*Editor’s Note* Archived newspaper clippings that I used in compiling this report, were all accomplished and given to me by my good friend and part-time contributor to the Black Bear Blog, Richard Paradis of Maine. We owe him a bit of gratitude for his compassionate caring and his willingness to dig this stuff up. Thank you!
Technology is supposed to speed things up, isn’t it? And, one would guess better technology would make for more precise things, and maybe even make “forecasting” even better. It has become obvious that this certainly isn’t the case for some things.
Consider the efforts by William Gray and Phil Klotzbach from the University of Colorado, who for twenty years and with some the finest and most advanced technology available to them, have decided to give up trying to predict how many hurricanes the United States will have to deal with in the next upcoming hurricane season. Why? Because their method stinks and the results are worse.
Of course, most of the sane world now understands that high tech computer models used for predicting climate changes are only as good as the biased information fed into a software model designed to create desired outcomes. While the modeling for climate change fails miserably, perhaps the technology isn’t all that bad. But when used and abused in the wrong way, it spoils the whole bunch.
For those of us deeply involved in wildlife management, we’ve come to also understand that computer modeling for wildlife predictions about mirrors the fraud behind climate change modeling.
Looking for better data and information derived from this kind of technology, seems to be worthless because of the influence of man’s greed and lack of any kind of moral backbone. So let’s discard any thoughts that high technology is worth a bag of dirt when it comes to using it to better manage our wildlife and conserve our species and habitat.
But certainly one would suspect that from the days gone by when fish and game personnel would have to hand count deer harvests, it must have taken an eternity. Are we also to be grateful now because technology provides for anxious hunters’ harvest figures for the deer seasons just ending? Let’s take a look at Maine.
In the year 1913, the Boston Evening Transcript printed a story on Nov. 29th, two weeks before the end of the deer hunting season in Maine, stating that as of that date 1,900 deer had been harvested, compared to 2,561 for the same time period the previous year.
As well in 1913, the New York Times reported on Dec. 1, again two weeks before the end of the deer hunting season in Maine, that Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts had combined killed 5,180 deer. Now it must have taken some pretty advanced technology to be able to get a count on deer that quickly and from four states as well.
Evidently this lack of high technology didn’t prevent news reporters from getting all kinds of data on Maine’s deer herd. On Nov. 28, 1956, the Lewiston Daily Sun filed a report about what happened after the 1955 season. Not only did they provide Maine hunters with the deer harvest numbers, they also got: average number of deer killed per square mile statewide – 1.17; of the 35,591 deer killed, non-resident hunters attributed to taking 23%, along with a representation of where the non resident hunters came from; what percentage of the harvest was taken on Saturdays and holidays; when the peak killing time was; buck and doe ratio of the harvest; weather breakdown and how it may have effected harvest; kills by county; and others. All done by hand.
On Nov. 21, 1972, just 4 days prior to the end of a shortened deer season in Maine, the Bangor Daily News was able to report that 20,506 deer had been shot and tagged as of sunset on Nov. 18th. It appears it took a long stretch of 3 days to compile that information for the press. And Maine was still hand counting the deer harvest.
Laughingly, in 1974, Bud Leavitt takes Maine fish and game commissioner Maynard J. Marsh to task asking him why he is hiding information about the deer harvest for that year. Mind you the article, published in the Bangor Daily News on Nov. 21, 1974, I’m guessing with a week left to go in the deer hunting season, is asking for specific information about harvest data. Leavitt facetiously writes that this information must be a secret and that, “Through 4 p.m. Wednesday, a preliminary count indicated hunters had tagged 14,251 whitetails.” Mr. Leavitt wants, what I can only presume was the norm back then, information and data on the hunt to date, other than just a preliminary kill count.
In Leavitt’s frustration he writes:
Why shouldn’t the Maine citizenry be afforded the latest, up-to-the-minute information with respect to the cropping of one of the state’s most valuable game animal[s]?
Why should Maine citizens be spoon-fed information dealing with one of the state’s best known sporting traditions, the matter of deer hunting? We say, if a network television computer can predict the winner of a state governorship with the scantest kind of information, certainly Maine citizens ought to be apprised of how their deer are being killed in a season that began in the early days of November.
Leavitt makes more than one point here. Not only is he looking for deer harvest information but he brings into question two things. One, he wants to know what it is the commissioner is trying to hide, which of course is normal when information and communication from any state fish and game office is lacking. Second, Leavitt questions the commissioner, vis a viz the governor and entire state of Maine’s serious commitment to “one of the state’s most valuable game animals” as well as “one of the state’s best known sporting traditions”. Obviously Leavitt held these two in high regard and he was considering the commissioner did not.
And so, from years ago, when fish and game personnel used to manually collect and count harvest data it appears that it took, on average, about 3 or 4 days for the fish and game to come up with at least a preliminary count, when they had the mind to do it.
In Bud Leavitt’s case, he expected and demanded more information than that. Did he get it? This may have been the beginning of the end so to speak.
It appears, and I have to admit I didn’t spend hours researching old newspaper archives, that with the onset of the computer as a high technology tool to assist biologists and fish and game personnel, the free flow of information dried up. Most would consider that trend to be the opposite.
At a time when sportsmen would think availability of harvest data would be a mouse click away, Maine hunters have to wait for several months to get a “preliminary” deer harvest count and a few weeks later to get the extremely limited “deer harvest data”, a “full” report, that hunting license buyers pay dearly to be collected and compiled.
The “official” Deer Harvest Report from Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (example here) is two pages in length. The first page is a map of the state that shows deer harvest for that year by town. The second page is a generalized written report of harvest numbers compared to the year previous, with summations of how some Wildlife Management Districts may have fared compared to others. You’ll find harvest numbers for archery, etc.
It becomes a bit subjective from one hunter to the next as to what is considered valuable and useful information in a deer harvest report. Obviously, the number one issue is total numbers compared with other years and how many hunters bought licenses compared to other years so some general comparisons could be made.
For me personally, I would prefer to see data that tells me more important things like age structure and buck to doe ratios. Toss in a fawn recruitment figure or two and while your at it tell hunters if these numbers are high, low or normal.
But this is wishing and wanting I guess. It’s extremely difficult to get this information by asking for it directly but that isn’t really the premise of this article though.
The beef here is why does it take Maine hunters 4 months or longer after the deer season closes before any of this information is made available? Bud Leavitt was angry that he didn’t have preliminary information, not just harvest counts, one week BEFORE the season closed. Today, with all the advanced technology available and at the disposal of our MDIFW personnel, we have to wait 4 or more months.
If we can’t do better than this, then I strongly suggest the fish and game department could save bundles of money by selling off and getting rid of their computers. They are obviously worthless when it comes to getting data out in a timely fashion.
And, have the Maine sportsmen become so desensitized to this kind of abuse and disrespect that they have just come to accept it? I would guess. Recall what I wrote above about the points Bud Leavitt was trying to make 27 years ago. He was questioning the serious commitment by the then commissioner of fish and game because of the blatant disregard of the sportsmen and one of the state’s most prized animals and traditions. What I took away from that piece was that Bud Leavitt felt like he was being kicked in the guts, that there wasn’t enough care from fish and game to give the hunters and the fine citizens of the state of Maine what they DESERVED to have.
How do you feel?
Tom Remington
