Where Can I Hunt? Game Management Plans Explained
In today’s post, we’re going to continue expanding on the state of Box to better understand how game management agencies decide how to assign hunter’s the rights (i.e. tags, to be explained later) to pursue a certain species in a specific area of the state. This understanding is very important, as it will allow us to grasp the various ways that state game agencies decide who has the right to purchase a tag. Throughout this post, we will work in a few definitions of terms that get thrown around that are difficult to grasp for those new to hunting or understand for out of state hunters.
First, let’s revisit the two items that we wanted to answer following the last post that covered how states can be split up into units, areas, regions or zones:
How do state game management departments determine how many animals can be taken in a specific Unit (i.e. how many tags can be distributed to hunters in a specific unit)?
How do state game management departments decide who has the legal right to pursue the animals in each unit - what are the rules for obtaining a tag?
These questions are posed in a meaningful order. First and foremost, game management agencies have to decide how healthy an animal population is in a certain area of the state. America’s game management practice is unique to the world and focuses heavily on making sure that there are sustainable populations of wildlife on a landscape that are both in balance with the given ecosystem as well as other needs of the land they reside. What could be a sustainable population number for one species could, with the same population number of animals, spell doom for another species.
Take for example the passenger pigeon. The passenger pigeon’s population dynamics required hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of specimen within a very confined landscape area in order for the population to continue on and thrive. For all species, there exists a number (among other critical ecological factors) below which the species will not continue to reproduce - ultimately leading to extinction.
In this post, we will be covering the first question - How do state game management departments determine how many animals can be taken in a specific Unit?
Keeping with the example of passenger pigeons, say the species requires millions of members to keep the population alive, while conversely the mountain lion requires just a few hundred in a large area of land to maintain the species. These are two extremes of the spectrum, but take from these examples the idea that given the presence of mankind on a landscape and mankind’s desired use of the land as well as the intrinsic value of the land that there can be three ranges of population levels of every species on a landscape - optimal, sub-optimal and over-abundant. These ranges can be both micro and macro level, meaning they can be applied to an area the size of a county all the way up to an area the size of an entire continent. This is not to say that every animal population depends on the definitions and value of mankind, but instead focuses on the fact that mankind is a major influence of all environments that it inhabits and that means that mankind shoulders the responsibility to make sure that wild ecosystems continue to thrive. Let’s pause for some definitions:
Sub-optimal: The animal species is at a level that puts it at risk of being wiped out on the landscape and within a certain ecosystem. Species that are at sub-optimal levels will almost never have a time period where it is legal for humans to harvest the species due to the low population levels. Sometimes, in dire circumstances, these species are put under management of the Endangered Species Act at which time Federal agencies takes over the management of the species.
Optimal: A species that has a population level that would be deemed optimal means that the population is healthy, self-sustaining and has a proper balance with mankind’s presence on a landscape. The last point is one of nuance - as there are different expectations of a population of animals in the suburbs versus out in a designated wilderness area. Even if a specie’s population is within the optimal range it doesn’t mean that management practices are without contention. Species within the Optimal range are generally managed by state wildlife agencies, and individuals have the ability to pursue these animals on a hunt (given that they are a game species).
Over-abundant: A species that is over-abundant on a landscape is generally a species that is present in such large numbers that it is unnatural causing issues stemming from negative consequences with humans (see vehicle-deer collision stats in the state of Iowa) to damaging an ecosystem. The reason for a species becoming over-abundant can range from the disappearance of predators (amazing video on How Wolves Change Rivers as an example from Yellowstone) to the species just being able to adapt extremely well to human inventions like the city (hey there Common Pigeon). Either way, the species winds up propagating itself so much that it actually becomes unhealthy. Common side effects from a species that is over-abundant include disease spread to total ecosystem destruction. A species that is over-abundant almost certainly has some sort of management plan put on it, and will oftentimes lead a state agencies to pay for the culling of the species (see below for more on ways to obtain tags).
Maybe you’re wondering, why do these definitions matter? Well, let’s revisit the first question we were trying to address in this post- How do state game management departments determine how many animals can be taken in a specific Unit? While this is an oversimplification, game management agencies will look at a particular physical area within their state, while also taking the state and national perspective into consideration with regards to a specific species, and determine whether that species is in the sub-optimal, optimal or over-abundant ranges when it comes to the population.
