A recent 2010 Whitetail Report by Quality Deer Management Association ranked Pennsylvania's deer management program second behind Vermont among Northeast states. Biologists from other wildlife management agencies have been generally supportive and complimentary of Pennsylvania's ambitious plan.

And while the Wildlife Management Institute's recent audit was critical of parts of the plan, its authors found nothing fundamentally wrong with the program.

"Comparison of the deer management programs and processes in eight states, including Pennsylvania, indicated that while there were a few differences in procedures and techniques among the states, all eight addressed management of white-tailed deer in a very similar manner," they wrote. "WMI found nothing in this comparison that would be considered problematic in the Pennsylvania Game Commission's general approach to deer management by professional wildlife biologists."

In fact, the report states, "Based on comparisons of hunter effort and harvest among 14 northeastern states and provinces, it appears that deer hunters in Pennsylvania have relatively good hunting opportunity, with the state ranking fourth in hunter density and harvest success, and ranking second in kill per unit effort and third in kill per square mile."

Yet hunters who grew accustomed to seeing lots of deer on opening day are convinced there's got to be something wrong with a program that has intentionally reduced deer populations, drastically in some management units. Seven years into the plan, outrage from the field continues to be so loud and persistent that the state House Legislative Budget and Finance Committee felt it necessary to commission the audit.

Among other recommendations -- including several ways to improve the accuracy of deer population estimates -- WMI suggested the PGC and hunters need to end their feud -- the agency, in fact, should improve communication with all wildlife stakeholders.

"The PGC ... continues to be subjected to considerable criticism from hunters about deer management programs," the report concludes. "Most states have had a period of time when deer management goals, practices or decisions were controversial, but Pennsylvania is unique in that the period of controversy seems to have never waned."

Unique. The authors' word choice is significant.

"The strained nature of the relationship between the PGC and some hunters is problematic," the report continues, "and in the long-term damaging to society's perception of how hunters and the PGC must work together to conserve and maintain the deer resource for the benefit of all the people."

The report found that the Game Commission uses many of the outreach techniques used by other deer states, including press releases to the media, a Web site with multiple pages about deer, and public meetings (the next Southwest Region Deer Management Open House is 10 a.m.-5 p.m. March 20 at the Richland Fire Department, Solomon Run Banquet Facility, 176 Mt. Airy Dr., Johnstown).

The audit was critical, however, of two key means of agency-hunter interaction. It found chronically low hunter participation in returning harvest reports and Citizen Advisory Committees that are neither fully objective nor satisfactorily representative of all stakeholder groups.

Jeremy Hurst, a biologist with New York's deer management program, said the state's Department of Environmental Conservation hopes to implement a deer management plan soon. Like Pennsylvania, the Empire State adjusts some season lengths to influence antlerless harvests, uses a public stakeholder process to help guide management objectives, and has weakly enforced harvest report regulations.

"Hunter satisfaction levels seem to be strongly tied to perceptions of the overall [deer] population size," he said. "We hear complaints when populations are low, not so much they're high."

In 2002, when New York deer populations where at its peak, biologists determined over-browsing was causing considerable damage.

"We dropped the population, then had a couple of bad winters which dropped the population below what we wanted," said Hurst. "There was a lot of hunter dissatisfaction. While the population has returned, hunters are on a lag. They haven't noticed the growth. Hunters perceive deer populations based on a relatively small geographic area in which they hunt. It's hard to convey what's going on on a broader scale as opposed to what's going on the back 40."

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources uses a citizen wildlife council, Web site, newsletter and press releases and plans to launch an automated harvest-report system in 2011. The WMI audit noted that Ohio's hunter harvest report rules -- check stations and forms -- are "rigidly enforced." Technically, failure to report is a third-degree misdemeanor with a fine up to $500 with possibility of 60 days in jail, but communications manager Vicki Ervin said it's not a top priority.

"Failure to check in a deer is not one of our top deer violations," she said. "If you are compliant enough to buy the permit, hunters tend to be compliant in checking in the deer."

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