Low Fawn Recruitment

[SwampCat]

@SwampCat we have talked a lot about your fawn recruitment on here.

It seems like most of the things you have tried haven’t worked very well. It might be time to think outside the box.

Also are you basing your numbers on camera surveys? How many cameras do you run full time?

I run seven cameras full time. I am about to put out seven or eight more that will run until antler drop. My fawn recruitment numbers are dead on the state average - until maybe this year

 

[Turkish]

This was an excellent episode, where they dove into the studies showing just that, and how burning reduced predator numbers.

I’ve been hesitant to post that here. It is an excellent episode indeed!

 

[SwampCat]

This was an excellent episode, where they dove into the studies showing just that, and how burning reduced predator numbers.

Back when I was trapping for a living - burned pine stands were tough places to catch a coon. I always figured it was because there was less food. Not as many grapevines, berries, acorns, soft mast trees, etc. On the other hand, it was a great place to catch a coyote. I have seen studies that indicate coyotes are attracted to burned areas because visibility is generally greater and coyotes do a lot of sight hunting. They did not mention coyotes - no coyotes in N Florida?

They kept saying the burning displaced the coons to the bottoms. My place all hardwood - I guess if anyone starts burning around me, I will get all their coons

 

[BenA]

Back when I was trapping for a living - burned pine stands were tough places to catch a coon. I always figured it was because there was less food. Not as many grapevines, berries, acorns, soft mast trees, etc. On the other hand, it was a great place to catch a coyote. I have seen studies that indicate coyotes are attracted to burned areas because visibility is generally greater and coyotes do a lot of sight hunting. They did not mention coyotes - no coyotes in N Florida?

They kept saying the burning displaced the coons to the bottoms. My place all hardwood - I guess if anyone starts burning around me, I will get all their coons

During college, I had a course where we went and burned and studied different forest management practices in a SE Louisiana pine forest. Some of these areas were burned annually by the students. Some weren't burned at all. The places that weren't burned were difficult to walk through because of the dense understory (briars, yaupon, sweetgum, etc), but it was all above knee level or so. At a coyote or fawn level, it wasn't very good cover. The burned areas on the other hand, had dense vegetation at ground level providing excellent fawning cover. We could see across the stand, and it was indeed open at the level we were looking, but you could put a fawn out there, and never see it. Yes, right after the burn, they were open on the ground, but in SE LA, it didn't take long to come back. That fuel load at ground level was what allowed us taking the course to burn annually.

I think food availability and the energy requirements needed to find and procure that food drive predator populations. You may have areas with lots of food, but if it's harder to find they may go somewhere else where there may be less food, but it's easier to find. I guess balancing those factors plays an important role in the number of predators in an area.

 

[SwampCat]

During college, I had a course where we went and burned and studied different forest management practices in a SE Louisiana pine forest. Some of these areas were burned annually by the students. Some weren't burned at all. The places that weren't burned were difficult to walk through because of the dense understory (briars, yaupon, sweetgum, etc), but it was all above knee level or so. At a coyote or fawn level, it wasn't very good cover. The burned areas on the other hand, had dense vegetation at ground level providing excellent fawning cover. We could see across the stand, and it was indeed open at the level we were looking, but you could put a fawn out there, and never see it. Yes, right after the burn, they were open on the ground, but in SE LA, it didn't take long to come back. That fuel load at ground level was what allowed us taking the course to burn annually.

I think food availability and the energy requirements needed to find and procure that food drive predator populations. You may have areas with lots of food, but if it's harder to find they may go somewhere else where there may be less food, but it's easier to find. I guess balancing those factors plays an important role in the number of predators in an area.

I agree - my business partner owned some land in SE Ga - pine - and even a year after a burn, it was difficult to find a place for concealment when turkey hunting. But I used to quail hunt (back when there were lots of birds), in thinned, burned pine that would have annuals come back in the year of the burn and broomsedge the next year after the burn. Of course, it depends a lot on over-story density. Firelanes were a trappers best friend - I think every critter in the country walks them with the meeting of those two cover types.

 

[West_Fork]

My fawn recruitment over the past ten years has run from .4 to .6 - with the last few years being closer to the .4 fawns per doe number. We dont shoot but one or two does a year off 350 acres. Personal opinion - I dont feel like we have a lot of coyotes - and our coyotes have always fed fairly heavily on piglets and scavenged pig carcasses the land owners killed. But over the past year or so, USDA and NRCS have concentrated hog trapping in my area. I have gone from killing 153 hogs in six months to getting a picture of the same four hogs twice in the last six months. I think the yotes have lost a huge component of their food source and they are having to rely on other food sources, now. We have very few rabbits, mice, rats, game birds, etc for coyotes to eat.

You are probably right on that. Some folks are looking at the same with feral horse gathers and mnt lions, using cameras, covering something like 500,000 acres with a handfull of cameras on a 7km grid, and it is scientifically defensible.

Because of cameras, I am convinced that the biggest impact to fawn recruitment in my area is elk, planted by the state where they never existed, nearly 100% private land and forage.

In fact, I am glad you brought this up because I was going to go to UDNR meeting in a couple weeks to make this same point, with the caveat that it just one season of data, but if what I witnessed this season is the norm, elk dog this particular herd of deer 365 days a year. The only reprieve they get, is after we turn sheep in. We have known for a while that elk don't tolerate sheep much, and I would have assumed the same for deer. The deer don't seem to mind the sheep near as much as they do elk, but its going to take a few seasons for me to feel confident any of this is real or just my bias.

In my opinion, and probably a few others, some of the best science (natural resource) is a photo, and maybe a series spanning years.

James E. Bowns said something to the effect of give me control of the range, and I will control your deer population. I took that to mean you control the forage and cover, but I would have to assume predators too.

I find it bizarre that you have any control over fawn recruitment with 350 acres. To control a deer's habitat all season long would require control of anywhere from 500,000 to 10 million acres where I live (IDK, assume on average one deer per thousands of acres range wide). If the deer show up barely alive from winter nothing I do will affect the number born, and I think it's only with already low numbers that predation becomes an issue. Unless you have something strange like prey switching from prey removal in your case. The environmental documents prepared by the USDA should have analyzed the effects of prey switching by predators/scavengers and included a plan to address it, but you know, govt.