Quality Deer Management Is Not To Blame

Bigger is better. While this may be true for paychecks and TVs it does not apply to everything.  However it seems to be a growing motto in the hunting community, and many believe that Quality Deer Management is to blame. Quality Deer Management, QDM, is a program that was established to increase the vitality and quality of a weak and inferior deer herd. QDM states that their program's success is built upon herd management, habitat management, hunter management, and herd monitoring.  By incorporating these four elementsof QDM can revitalize and sustain a depleted deer herd.

Herd management involves gauging the appropriate number of deer that a piece of property can hold comfortably. To properly manage the herd one must become aware of the sex and age ratios. When these ratios become unbalanced in either direction the overall heath and quality of the herd will start to decline. If these ratios should ever become unbalanced the hunter should remedy the problem by harvesting the deer in a fashion that will bring the ratios back to an equilibrium point. For example if the buck to doe ratio becomes heavy tilted in favor of does the hunters should start to harvest more does and less bucks to bring the ratio back the optimum amount.

Habitat management is closely linked to herd management because the ratios that herd management are based upon are dictated by the quality and size of the habitat available. For a deer to reach its optimal potential it requires a diet that consists of twelve to eighteen percent protein and adequate amount of calcium, phosphorous, and other minerals. If the property does not have a sufficient amount of nutritional foliage then the hunter or manager can supplement the natural vegetation with food plots or feeding stations. A food plot is usually between a one and three acres in size and provides supplementary vegetation, such as alfalfa, rye, clover, and soybeans, that is a quantifiable nutritional improvement over the natural vegetation. A feeding station is another way to improve the nutritional benefits provided to the deer. Many of the stations are nothing more than a drum filled with corn or commercialized bagged feed that is dispersed by a timer. Either of these two methods will increase the habitats nutritional value thus increasing the carrying capacity of the property.  

Hunter management is probably that most difficult to control due to the fact that most people have differing opinions on what makes a “harvestable” deer. If a standard could be set, accepted, and enforced many of the deer that would have been harvested before their prime would be able to reach their potential thus adding to the quality and heartiness of the herd.  However with small a property size hunter selection may not be as effective because deer have been known to roam several square miles. Consequently the deer might venture onto a property that may not have the same ideals that a QDM property owner may have and would be harvested prematurely.  With this in mind hunters and property owners that practice QDM should recruit the surrounding owners to observe QDM practices as well.

Herd monitoring is a way of tracking the progress of the QDM. With an adequate amount of data one can find tendencies and forecast their deer herd’s development. There are two types of data collection harvest and observation collection.  Harvest collection the data recordings of every harvested deer. One may want to record weight, age, sex, date, harvest location, hunter’s name, and any other viable piece of information they deem crucial. Observation data can provide different types of information such as herd size, fawn rate, sex ratio, age ratio, and overall success of the program. Observation data can be collected by glassing, physically viewing at the herd though binoculars or with the naked eye, or with trail cameras.     

With the increase in QDM over the past decade many sportsmen feel that the sport of hunting is turning into an obsession with antler size.  They argue that with the strict minimums on rack size and the glorification by television personalities the sport is turning way from its roots and becoming more of an elitist’s community. The days of hunting for the pure fun of the hunt is dying and being replaced with a sense of hierarchical smugness that if a deer does not meet certain criteria it is somehow deemed unethical.

I have sensed this trend myself through the many articles, such as How Much Does Size Matter? by Doug Howett in the July issue of Peterson's Hunting as well as The Dark Side Of Deer Managment by Bill Winke in the July issue of Peterson's Bowhunting,I have read, however I don’t consider QDM is to blame. I believe that this arrogance has been cultivating within people all along. The hunting community is no different from any other population of people in that we always try to one up each other. Whether it’s in sports, our career, or our personal life people always try to out due the next guy. It just so happens that QDM is trying to produce high quality deer which in turn feeds right into our natural instinct to best the each other. QDM at its core only strives for a healthier deer population for us to harvest, however people have turned that into a competition to see how big they can get their deer.  As for this notion that QDM is the reason why the sport is turning into an elitist community it’s truly ridiculous. To find the true reason why the sport has shifted one only has to look in the mirror.