Perhaps I’ve struggled over the past several years to find the right words to describe what many of our state fish and game departments are doing in what might be incorrectly called game management. The battle may be over. Where once state game departments actively worked at producing surplus game species for harvest opportunities, they now do what I have found to be described as “Observational Game Management”.

The newest issue of The Outdoorsman, No. 41, Sept-Dec. 2010, contains two starkly different articles that address the same issue – Utah’s Response to a Declining Deer Population, ppg. 8-9, and Nevada’s Response to a Declining Deer Population, Ppg. 10-11.

I will spare you all the details but I encourage you to open the link and read both articles. They are quite revealing. The Utah response was perhaps what too many of us sportsmen have come to expect from our fish and game departments.

Over the past five years, the Utah fish and game department spent $100 million dollars in response to a shrinking mule deer population. The result has been a reduction in deer of 63%. Very little was put into predator control. The recommended actions by the fish and game to stop the shrinking deer herd is to reduce the number of hunters allowed to hunt.

The three options provided by UDWR biologists to the Board to allegedly increase the number of mule deer bucks were schemes to reduce the total number of hunters by an additional 3,000, 7,000 or 13,000. Two of those schemes required the hunter to hunt in only one of 29 units rather than one of five larger Regions in the state.

Does this resemble your state’s fish and game management plans?

Let’s take a look at the other side of the coin for a moment and examine Nevada’s response. It’s bold and fresh and more closely resembles the days when fish and game took care of their bread and butter, the hunters, and managed game for harvest opportunities.

Upon recognition by the Nevada Mule Deer Restoration Committee of the Board of Wildlife Commissioners that the mule deer herd was “at or near its lowest point in the past century and is far below the stable population level that the habitat is clearly capable of maintaining”, the committee recommended actions. Within those recommended actions it examined the operational structure of the fish and game department. I completely fell in love with this observation.

NDOW is not currently in the business of wide-scale game production and has not been for
decades.

Current NDOW organization focuses on observational biology and research. Current bureaucratic practices within NDOW make it increasingly difficult to get any production-oriented project into practice. The same unnecessary bureaucratic quagmire creates an environment in which it is far easier for personnel to study a situation than it is for them to act to correct a biological problem. Political incentives exist to study, and not act upon the results of those studies. Federal monetary incentives reinforce this situation.

While many may expect government agencies such as Nevada Department of Wildlife to produce big game herds in the state of Nevada, those expectations are likely unrealistic due to the current bureaucratic quagmire and the fact that governmental agencies are generally not designed to produce.

“Dancin’! Dancin’! There’ll be dancin in the streets! My God, what I would give to have my fish and game department actually recognize this fact, say nothing about suggesting doing something about it. But, don’t fear. There’s more! Nevada Department of Wildlife recommends solutions that are sure to ruffle a whole bunch of feathers.

Such recommendations as: Setting goals to PRODUCE more deer; overhaul the fish and game structure so it can meet production goals; ELIMINATE positions that are paid by fish and game dollars that don’t contribute to producing fish and game – S-W-E-E-T!!!!; rewrite job descriptions in order that they focus on game production; retrain agency personnel to meet production goals and if they can’t perform, fire them; actually focus on areas where predation is up and deer numbers are down.

This is simply incredibly good! But wait, there’s more!

NDOW recognizes that predators are a problem. Not just mountain lions or coyotes but all predators. Here’s another statement that makes me swell with hope.

There is no evidence to show that predation is not a population limiting factor.

Take that! For all the rhetoric on predators we have listened to for decades that predators aren’t a problem with deer, NDOW says there isn’t any evidence to suggest it’s NOT!

And then NDOW recommends real solutions to dealing with predators: practice intensive predator control in real problem areas; allotment of game tags that aim to increase deer numbers and reduce predator numbers; use helicopters to take out predator populations destroying game animals; work with hunters and trappers to know where the problem areas are and deal with it; a proactive approach to predator control should be used and it should be ongoing, long after deer population restoration.

Can you imagine? But there you have it. You have one state that appears to admit there’s a deer shortage and their action is to limit the number of hunters. A neighboring state does everything it can FOR the hunter, to not only continue to allow the hunter to harvest game but increase those opportunities.

And above all, it is time that all state fish and game departments get back to managing game in a productive manner. We need to get away from this “Observation Game Management” in which monies are used to “study” and “research” wildlife, while doing nothing to solve problems other than tell hunters they can’t hunt anymore.

Hunters are expected to stand by while money is spent counting deer and then they tell us how much we can hunt.

Hip, hip hooray for Nevada!

If you would like to read the entire action plan of Nevada Division of Wildlife. Click this link!

Tom Remington

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