Let’s revisit the state of Box. Let’s say Box is a pretty sparsely populated state with the majority of the population concentrated in the Southeast portion of the state, or Unit 4 as depicted previously. In the previous post, we had said that Box consists of two types of game animals, Mule Deer and Elk. Let’s make one more claim about the state of Box, that its Northwest section (Unit 1) is made up of gorgeous mountains that consists of bountiful water sources (lakes, streams, creeks, rivers, etc.) and incredible high altitude habitat that nicely fills the bellies of the local deer and elk populations. Further, the Northeast and Southwest units are are transition zone with a low human population from lowland suburbs/cities to the mountainous region, which again provides adequate habitat for the deer but not the elk, although the elk can survive in sustainable numbers. See Box below. Note - the yellow ovals and black dots are corn and represent the transition zone.
I’m married to an artists daughter… can’t you tell?
Now that the make up of Box has been expanded on a little more, let’s add the population dynamics of humans with the two previously mentioned game species. Assume that the state game agency is trying to determine how to create a sustainable population of both Mule Deer and Elk within the state boarders of Box. For the sake of this post, let’s not worry about the actual realistic nature of these coming numbers, but let’s say there is a population of 5 million people in the Southeast, Unit 4 area of Box. Let’s further decide that the other three units have a population of 100,000 people each, making the total population of Box 5,300,000 with an obvious heavy density of human population in Unit 4. Unit 4 consists of a city center and suburbs, while Units 2 & 3 are geographic transition zones consisting of farms, ranches and some public land to Unit 4’s mountainous region which is nearly all public land, say a National Forest. We have now set the stage to place our animal populations across the landscape of Box to answer our first question - How do state game management departments determine how many animals can be taken in a specific Unit?
As we theoretically lay the animal populations of Box on each of the designated unit, I want to stress again that we don’t get caught up in the numbers that are used and instead focus on the theoretical impacts of each unit’s population to human, animal and ecosystem health and well-being. Prior to expanding further on the animal populations of Mule Deer and Elk, let’s explicitly state that both of these species are NOT under the jurisdiction of the Endangered Species Act, meaning that their population management is done at the state level via the state agency. The way that the North American system of game management is set up makes it such that the game species of a state is owned by the people and the management of those game species is entrusted to the state game agencies. Since all of this is made up, let’s call the state of Box’s state game management agency the Box Game & Fish, or BGF.
Wild animals being wild, it’s a very difficult task for BGF to count the actual number of animal species within each unit and subsequently within the entire state. A surprising fact for those new to hunting or wildlife management practices is how well versed in statistics that a wildlife biologist must be. Wildlife (Mule Deer and Elk in the case of Box) are well versed in being evasive and hiding from predators (i.e. humans), so getting a count of the number of game species in a specific area is part science, part conjecture. Enter advanced statistics. I will save the mathematical averse reader an explanation because things get weird with advanced statistics, but know that what occurs is some sort of counting method of the population, coupled with a statistically significant expansion of those numbers. For example, if you had a perfect ecosystem that was 10,000 square miles (roughly the size of the state of Maryland) with equally dispersed wildlife - if you counted 100 deer within 100 square miles, you could extrapolate an ecosystem that held 10,000 deer at the population level, with a high level of probability. Clearly there’s not perfectly 100,000 deer in the entire area, but animals are difficult to count so advanced statistics are an important tool.
Nerdy statistics aside and returning to the main point of the post… How do state game management departments determine how many animals can be taken in a specific Unit?
Let’s return to Box and determine its Mule Deer and Elk population estimates as they pertain to the landscape of the state. For the sake of this post and those to come to give an example of all the different types of management philosophies and practices, we’re going to say that there’s a dead even spread of Mule Deer across the entire state. To be exact, there are an estimated 400,000 mule deer spread equally over the entire state of Box. This means that each unit, regardless of habitat, have 100,000 mule deer living in it. For elk, we will assume that Box has a population of 200,000 animals, but for elk, 75% live in the mountainous region of Unit 1 (150,000) and the other 25% of the population is spread out between the transition zone of Units 2 and 3 (25,000 for Unit 2, and 25,000 for Unit 3).
Now that animal species population levels are determined, let’s lay those over with the human level populations and throw in other factors (FYI, these other factors amount to A LOT when it comes to determining species harvest requirements) to try to determine whether the Mule Deer and Elk species are sub-optimal, optimal or over-abundant.
I really aim to make this blog approachable by any single person regardless of mathematical aptitude, but I do have to introduce one mathematical equation into the mix. This is actually from my Thermodynamics class in college, but it pertains to populations dynamics just as well. The equations is:
(In - Out) = ChangeDang… that’s a super easy equation. The "“In” is what is born into the population via newborn fawns or transplants into the population, the “Out” is what dies or physically leaves the population (we’ll come back to this), and the “Change” is the resulting change over a certain time period (assume a calendar year) within a specific boundary (our state of Box, in this example).
