Hunting Archery Duck Deer

The first of the fall deer hunting seasons is set to open on Sept. 15 with the start of archery deer hunting. The early archery season runs Sept. 15 through Nov. 15 and the late archery season runs Nov. 26 through Jan. 6, 2008. Archery hunting in both Chronic Wasting Disease management zones is open continuously Sept. 15-Jan. 6, 2007.

State wildlife officials say the statewide preseason white-tailed deer population projection is between 1.6 to 1.8 million animals, which should provide plenty of opportunity for hunters who have scouted hunting spots, renewed permissions from landowners if they hunt on private lands, and have equipment ready.

“Deer hunting opportunity should be great again this season,” said Keith Warnke, deer and bear ecologist with the state Department of Natural Resources. “Hunters put in a great effort last year and archers set a new state harvest record for bow-killed deer. The potential is good again this year as populations are above goals in most deer management units across the state and there are an unlimited number of inexpensive antlerless deer tags available for all herd control and earn-a-buck units.

“But remember, high deer populations don’t make them any easier to kill. Deer will still use the best available habitat and they continue to make every effort to avoid hunters. To be a successful hunter requires scouting and patience.”

With the exception of the statewide youth deer hunt on Oct. 6 and 7, and the CWD units, there is no gun deer hunting in October again this year. This is the second year of a trial moratorium on October gun hunting and archers who do their scouting should be successful in filling earn-a buck requirements.

The return of October gun hunting hinges on meeting a two antlerless deer for every buck ratio in herd control and earn-a-buck units. Hunters met that goal in the central forest area last year but fell short in other areas. “It will take well more than two to one antlerless to antlered ratio this year in herd control units (not including EAB) or October gun hunting will return in 2008.”

Hunters can donate extra venison to the venison donation program so nothing goes to waste, remind officials. Details of the donation program are available on the DNR Web site and at DNR service centers. Due to impending budget cuts there will not be a donation program for deer from the CWD zones.

“Each archery license will come with an antlerless carcass tag good in any herd control or EAB unit in the state,” Warnke says. “And there are unlimited inexpensive antlerless tags for the herd control and EAB units available over-the-counter. For those archery hunters who also gun hunt and plan on gun hunting in an EAB unit, archery season is a great time to prequalify for a buck sticker. That way you can hit the woods opening morning of the gun deer season with a buck sticker in your pocket giving you the option of shooting any deer of your choice right off the bat.”

Archers need to keep in mind that in any area of the state where a firearm deer season is open, including the regular nine-day hunt, muzzleloader season, Oct. 7-8 youth hunt, December four-day antlerless only hunt or CWD hunts, all hunters except water fowl hunters must meet blaze orange clothing requirements. Officials also remind hunters to be careful in the use of tree stands.

The 2007 deer hunting regulations are available on the Department of Natural Resources Web site and at DNR service centers as well as most license vendors.

Turkey vultures house-hunting in Sask.

A farmer ran in terror from an abandoned farmhouse on his land earlier this summer.

New residents had taken over the house — giant turkey vultures. The birds have a six-foot wingspan, look like chubby hunchbacks and eat the dead.

“The vulture jumped out from the top of the stairs,” said Dr. Stuart Houston, a Saskatchewan bird expert. “(The farmer) got the living daylights scared out of him.”

Houston has chased birds for 65 years and turkey vultures are the latest in his ornithological adventure. The population is on the rise in recent years.

“They are hellishly big birds, and ugly as sin up close, but they are beautiful in flight,” said Houston. “They fly with grace and soar like gliders on the thermals.”

The protected birds have been taking up residence in old, abandoned farmhouses and using them to nest instead of traditional nesting locations like caves.

Observers noticed the farmhouse phenomenon in 2002. Three pairs of turkey vultures set up shop in farmhouses in the Saskatoon area. Houston said it was a rare change in the usual habit of the animal. Caves are exceedingly hard to find, so the birds are turning closets and attics into makeshift abodes.

