Arizona Hunt Guidelines

The Arizona Deer Association is formulating comments to provide to AGFD regarding their hunt guidelines.  Hunt guidelines are designed to provide an overall framework to make decisions regarding deer management in the state.  AGFD opens those guidelines up to public comment every two years.  The comments below are what the ADA will be providing to AGFD June 17 at the Payson public meeting.  This is a first draft and we are continuing to work on these guidelines.  If you have suggestions, please email our president, Jeff Dickey.

The propose hunt guidelines can be reviewed and downloaded at http://www.azgfd.gov/pdfs/h_f/guidelines/HuntGuidelines2010-2012draftJune22009.pdf

You can provide feedback to us, or send your comments directly to AGFD.

ADA Deer Guideline discussions

 Introduction:

1. Hunter satisfaction is a key issue when considering harvest allocations.  Arizona is a changing landscape as increasingly private lands become unavailable to hunters via urbanization or blocked access and federal lands are converted to non-hunting lands such as Monuments.  Allocation of harvest quotas need to take this into consideration and strategies such as stratified hunts used to avoid unacceptable hunter densities.  It might be useful to address this in the light of a maximum hunter density that would be allowable without stratification.
2. The Hunt Guideline Approaches need to recognize that many species are at low population levels and efforts need to be made to increase populations and that efforts to “Maximize hunter opportunities” and “increasing opportunity”  may not be appropriate in the absence of any statement regarding restoring populations to socially and biologically acceptable levels.

 General Deer Guidelines:

1. Here again, is providing “maximum” permit allocations appropriate in light of relatively low population levels? 
2. There is no statement in this preamble regarding population management; it all focuses on harvest.  It seems that a positive statement about taking steps to aid in restoring population levels may be appropriate.
3. The buck:doe and hunt success ratios seem to be too low and optimizes participation.  Hunter satisfaction may be looked at as a sliding scale; one level of satisfaction is achieved by obtaining a permit, with the level of satisfaction growing as a buck is harvested and even more so when a large buck is harvested.  The guidelines optimize participation, perhaps at the expense of a higher level of satisfaction.  As a starting point, raising the buck:doe and hunt success by 5% in each category would be prudent in increasing higher level satisfaction and improving age structure in the deer herd.

 Alternate Deer Guidelines:

1. It is clear that the three groups of units in the Alternate Guidelines are different and by listing them as one is confusing.  Reading the instructions, virtually all of them apply only to units 12A and B.  In general, the later two groups of units are more passively managed while 12A and B are intensively managed.  As a minimum, separate 12A and B from the other two hunt structures.  This is further justified based on the substantially different biological background among these hunt groups.
2. Particularly as it relates to the 12 A and B units, it is important to establish a population goal for this unit.  The ADA believes that a reasonable and obtainable growth rate for this unit is 5-7% growth during the two years covered by the current guidelines.
3. Prior research has demonstrated the importance of yearling buck weights as an indicator of habitat conditions.  It is important to maximize the collection of these data.
4. The alternative guideline instructions seem to be quite negative in tone.  As examples, while it is true that low fawn; doe ratios may reflect inadequate forage base on the winter range as stated, but there are other explanations for low fawn:doe ratios such as an extreme winter or an epizootic event which would have an affect on this parameter completely independent on overall habitat conditions.  Further, while low buck weights may also indicate low quality habitat, again, alternate explanations exist and much be considered.  The opposite of these conditions may occur and then it would be possible to increase populations, but this is not mentioned.  For clarity, it might help to rewrite this to avoid a focus on a single factor and as it says in the first sentence, consider all available data without predisposing the reader/applicator to seize upon increased harvest without careful evaluation of all available data.

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