Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411230030
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Let the little bucks walk. If you just let the yearling bucks - the typical four-pointer, six-pointer and in some cases eight-pointer here in Bedford County - survive to the next year, in effect, what you have next year is a quality management program."
That is one of the messages of the Deer Management Assistance Program, succinctly known as DMAP. Started a half-dozen years ago by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the program has 361 participants, ranging from individual landowners to hunt clubs with scores of members. When the general firearms deer season opens today, more than 1 million acres of deer habitat will be under the program.
Jeffries is a wildlife biologist supervisor for the department. His district covers 10 counties, including major deer counties such as Bedford, Botetourt and Franklin. He has 30 DMAP participants, and some of them can expect to get their sights on better-quality bucks this season because of the program.
"They are all interested in the program," Jeffries said, "but some do a little bit better job of following through with harvest strategies through the years and their rewards have been paying off handsomely."
Cooperators in the program receive free technical assistance from a wildlife biologist, who sets management goals for the property. But the participants have their share of work, too, such as removing jaw bones from the deer they kill for age-tracking purposes and collecting other weight and measurement data. In many instances, participants engage in land management practices that provide more wildlife food and cover on their property.
"Most say they want to manage for trophy bucks," said Jeffries. "The first thing I say is, 'Let's manage for quality bucks.' Managing for a true trophy, a Boone and Crockett trophy, is going to be a major task, because you need bucks that will survive to the 51/2 years age bracket."
The initial task in the process is to instill a discipline in participants that will overcome the "blast anything with horns" philosophy. The idea is to give younger bucks an opportunity to mature.
"Coming in second place, and close behind, is maintaining an adequate level of doe harvest in order to keep your herd growth in check," Jeffries said.
In many instances, cooperators are going to be told to kill more does, because the herd exceeds the carrying capacity of the habitat. They often will get extra tags to get the job done, with doe day becoming every day on DMAP property.
"Although fewer deer may be seen, a greater number of these sightings will be antlered deer," Jeffries said.
For DMAP to work to its fullest, Jeffries has found that the management area in the southwest Piedmont must be a minimum of 750 to 1,000 contiguous acres. Either a landowner or a club needs to be in control of that much property or several landowners need to band together under the DMAP concept, he said.
If hunters on the next property are going to blast every buck that moves, then it does little good for a DMAP cooperator to pass up a young buck, Jeffries said.
"One hunter [in Bedford County] watched two yearlings go by, jump over the boundary fence, then promptly were killed," he said. That cooperator asked to be removed from the program, but stayed on with a different management goal.
"People have to cooperate," said Matt Knox, deer research biologist for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
"If you own 200 acres in Botetourt County and you are passing up small bucks and your neighbors aren't, you aren't going to get anything done," he said. "If you pass up a small buck and know that your neighbors aren't going to shoot it, you are going to get something done."
There is no instant gratification when it comes to building big bucks, Knox said. It takes time, and it requires reasonable expectations, but it can work.
"You can go to the Radford arsenal and see it is working," he said. "Why do you see so many big bucks there? Because they don't shoot little bucks. It is most obvious."
Even when you increase your percentage of mature bucks, never expect trophy hunting to become easy, Knox said.
"This is the part most deer hunters don't want to admit, because everybody likes to think he is the greatest deer hunter ever to step into the woods," he said. "When you grow a big deer, it is hard to kill. These deer just don't walk out in front of deer hunters and get killed. You have to hunt and hunt to kill them."
by CNB