2024 Deer Management Updates

The 47th annual meeting of the Southeast Deer Study Group was hosted by the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources in February. The top deer researchers, professors and graduate students were in attendance and presented 35 papers on the latest deer research. And as always, Bowhunter was there. Space won’t permit me to summarize all the papers presented, so I’ve selected those I believe you will find most interesting.

Deer Bedding

There were several interesting studies related to deer bedding. The first was done by Blaise Newman, a graduate student at the University of Georgia, but the study was conducted in Florida. A lot of what she and her co-authors found would apply everywhere. Newman followed 15 GPS-collared adult bucks and found where every day and night bedding area was located. A buck chews it cud while bedded and, on average, gets up and moves about eight yards every hour. They do this day and night. Closed-canopy areas were selected as bedding sites the most and wetlands were avoided during the day. Shrublands and closed-canopy environments were selected at night. She concluded that closed-canopy areas provided thermal refuge for deer during heat-generating rumination in warmer climates.

The second study was done by Luke Resop, a graduate student at Mississippi State University. Resop followed 60 bucks with radio collars from 2017-2019. All bucks were 2.5 years old or older. His objective was to characterize bedding sites. A bed site was defined as an area that had more than four GPS points in one hour within a 20-yard radius. Then they looked at bedding areas — these areas are bedding sites separated by more than 100 yards. On average, bucks bedded four times a day and used 23 distinct bedding areas from November to January (the hunting season). They used 52 percent of their bedding areas only a single time. To me, that means bucks move around to bed a lot. They used 30 percent of their bedding areas two to five times, but they had a few areas that were favorites, as 4 percent were used more than 200 times. The average return interval to bedding areas that were used more than once was 6.1 days. The author suggested bucks seem to run a circuit, and it takes six days to return to a site. Another conclusion was that bucks have more bedding areas than previously thought — just another reason bowhunting older bucks is such a challenge.

Also in Mississippi, Natasha Ellison followed 40 bucks on a 9,000-acre area during the 2017 and 2018 hunting seasons and recorded their GPS locations every 15 minutes. The area had 468 food plots, 900 hunting stands and a large number of feeders. Medium-sized food plots of 2-4 acres were most preferred, and most visits were at night. There were visits during legal shooting hours, and early-morning got more visits than late evening. The average distance from bedding sites to the visited food plots was 100 yards. Bucks were most likely to move in areas with more food plots, more feeders and fewer treestands.

Antler Restrictions

Regarding antler restrictions, for years deer managers have believed implementing antler-related harvest restrictions would change the age structure and yield more bucks in older age classes. We also believed antler restrictions would lead to higher doe harvests. Steve Gurney presented his southern Michigan research designed to estimate the relative abundance and trends over three consecutive years after implementation of antler restrictions. He and many co-workers deployed 144 camera traps across a five-county area, obtaining 2.6 million photographs that allowed him to estimate the annual abundance by sex and age class. He found weak evidence for antler restrictions affecting the relative abundance of all deer by sex and age class. He found increased trends in the relative abundance of legal and sub-legal bucks over time, but no evidence supporting change in female and fawn relative abundance. Doe harvests over the three years were similar in the antler restriction areas and the non-antler restriction control areas. So, buck sizes by age did increase, but antler restrictions did not lead to increased doe harvests.

Common Deer Diseases

There were two papers on midges and hemorrhagic disease (HD). Mark Ruder with the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia presented a paper on midges biting deer, and Sonja Christensen from Michigan State University presented data from West Virginia on climate factors that led to hemorrhagic disease outbreaks. Epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) virus is transmitted to deer by biting midges, of which there are many species. Ruder found deer can be infected by as few as four midge bites.

Christensen noted there are two viruses that give deer hemorrhagic disease. The more common virus is EHD, but bluetongue virus (BTV) also occurs. Visually, the effects of these viruses cannot be distinguished, so blood samples are required for a definitive diagnosis. Christensen examined data from 181 hemorrhagic disease occurrences in West Virginia from 1981 to 2019. Viruses were isolated in 94 of those occurrences. She learned that increased July precipitation followed by decreased August precipitation were significant predictors of HD in West Virginia, probably because those conditions favor the hatching of midges. I’ve heard some hunters say that deer density can cause outbreaks of HD. Not so, and this study presented data that proved that density is not a factor. Christensen also noted there is greater mortality in deer populations that experience their first exposure to EHD, because after the initial exposure, some deer become immune to that strain of the virus. However, immunity does not carry over to another viral strain, and new strains pop up all the time.

Samantha Courtney from Michigan State University looked at how deer may contact each other and spread chronic wasting disease (CWD) via prions. She found fewer deer contacts (grooming, fighting) in food plots compared to feeders. She also observed fewer environmental contacts (tree rubs, nose to ground at scrapes) at food plots compared to bait sites. Her conclusion was that bait sites are a greater risk for infected deer to spread the disease than food plots.

Researchers from Mississippi State University swabbed seven feeders for the presence of CWD prions in a CWD-positive captive deer facility. Individual deer touched other individuals more often at deer feeders than food plots or at mast trees. All seven feeders were positive for CWD prions within six weeks. Feeders that excluded deer were also positive, presumably spread by raccoons that went to other feeders where they picked up prions and spread them.

Funding for State Wildlife Agencies

John Culclasure with the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation talked about things that affect funding of our state wildlife agencies. One huge problem that seems to never go away is free hunting and fishing licenses. Since hunting and fishing equipment excise taxes are based in part on the number of hunting and fishing licenses a state sells, any licenses given away don’t bring in that 3-to-1 match the state gets from equipment sales. Politicians keep introducing free license bills every year. For example, in West Virginia there were 35 such bills introduced in the legislature since 2016. Politicians want to give free licenses or discounted licenses to all kinds of groups, such as landowners, veterans, police, first responders, teachers, etc. Many states give away the equivalent of 40 percent of their total licenses and permits, and in so doing, those states lose a huge chunk of Pittman-Robertson excise taxes. Several states have introduced bills to reimburse the DNR for federal tax revenue lost due to the free licenses. Of course, state taxpayers foot that bill.

Kevin Gerena at Auburn University looked at the use of drones to estimate deer density. He learned that thermal cameras on drones were an effective and safe tool for estimating density and caused only minimal disturbance to deer.

Kip Adams with the National Deer Association talked about hunter success rates. He noted that nationally, only 41 percent of hunters harvested a deer in 2022, down from 48 percent in 2011. The national average for hunters harvesting two or more deer was 17 percent in 2022 and 21 percent in 2011. Thus, a decreasing number of hunters are filling multiple tags. For those who perceive that overharvest is why they are seeing fewer deer, the data prove otherwise.

Next year, the Southeast Deer Study Group meeting will be hosted by the state wildlife agency in Maryland. Yes, Bowhunter will be there and bring the results to you, as always.

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