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I’d rather actually see a 2 buck and 3 doe limit.
Let that hate out Gene....it will keep you from getting an ulcer. LOL
I hope Newton gets a head count on how many here make the meeting next Wednesday...
Many things to do.
Knots to be unraveled
'fore the darkness falls on you
Many things to do.
Knots to be unraveled
'fore the darkness falls on you
But not in North Florida, where we have all the deer we can want. Here our biggest biological problem is an out-of-wack buck-to-doe ratio that stifles rutting activity in many localities. In most areas, there are far more does than bucks. The natural ratio should be near 50:50. The goal shouldn't be to create a herd of breeder does that are constantly pushing out fawns to get shot when they hit 2 1/2. The goal should be a balanced herd where the bucks have to fight and travel for the does. Far better to allow extra doe harvest and a little less buck harvest to balance things out.
Before the "Florida is different" argument comes out, remember Georgia just north of us has identical habitat in the south part of the state as the north part of the Florida peninsula, and they support a doe harvest of 10 does per hunter.
I thought the point of DMUs was to be able to have rules tailored to each region.
Very bad idea not to have physical tags involved. Its going to make enforcement almost impossible, ultimately turning into an honor system, which only benefits the dishonorable. I will not support it as a prosecutor unless it has a strictly enforced physical tag requirement.
Make it easy to identify violators and LEO and the courts to weed them out....and it's a win / win for the legal hunters and the resource.
Many things to do.
Knots to be unraveled
'fore the darkness falls on you
GUARANTEED!
"1. All deer harvested must be recorded in a harvest log and reported to the Commission’s harvest reporting system within 24 hours of harvest and prior to final processing, prior to any parts of the deer being transferred to any meat processor or taxidermist, or prior to leaving the state.
2. Prior to moving a deer from the point of harvest, the person that harvested the deer shall record in a harvest log: the first and last name of the person who harvested it; the date of harvest; the county or, if applicable name of public hunting area where harvested; and the sex.
3. An FWC-issued customer number is required for reporting harvested deer."
If a log system is going to be the primary tool of enforcement, they're going to have to codify failure to have the log on you at all times an infraction in and of itself and a requirement that hunters be able to produce the log on command like their license*. Its going to be much easier to lose or accidentally destroy a log than it is a tag. So they're going to have to figure out whether a hunter can print a new log every time they go hunting or whether they have to keep one log all season, and what the remedy is going to be for the hunter that honestly loses or damages his log.
They can make this so much cleaner and simpler and not doomed to failure. Issue tags upon purchasing of license and deer stamp. Require all harvested deer be tagged immediately upon recovery. Require said deer be reported before cleaning. Totally skip the log paperwork. If some WMAs need not have doe harvest, indicate a doe tag isn't valid in that WMA. Otherwise let the hunter spend his tags wherever public or private. But once they're gone, they're gone and your season is over. Most people will never fill all 5 tags and will therefore have a full hunting season. Simple.
*As written, the argument is going to have to be that failure to maintain the log falls under a level 1 wildlife violation (civil infraction) under this provision:
"Rules or orders of the commission relating to the filing of reports or other documents required to be filed by persons who hold any recreational licenses and permits or any alligator licenses and permits issued by the commission."
Its not clear that failing to log in the harvest is a failure to "file" the report.
It could be a level 2 violation (2nd Misdemeanor) if it falls under the catch all provision for a rule not otherwise specified for punishment.
This all really needs to be streamlined and clarified if its going to work. Making it more complicated is going to doom it.
But once the dishonest hunter spends a physical tag, the tag is gone. Sure, he'll keep it in his pocket until he sees the LEO coming and try to get home without tagging the deer. But once the LEO checks him, that's one less tag our dishonest hunter has, assuming our dishonest hunter is fast enough to tag the deer before the LEO catches him. If the deer makes it to the back of the truck untagged, then he really has no way out once the LEO sees the untagged deer in the back. Either way, he's eventually going to run out of his tags he's being forced to use, then he'll be in the woods with no tags in his pockets, which is going to encourage him to stay home or risk being caught with a deer with no way to tag it.
Logs are going to require LEOs to go back and check to make sure each deer they've checked via log has been actually reported in within 24 hours before they can determine whether the law has been complied with or not. That's going to be a huge burden on wildlife officers. They're going to have to keep their own records then go back and check 20 or 30 deer at the end of the weekend thru the system. That's asinine.
Is your deer tagged? Yes or no. Did you report it before cleaning it? Yes or no. Simple checks. Simple yes or no whether a violation occurred.
Spangler, if you want more doe tags during gun then you might think about trying to get less doe hunting during archery season, if it allows either sex during archery. And if the new limits pass maybe this will help get more doe tags on some WMA's down the road.
As it is now we have way to much doe harvest going on in most parts of Florida. I know some parts of the Panhandle can handle this but most parts of Florida can not. And once you shoot your doe herd down it takes many years for it to come back.
That would be Bullfrog's rules in his kingdom.
Any system you come up with will never stop all violators no matter how much money you throw at it.
I have my own antidotal story. We kept a 1500 acre club in the NE for 6 years bordering the Osceola. The first couple of years harvest numbers were meh. The previous club didn't shoot many does and it looked like what you'd expect a WMA to look like, lots of does everywhere with few bucks. We ended up getting doe tags and started thinning the does severely. Sucking them out of the management area like a sponge. Our buck population skyrocketed because they moved into the areas the does dominated. Yes, does dominate bucks over browsing habitat. By the time we were done we were taking 20 deer a year, an equal ratio of bucks to does. Never had such good hunting in Florida.
If you're killing does beyond their 50% ratio they would naturally be kept at, yes that's a problem. But much of Florida is dominated by the old fashioned mentality of treating deer like cattle where one buck acts as a bull to service a large herd of does. Biologically that's not possible. It takes a buck about two to three days per hot doe to breed her. He won't leave her until she isn't receptive anymore. That's why many places in Florida don't have defined ruts. The does come into heat at the same time, but there's only a couple of mature bucks around to service them. So most don't get bred and they cycle in the next month, and the next month, and so on until they get bred, stretching the rut into a half-year cycle.
Its a fact that bucks and does are dropped in about a 50% ratio. In a state of nature, they're be roughly half and half of each sex, with a slight preference for more bucks because they don't get preyed on as heavily by natural predators when they're in their prime.
I agree that anywhere that thinning does out to lower than 50% of the herd is not good. But where in Florida is the herd that in balance in favor of bucks so as to risk tipping the scales towards not having enough does to go around?
Rules that only burden the already honest hunter, that will not be practically enforceable against the dishonest hunter, are not only wasteful, I think they're ethically/morally wrong. For this to work, the rules MUST be designed so that they can cleanly and efficiently pop someone when they try to cheat the system. That's the only way. It doesn't matter if the majority of hunters will follow them just because. The majority isn't killing most of the deer. A small minority is killing most of the deer. Its that minority you have to make comply. Unfortunately there's a lot of overlap, too much overlap, between those hunters who know what they're doing in the woods in terms of efficiently killing deer and also having the mentality of "I should kill what I want when I want, **** the rules."
Hopefully the new regs will help this situation somewhat.
I'm not clear whether the log is supposed to be the same log you carry out with you every time you go afield that's going be printed from an FWC source, or whether the log is any piece of paper you want it to be so long as you're writing down your kill for that particular hunt.