For a state agency that wants to manage a game species population levels, they can control the “Out” or the “In” lever of this equation. Generally speaking, the “Out” lever is easier to control. This is the cornerstone to state game management practices. The “In” is something that consists of can natural births, wildlife transfer or trades with only the final two items being controllable by a state agency (see wild turkey restorations throughout the 70’s/80’s), and the “Out” consists of death rates of a species or the species physically wander out of a managed boundary never to return (which is rare). If a state finds itself in a place where the healthy population range is not being achieved, and a population is set to exceed its healthy limit, then the state will likely grant hunters the right to become part of the “Out” in that equation.
Let’s go back to the state of Box and only focus on Unit 1 and put numbers to all of this as an example. On January 1st, 2019 there’s a population of 100,000 mule deer and 100,000 human beings. These mule deer do not impact the human settlements in the area, but they are making an impact on the landscape and ecosystem. They are eating all the low browse and making it difficult on other animals in the ecosystem to establish healthy populations (as established by the BGF) and mule deer need to be thinned back in population in order to create a healthy overall ecosystem. Based on studies conducted by BGF, mule deer populations in Unit 1 are optimal between 60,000-90,000 specimen on the landscape.
The BGF decides that in Unit 1, 10,000 deer need to be taken off the landscape in 2019 to establish a balanced and healthy ecosystem. Their goal is to have the population at 90,000 specimen on January 1st, 2020. Therefore, the “Change” part of our equation above needs to equal -10,000. So, we set “In - Out = -10,000” and move to the left side of the equation.
We need to break down “In” and “Out” into their sub-components and give a quick explanation of each.
In
Factors that add population In to a game species during a year are - natural births, transient members of the species (i.e. a mule deer migrates from a neighboring state) and human induced transplants.
Out
Factors that remove population Out of a game species during a year are - deaths due to weather (primarily difficult winters), deaths due to predators such as wolves, deaths due to hunting (this technically belongs under death due to predators but is separated out for this example) and similar to the In categories, transplant or transient specimen in the population.
Now, let’s put some numbers to this example. The goal is to remove 10,000 mule deer from the landscape (Change = -10,000).
Starting with “In”: Mule deer have their fawns (i.e. babies) in the spring of the year. Let’s assume that 50% of the entire population is female (so 50,000 females), and of those 50% assume that 80% of them are pregnant (40,000 pregnant mule deer moms) and will “drop” fawns in the spring. That means that in the spring of 2019, 40,000 baby fawns will be born and for this example assume that 50% of fawns survive (welcome to real life), meaning that 20,000 of the 40,000 live to 2020. There are zero transient or transplants of specimen into Unit 1, so the “In” part of our equation is derived entirely of natural birth and that number is 20,000.
Now for “Out”: Historically, it is known within Box that wolves and other predators will kill 5,000 mule deer per year assuming a healthy mule deer population (which we are). Additionally, statistics show us that survival rates of deer from January through March of any year are 90%, meaning that 10% of a population will die during that time frame from winter conditions. That means that 10,000 mule deer will be lost to the winter. There are no transient or transplants out of this unit. Removal of specimen due to hunters is what we will figure out next, as it is the only unknown.
Right now, our “In - Out = Change” equation looks like this:
20,000 [In] - (5,000 + 10,000 + X) [Out] = -10,000 [Change]
The “X” in the Out is for the unknown quantity of deaths in the population from hunters. Solving for X gives us a value of 15,000.
Now that BGF understands how many mule deer that they want taken out of Unit 1 by hunters, they can start distributing tags, which we will get into next about the methods behind making tags available.
We have to assume at this point that BGF is right and that 10,000 deer need to be removed from the landscape this year in order for it to be maintained as a healthy ecosystem in balance with human activity. This leads to an answer of our first question - How do state game management departments determine how many animals can be taken in a specific Unit? They achieve this by understanding the overall health of the population on a specific landscape, coupled with the expected Change throughout the year and work the “In - Out” equation for how much hunter involvement is needed to balance the population to the healthy intended levels.
Next, we will dig into question 2: How do state game management departments decide who has the legal right to pursue the animals in each unit - what are the rules for getting a tag?
All of this will lead to the simplification of the hunting tag application and help us understand why certain tag methods are used in various areas of a state. Stay tuned in weeks to come for more.
Kyle Zibrowski