“It was just what the vulture ordered,” said Houston.

A house also offers better protection for eggs. The birds don’t make nests with twigs and brush or soft materials. In a house they lay eggs on hardwood, cardboard or concrete, Houston said.

Houston and his team are tagging the vultures to study migration habits and learn more about the life cycle.

Last week, the team ventured into houses that smelled of rotting carrion — a staple of the vulture diet. Coveralls and a gas mask were needed to make it through the lair with sinuses relatively untraumatized.

The scientists know the vultures soar during the day, riding the hot air stream rising from the earth. The osprey can fly across the United States in less than two days, but the vulture is slower, travelling approximately 300 miles per day.

“They’ve got better union hours. They start at 10 in the morning and stop at five in the afternoon,” said Houston.

The team has tagged 40 vultures this summer, and a total of 180 over the past four years. Birds with Houston’s tags have been spotted in Venezuela, North Dakota, Florida and Montana.

Lorne Scott, a Regina-area farmer and conservationist, invited Houston to tag the vultures on his farmland last weekend.

“He’s the foremost ornithologist in Saskatchewan,” said Scott.

People should not shoot the birds when driving past them on the road. The vultures save authorities money by cleaning carcasses off the side of the road, according to Houston.

Banding efforts have proven useful in the past. His work helped track pesticide poisoning of Swainson hawks in the 1990s.

If you have a son or daughter between the ages of 12 and 15, who might be interested in real duck hunting there are some the folks who’d like to talk with you.

The 2007 Youth Hunt will be held at Pointe Mouillee on the morning of Sept. 15.

This special hunt is designed to open well before the actual regular Michigan duck hunting season and the participants generally have lots of great shooting. On top of that, it’s free.

Plus, after the morning hunt at Pointe Mouillee, the kids are welcome to join in these activities to also be held there:

•After Hunt BBQ Lunch

•Duck Cleaning Demonstration

•Duck-Goose calling demonstration

•Lots of prizes to be given away to the young hunters

Matthew LaCombe, President of GDHA asks, “Do you know of a Youth who does not have an opportunity to participate in the 2007 Michigan State Youth Waterfowl Hunt Weekend but would enjoy doing so? Please read on.”

Volunteers from the Gibraltar Duck Hunters Association will be available to provide young hunters with an opportunity to participate in the Youth Hunt. No Boat, No Decoys, No Problem!

One legal guardian or responsible party must accompany each youth attending this event. Each youth must be 12 to 15 years of age with a Hunters Safety Certificate and a valid Small Game License to participate in the Michigan State Youth Waterfowl Hunt.

To set up a hunt for a youth or if you have any questions regarding the event please contact Matthew LaCombe at 313-414-1001.

This is a well-run activity where the emphasis is always on safety, especially for the kids.

I would allow my grandkids to hunt with these guys if they were only old enough. However it’s up to you as a parent or guardian to get those kids to a hunter safety program and make sure they have proper licenses.

In preparation for this year’s coastal deer hunting season, early scouters are checking their favorite spots.

There is plenty of grass, but very little water as many creeks are dried up.

That will affect some of the deer concentrations.

Napa County does not have the population it had 30 years ago, but we seem to have stabilized at a low level about one third of what it used to be.

Around humans, deer seem to adjust.

Silverado is a good example. But most of our local deer hunting takes place in the hills of Pope Valley, Berryessa, private ranches in Chiles and Knights Valleys, and the Knoxville Wildlife Area.

So what are the early reports? I’ve now heard from three local hunters who have been hiking and trying to analyze the population.

All three of my friends who spent a few days out last week saw deer and some bucks, though one only saw a small spike for nine hours afield.

All three said the populations were about the same as the last few years.

The one who was hiking in Pope Valley saw a mountain lion and some coyote. The young turkeys are out discovering the world through their mothers.

We will keep you posted.

