it was equally as to someone seeing 180" buck in today's standard. We have lost touch. I do not agree with closing a season either and I honestly dont think that is an option. People leasing or guiding hunts in those areas would go out of business.
As Joe mentioned, leaving it up to the hunters is a slippery slope. Today's hunters are way more in tune with the deer on the property than they ever have been.
Having this happen to me multiple times, I can tell you that everyone in the areas effected will notice a difference as fall patterns happen. Those of you with deer now will have some leave. They will find these pockets of no deer and food plentiful. So those of you without deer will have some move in. Keep on keeping on everyone and enjoy the process. Take that negative energy and think about what you can do to help. Bat boxes, Martin hotels, dragonfly habitat, fixing ruts, fixing broken field tiles and the list can go on. Waiting on the ODNR to do something is a hard battle. Do something you can see a change. I can promise you it'll feel much more rewarding!
As Joe mentioned, leaving it up to the hunters is a slippery slope. Today's hunters are way more in tune with the deer on the property than they ever have been.
Having this happen to me multiple times, I can tell you that everyone in the areas effected will notice a difference as fall patterns happen. Those of you with deer now will have some leave. They will find these pockets of no deer and food plentiful. So those of you without deer will have some move in. Keep on keeping on everyone and enjoy the process. Take that negative energy and think about what you can do to help. Bat boxes, Martin hotels, dragonfly habitat, fixing ruts, fixing broken field tiles and the list can go on. Waiting on the ODNR to do something is a hard battle. Do something you can see a change. I can promise you it'll feel much more rewarding!
Great post Dave! I remember getting excited just because we seen some tracks in the mud.
Are they though? The serious people are still serious. But the more casual guys are more casual.
Sure. But not all the same ways. Lot of hunters i see in places I hunt need ultra remedial deer hunting classes
Killing does this year sure as hell won't help the recovery
They don't care as long as people are killing more deer. It wasn't until all the deer were dying in their own hunting grounds that notice was taken. How many of us have been thru EHD without so much as a "sorry. We can't do anything about it" before they acknowledged this was a problem? I'm not honestly sure they feel this is a problem. Just stinking up their hunting season.
Really what can be done about EHD other than reducing bag limits/closing seasons? I don't think there's any pesticides available that would selectively kill the bugs responsible for EHD. Mass innoculatiion isnt possible. Maybe you could with feeders add some kind of supplement that would boost the immune systems. Ive seen ads for feed that fights EHD but I'm skeptical.
It isn't practical or realistic to think we can treat every possible water location which "might" produce a midge. I don't trust products in seeing to fight or prevent EHD either. I simply don't think any of them cared if the deer population was demolished until it hit their local herds. Now we hear about it and get a meeting but that won't change the outcome.
This is the worst ehd outbreak that I can remember. I'm just outside the worst of it but my area has been largely spared, just now getting a few kills reported. Southern part of my county been hit hard the last few outbreaks but nowhere near what Athens and meigs are seeing now.
I even had the thought, what if in the future I put out a couple of water tanks to provide the deer with a water source that has steep walls and not be suitable for the midges...but there's just too many other water sources for them that you can't control. Creeks, ponds, wetland areas...I'm just not sure there's much that can be done to prevent it.
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The fact is reducing the bag limit to 1 in those counties wouldn't do much besides acknowledging the problem in a public fashion. The majority of deer hunters only shoot one deer a season, something like 60% of successful hunters last I ran the numbers years ago. Going from memory here but I think only 2% or so fill every tag available to them. It's such a small number that even reducing it to 1 is statistically insignificant. Then you have the probably 40% that buy a tag and kill zero deer every year. Between all the groups just reducing the bag limit to 1 wouldn't make much of an impact outside of being symbolic.
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As for the midges. I don't know enough about them but it never adds up to me. They say it's due to drought and the lack of water forcing deer to fewer more crowded water sources. That doesn't explain why last year in Athens and surrounding counties it was so dry they had a 3 month burn ban but not a massive EHD outbreak. Or really anything IMO. Deer have access to tons of water. Be it creeks, lakes, rivers, ponds, ditches etc. Sure I can see the water levels in those locations being reduced, but I can't see the number of sources being reduced to a point that every deer in 4 square miles has to go to the same watering hole. Then there is the "why is it hyper localized". Weather patterns aren't super local, rain usually travels along a long linear line with a front. It doesn't rain, skip a spot and rain all around it that often. Why is there an "epicenter" where the closer you get the worse it gets. Did rain just so happen to miss that epicenter that many times, did the sun somehow focus it's intensity on that epicenter, of course not. So the rain / drought thing doesn't make much sense to me.
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But mud exists around every source of water I've ever been around. Full of water and there is still mud around the edge, 2 weeks since the last rain and the pond level drops only a a few inches there's mud. Rocky creeks, theirs always areas where sediment piled up, mud. How about after a big rainfall event and there's puddles and low lying areas with stagnant water, as it dries up mud. How about low swampy areas that are always wet, mud abounds. That patch f trees in a field where the farmer has never planted because it's always wet, mud. We've got mud everywhere around here in the south, how do we still have deer and not massive EHD outbreaks? We have a 10,000 acre WMA that if it's not water, it's mud. There's no such thing as dry ground in that swamp. I'm just thinking there has to be more to it than mud.
It's higher than that now. I have the data at home and will share later. The reality is, as you alluded to, a reduction to 1 is mostly PR unless is 1 and buck only.