It's a familiar scenario across the state: a landowner wakes up to find his flower bed gone, his decorative shrubs denuded, his tree sprouts eaten to the browse line. Despite inviting hunters in to legally cull prolific does, there are more deer on the acreage than habitat can support. Deer are destroying the property.

Each white-tail deer eats about 1 ton of shoots, twigs, leaves from trees and shrubs, weeds, grasses and garden vegetables per year. Does reach sexual maturity in 12 months and almost all breed, often bearing twins and sometimes triplets. Deer in Pennsylvania have no natural predators, but more than 25,000 of them collide each year with motor vehicles each year, causing millions of dollars in damage as well as human injuries and some fatalities.

No one knows for sure how many deer live in the state, but hunters in Pennsylvania killed an estimated 323,070 antlered and antlerless deer during the 2007-'08 hunting seasons.

One of several whitetail management tools offered by the Pennsylvania Game Commission is the Deer Management Assistance Program. Sparsely used in this region of the state, DMAP provides a break for landowners in heavily hunted areas who need to reduce deer populations in order to meet their land-use goals, and offers additional opportunities for hunters.

Landowners who qualify for the program are issued one DMAP coupon for every five acres of cultivated land, or one coupon for every 50 acres of non-cultivated land.

DMAP increases the legal hunting harvest within standard seasons, but getting access to DMAP land can be more complicated than getting a deer.

A DMAP-enrolled landowner can seek out a particular hunter, or a hunter can otherwise get a coupon directly from a landowner. Or, a hunter could locate some DMAP-enrolled property owners through the agency's Web site (www.pgc.state.pa.us) or other means, contact the owner and get the DMAP unit number linked to the desired hunting area.

Once a hunter has either a DMAP coupon or unit number, he or she goes to a license issuing agent to buy a DMAP harvest permit: $10.70 for a resident, $35.70 nonresident. Each DMAP harvest permit allows the hunter to take one antlerless deer on the designated property.

If that sounds like a lot of work before you even get into the woods, you're right. Chris Rosenberry, head of the agency's deer program, said the restrictions and conditions associated with DMAP enable the program to target a very specific purpose.

"DMAP is for landowners who are not getting the antlerless relief they need on their properties," he said. "It's an improved method to increase the harvest on their land."

DMAP is available in all Wildlife Management Units, but it's tailored for and used mostly by private landowners in heavily hunted units such as 2F and 2G in the Pennsylvania Wilds.

DMAP differs from the Agricultural Deer Control Program, commonly known as "red tag." Under red tag rules, qualified landowners are given tags to distribute to hunters, and the antlerless hunting is done outside of established deer seasons.

"Red tag is a bigger program in terms of participation," said Rosenberry. "In 20 of 22 Wildlife Management Units, DMAP contributes very little to the antlerless harvest, adding a couple percent."

At the unit level, he said, DMAP might not be "a big deal," but the program can be helpful to landowners in areas that sell out of doe tag quotas.

Last year, more than 1.5 million acres of land was enrolled in the DMAP program. Over 30,000 tags were issued in 841 DMAP units. In 4D near Williamsport, 414 deer were culled through DMAP. But locally the program thinned only 17 deer in 2A, and five deer in 2B.

"[The program] wasn't really designed for the needs of your area," said Rosenberry. "Shortage of doe tags there isn't the issue. 2B has yet to sell out of its doe tags. A landowner could apply for DMAP in 2B, and it might get a few deer, but [hunters] could just get unit tags and get in there and get deer."

Property owners wishing to enroll in DMAP had to apply by July 1. Now is the time for landowners and hunters to be making connections, before the deer seasons begin in September. Some DMAP enrollees request that their names and properties remain confidential, but the rest are posted on the agency's Web site.