Agricultural damage caused by wild turkeys is nothing new in parts of Middle and West Tennessee. Now crop depredation via the big birds has made its way to Powell.I know. It’s my crop that has been depredated.

In the grand scheme of the state’s farming industry my losses aren’t that big, but then neither is the “flock” of turkeys doing the depredating. The tally: Four rows of corn in my garden were all but pecked away by the single hen turkey that’s been living near my house the past three years.

The hen appears to be the last survivor of six turkeys which showed up in 2004. Although all six were hens, I figured there had to be a gobbler out there somewhere and it wouldn’t be long before turkey hunting was no farther away than the woods behind the house.

Three years later there’s only the one lonely hen that makes her living getting handouts, scratching around bird feeders and eating my corn.

While my flock is struggling to grow, Tennessee’s turkey hunters struggled through a tougher-than-expected season.

But keep in mind, struggle is a relative term.

Tennessee hunters killed 31,061 turkeys during the season that ended three weeks ago, short of the record 35,807 bagged in 2006. The culprit is most likely the cold snap that during April all but wiped out everything from mast crops to turkeys wanting to gobble.

But turkey-hunting success isn’t always a numbers game.

For Ernie Connor a big year was had with his first bird of the season: An albino turkey that was all pink and white except for a jet-black beard.

As turkey flocks continue to grow, oddball birds - bearded hens, turkeys with lots of white, etc. - have become more common. But true albinos usually don’t last long once they leave the egg and biologists say the odds are heavily against an albino turkey living to be an adult.

Numbers definitely weren’t foremost in the mind of Daniel Overbey, grandson of former state representative and state champion archer H.E. Bittle.

Following in his grandfather’s footsteps the freshman-to-be at Webb spent all his time in the turkey woods with a bow in his hand. With his granddad doing the calling he had a couple of almost-but-not-quite hunts, finally getting his gobbler a few days before the season ended.

“It was his eighth turkey, but his first with a bow,” Bittle said. Daniel is good enough to have already earned a place on the pro staffs of Mothwing Camo and Matthews.

But sometimes numbers do matter, and Benny Collins of Middlesboro, Ky., continues to set the pace when it comes to bagging turkeys.

For the seventh year in a row Collins completed the “Hillbilly Slam” by taking his limit in Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Collins, who is on the Primos pro staff, got his nine birds, then spent the majority of the spring helping other hunters get a bird.

The number that matters now is 293.

It’s 293 days until the youth turkey hunt next spring. I know there are an ever-increasing number of fall-hunting opportunities in Tennessee, but to me hunting turkeys in the fall is like playing football in the spring: It don’t feel right.

So I’ll occupy myself practicing turkey calls, buying turkey-hunting stuff and figuring how to keep that hen out of my garden.

Bob Hodge covers outdoors. He may be reached at hodge@knews.com or 865-342-6314

Practically everything at the Trexler Nature Preserve — formerly the Trexler-Lehigh County Game Preserve — generates controversy. The decision by Lehigh County to allow limited archery hunting on part of the preserve is doing the same. It shouldn’t. This is a common-sense step toward responsible stewardship of the land and the wildlife there.

Last week, County Executive Don Cunningham announced that the county is ready to sign an agreement with the Pennsylvania Game Commission to enroll a 471-acre portion of the preserve known as the North Range in the commission’s Safety Zone access program. The commission will patrol the area, enforce game laws and improve access roads and parking. The North Range is separated from Game Lands 205 by Mill Creek Road.

The biggest news to come out of this year’s spring turkey hunting season has nothing to do with the number of turkeys killed, but rather with how few hunters were hurt. For the first time in 35 years, the spring turkey season’s accident toll fell to two.

Safety has been an issue since the first modern turkey season in 1960. With turkey numbers increasing, the Missouri Conservation Commission approved a three-day hunting season with a limit of one. By 1963, when the Conservation Department began keeping records of turkey hunting accidents, the season had been expanded to four days, and there were 1,778 licensed hunters. There was also one firearms-related turkey hunting accident, in which a hunter lost his life.

