HomeOutdoorsHunting Outta' the Woods: New Deer Management Plan Out of the Starting Gate (by Tony Young)
04-07-2008
Outta'theWoods By Tony Young
Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission
New Deer Management Plan Out of the Starting Gate
In its February meeting in Panama City Beach, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) approved the “Strategic Plan for Deer Management in Florida 2008-2018.” The plan describes the state’s history of deer management, its current status and outlines a 10-year strategic direction through a series of well-thought-out goals, objectives and strategies.
Even though the plan was just approved, FWC’s Deer Management Team is already working hard to begin implementing the steps necessary to achieve the plan’s objectives – the overall goal being to ensure healthy deer populations that will meet the public’s desires for recreational hunting, while protecting private property and ensuring the long-term welfare of the species.
This living-and-breathing plan continues to be a collaborative effort between FWC staff and a stakeholder group representing many of the state’s hunting and conservation organizations/associations, other governmental agencies and large private landowners that lease much of their properties to hunters.
Valuable input is being gathered from these stakeholders, which include the Future of Hunting in Florida, Florida Wildlife Federation, Allied Sportsmen’s Associations of Florida, United Hunters of Florida, Traditional Bowhunters Association, Florida Bowhunters Council, Everglades Coordinating Council, Florida Sportsmen’s Conservation Association, Kissimmee River Valley Sportsman Association, Unified Sportsmen of Florida, Florida Dog Hunters and Sportsman’s Association, Lykes Brothers, Department of Environmental Protection, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Forest Service, Quality Deer Management Association, St. Joe Land Co., Deseret Ranch, National Rifle Association and all five Florida water management districts.
FWC’s deer team has met regularly over the past year and a half, developing the plan and is now beginning the tedious process of compiling the many varied ideas and opinions on how Florida’s deer should be managed. The process of hashing out all of the details is challenging, but the team and stakeholder group are committed to making the plan a reality.
Together, these folks are spending countless hours going over every detail, obstacle, theory and strategy that needs to be considered and worked out so the management plan’s ambitious goals and objectives will be realized. Much more hard work lies ahead, but the strategic plan provides a good roadmap for moving forward.
Florida’s deer are unlike any other state’s, and there are no clear-cut, easy fixes that can be applied in “broad-brush” fashion to solve every issue. Much of our state is not blessed with rich soils capable of producing high-quality, year-round nutrition for deer, so you can’t just take what another state is doing for deer management and apply it to Florida.
Because Florida’s northern-tiered counties that border Georgia and Alabama actually do have pretty fertile soil, you have to manage that herd differently than you would the deer living in areas of the state with poorer habitat. So the plan includes the idea of creating deer management units (DMUs) to help manage deer at a more local level. The factors going into where the lines may be drawn include areas with similar habitat, soil compositions, geographic features and timing of the rut. Major roads and rivers will be used as boundary lines when possible to make the DMUs easy to delineate.
Now there’s probably not going to be different hunting season dates for each DMU; that would be too complicated and unnecessary. But it is possible that more hunting regulation zones than the three we have may be necessary.
Besides creation of DMUs, other possible ideas being considered include changes in hunting seasons, better ways to ensure harvest success for a greater number of hunters and monitoring the long-term effects of antler restrictions on wildlife management areas (WMAs).
Speaking of antler restrictions, at the February Commission meeting, rules were passed on 21 WMAs, which put a 3-points-on-a-side antler restriction on legal bucks. These areas are Apalachee, Pine Log, Wakulla, Belmore, Four Creeks, Hatchet Creek, Homosassa, Jennings Forest, Big Bend Tide Swamp Unit, Richloam Baird Unit, Bull Creek, Caravelle Ranch, Guana River, Seminole Forest, Arbuckle, Lake Marion Creek, Upper Hillsborough, Okaloacoochee Slough, Dinner Island Ranch, Jones/Hungryland and Spirit-of-the-Wild.
Additionally, Tate’s Hell State Forest and Tate’s Hell Womack Creek Unit in the Northwest Region will have a forked-antler (2 points on a side) restriction. The new antler rules on all of these areas will be in effect during the 2008-09 hunting season.
Other proposals under consideration include a tag-and-report system, where hunters would tag deer immediately after the take and shortly afterwards, report the harvest. Methods for reporting deer harvest information may include calling a toll-free telephone number or entering the harvest information through the Internet.
As different aspects of the plan and associated proposals are fleshed out further by FWC staff and the stakeholder group, a series of surveys and public meetings will be conducted around the state to gather input from the general deer hunting public and landowners.
In the meantime, if you’d like to view a copy of the “Strategic Plan for Deer Management in Florida 2008-2018,” go to MyFWC.com/hunting and look under “Additional Hunting Seasons, Regulations, Permits and More.”
Outdoors 
Subscribe to this comment's feed