Over the years, turkeys grew more numerous, and so did hunters. Between 1970 and 1972 turkey hunter numbers doubled, from 10,000 to 20,000. During the early history of Missouri’s turkey season, the number of turkey hunting accidents averaged fewer than two per year. Some years there were none.

Then in 1973 the number exploded to 16. After that, the toll gradually increased to a peak of 29 in 1988. It is no coincidence that hunter education became mandatory that year.

“The number of hunting accidents overall had become a serious concern,” said Hunter Education Coordinator Bryan Bethel. “Turkey hunting accidents weren’t the only reason, but they certainly were part of what led to mandatory hunter education.”

Since 1988, anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 1967, has been required to successfully complete an approved hunter education course that includes firearms and hunting safety. Last year Missouri certified its 1 millionth hunter education graduate.

The results have been as dramatic as the conditions that led to mandatory hunter education. From 1979 through 1988, the number of reported spring turkey hunting accidents averaged 18 per year. From 1998 through 2007, the average has been 6.9.

Even more impressive than the reduction in accidents per year is the decline in the number of accidents per hunter. In 1972 there were only two spring turkey hunting accidents, approximately one per 10,000 hunters. The worst years on record were 1961 and 1973, when the Conservation Department recorded approximately one accident for every 1,800 spring turkey hunters. In contrast, this year’s average was approximately one per 75,000 hunters, about 40 times fewer than in the bad old days before mandatory hunter education.

“We still have some bad years,” said Bethel. “As recently as 2004, we had nine spring turkey hunting accidents, including one fatality. But the number of accidents per hunter has dropped dramatically, and the trend is downward. When we have a year like this, you can almost foresee the time when more than 100,000 hunters go

Landowners looking to enroll in the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP), which is designed to help landowners manage deer on their properties, have until July 1 to submit an application addressed to “DMAP Application” to the appropriate Game Commission Region Office.

In addition, a map delineating the property boundaries must be enclosed with the application. Landowners may obtain DMAP applications from the Game Commission’s website (http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/) by clicking on the “DMAP” icon in the center of the homepage. Applications also can be obtained from any Game Commission Region Office or the Harrisburg headquarters.

Eligible lands for DMAP are: public lands; private lands where no fee is charged for hunting; and hunting club lands owned in fee title so long as the club was established prior to Jan. 1, 2000, and they provide a club charter and list of current members to the agency. Previously, private hunting clubs were required to own a minimum of 1,000 contiguous acres before being eligible.

Coupons for DMAP antlerless deer harvest permits may be issued to landowners at a rate of one coupon for every five acres in agricultural operations or one coupon for every 50 acres for all other land uses. Management plans will be required only when an applicant for DMAP requests more than the standard rate for issuance of DMAP harvest permits.

Landowners must designate their boundaries in a manner approved by the Game Commission. Landowners will receive one coupon for each DMAP permit allocated for their property, and they may give up to two DMAP coupons per DMAP area to a 2006-07 licensed hunter, who will then apply to the Game Commission for DMAP harvest permits. Landowners may not charge or accept any remuneration for a DMAP coupon. Hunters may possess up to two DMAP permits for a specific DMAP property in any given license year.

DMAP permit allotments will be made separate from the general antlerless deer license allocations, and will be $10 for residents and $35 for nonresidents.

After August 1, hunters can begin to apply for DMAP antlerless deer permits. Also on August 1, a listing of DMAP properties that have available coupons will be posted on the agency’s website (http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/). Those without access to the Internet can obtain listings by mailing a self- addressed, stamped envelope along with a letter indicating their county of interest, to the Game Commission Region Office responsible for that particular county. Region Office contact information, and a listing of counties in their jurisdiction, is as follows:

Northwest Region Office, P.O. Box 31, Franklin, PA 16323. 814-432-3188. Butler, Clarion, Crawford, Erie, Forest, Jefferson, Lawrence, Mercer, Venango and Warren counties.

Southwest Region Office, 4820 Route 711, Bolivar, PA 15923. 724-238-9523. Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Cambria, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

Northcentral Region Office, P.O. Box 5038, Jersey Shore, PA 17740. 570-398-4744. Cameron, Centre, Clearfield, Clinton, Elk, Lycoming, McKean, Potter, Tioga, and Union counties.

Southcentral Region Office, 8627 William Penn Highway, Huntingdon, PA 16652. 814-643-1831. Adams, Bedford, Blair, Cumberland, Franklin, Fulton, Huntingdon, Juniata, Mifflin, Perry and Snyder counties.

Northeast Region Office, P.O. Box 220, Dallas, PA 18612. 570-675-1143. Bradford, Carbon, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe, Montour, Northumberland, Pike, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties.

Southeast Region Office, 448 Snyder Rd., Reading, PA 19605. 610-926-3136. Berks, Bucks, Chester, Dauphin, Delaware, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Montgomery, Northampton, Philadelphia, Schuylkill and York counties.

Created in 1895 as an independent state agency, the Game Commission is responsible for conserving and managing all wild birds and mammals in the Commonwealth, establishing hunting seasons and bag limits, enforcing hunting and trapping laws, and managing habitat on the 1.4 million acres of State Game Lands it has purchased over the years with hunting and furtaking license dollars to safeguard wildlife habitat. The agency also conducts numerous wildlife conservation programs for schools, civic organizations and sportsmen’s clubs.

The Game Commission does not receive any general state taxpayer dollars for its annual operating budget. The agency is funded by license sales revenues; the state’s share of the federal Pittman-Robertson program, which is an excise tax collected through the sale of sporting arms and ammunition; and monies from the sale of oil, gas, coal, timber and minerals derived from State Game Lands.

Note to Editors: If you would like to receive Game Commission news releases via e-mail, please send a note with your name, address, telephone number and the name of the organization you represent to: PGCNews@state.pa.us.

For Information Contact: Jerry Feaser 717-705-6541 PGCNEWS@state.pa.u

COLUMBUS, OH - Ohio archery hunters will have expanded deer hunting opportunities this fall, under new regulations recently approved by the Ohio Wildlife Council.

Archery hunters can take additional antlerless deer September 29 to November 25 by purchasing additional antlerless deer permits. Under the new regulation, hunters can take one additional antlerless deer in Zone A, up to two additional in Zone B and up to three additional in Zone C.

Archery hunters will still be required to buy a regular deer permit before purchasing any antlerless deer permits. The antlerless permits, formerly known as urban deer permits, will also be valid for controlled deer hunts and for hunting deer in an urban unit. Antlerless deer permits will cost $15 each.

Deer-gun season will open November 26 and run through December 2. For the second year, hunters will have an additional weekend to hunt whitetails with a gun, December 15-16.

Statewide muzzleloader season will open December 27, and run through December 30. Early muzzleloader hunts will open October 22 through October 27 at Salt Fork, Shawnee and Wildcat Hollow. Muzzleloader hunts at these areas are by special permit only, with a random drawing held prior to the season for a limited number of antlered and an unlimited number of antlerless permits.

The state’s three deer-hunting zones remain in place. A three-deer limit (Zone C) will cover 38 central, south, southeastern and southwestern counties. The 30 mid-state counties of Zone B will have a two-deer limit, and the 20 northwestern counties of Zone A will have a one-deer limit. A hunter may take only one buck in Ohio, regardless of zone, hunting method or season.

The youth deer-gun season is set for November 17-18. Young hunters can bag only one deer of either sex in any county of Ohio during this special season. Any deer taken will be part of the young hunter’s total season limit.

Concealed-carry permit holders may carry a concealed handgun while hunting deer, wild turkey, and all other game after September 1. However, wild animals cannot be hunted with a concealed-carry licensed handgun.