FOIA requests might reveal some interesting information about a lot of topics.

I don't think we all need to understand the biology.
I mean thats why Matt went to school and the rest of got a real job.

Pretty interesting there Goatkiller, sounds like you want a deer report like we do a turkey report. Interesting concept.

And you are correct on the statistics. But... those numbers would take us years to gather enough to answer questions like you want in the report you have laid out. Would the public wait for us to gather that data? I don’t think so. As a society we want things now but like I said, many agencies are attempting to gather just that kind of data so they can provide that level of info to the public.

Huh??

You understand the biology.
So the rest of us don't have to.

Giving him a lot of credit...

Yeah I don’t need too much credit. I’m only slightly educated, not smart, redneck.

We're speaking the same language but reaching different conclusions. I understand the limitations but the nature of the beast is a lot of decisions are made with not entirely complete data. We cant get exact numbers for a lot of things. I believe with a reasonable compliance rate, some decent sampling, fawn recruitment studies and similar solid biology work game check could help us arrive some very useful numbers especially considering it costs a very slight inconvenience for the hunter.

As you mentioned, by itself it would be of very limited utility because of all of the other variables in the system but unlike boxes in a warehouse you don't need an exact number and an exact number is impossible to arrive at anyway. If God told you how many deer there are in the state right this second that number could easily change by 500 before the sun went down. A better analogy would be a farmer comparing harvest weights from his apple trees over the years, you wouldn't know how many apples you had to start with in your trees but with some additional work like sampling you get trends and could make business decisions and might figure out if you needed to check for the neighbor kids stealing, your fertilization methods or start shooting more crows. The game check data would at least help you know what questions, if any, need to be answered especially compared to what we had without it.

https://georgiawildlife.com/sites/default/.../2015-2024_Deer_Management_Plan.pdf

"WRD manages deer herds for long-term sustainability in balance with dynamic habitat
capabilities and social tolerances on a regional scale. The 2012 pre-hunt statewide estimated deer
population currently stands at 25 deer per square mile of forested acreage on average. Overall physical
condition of the deer herd is excellent. However, at a fine scale (e.g., property level) deer population
densities may number fewer than 10 deer per forested square mile or may exceed 100 deer per forested
square mile. Due to the focal nature of this issue, individual property level deer management is the most
appropriate solution."

GA claims 25 deer per sq-mi in 2012. I would think that AL pop's would be very similar... how does this stand compared to what AL claims?

I would be interested to see AL's version of what GA has done in a long-term management plan.

Aint no deer in marshall county...or turkeys....why be that fur...teh meeeeeee....tehhhhmeeenahhhyuhhhhh......

JSOG47 - in your example you can't sample how many apples a tree is going to produce and draw any sort of relevant conclusion about that if you don't know how many trees you have. You'll never know what you can produce until you can multiply your analysis over a defined number of trees.

Same exact thing with a farmer. He's got to know his acres. Bushes per acre per field.

Where I want to go is ---- bushes per acre per area in the field. Is there a wet area that did not produce as many bushels? Can I put some tile in that area of the field to get the bushel per acre up? What is that going to cost and does the analysis say it will be cost effective?

It is all about doing a better job. There is just no way around this and really no reason to argue it. You can always do a better job using statistics if you have more data points.

You can make any statistical anlaysis out of any data and it can tell you something. Most of the time you can make it tell you what you want it to tell you.

In the case of Game Check and how our season dates and bag limits are being set. The question is... is it good enough?

I'm not pointing fingers at anyone here but I say it is no where close.

And I think the point of all this is that is what we have to articulate to the DCNR when they are demanding we all use Game Check and want people to participate.

They need to show people how this is going to benefit them instead of legislating like Obama did coal mines.... executive order style.

Goatkiller

You coming to our Hunters Night Out event in Hoover?

GC can be successful, once Chuck is gone

I can tell you with 100% certainty there isn't 25 deer per every 640 acres in Alabama. I'd guess 15. Sure, some areas have 75, but a bunch of areas have 5.

Lots of areas with zero...

We farm cattle on roughly 500 acres in Marshall county and there has not been a deer there in my lifetime. Got to go a few miles in every direction to find a viable population.

Marshall county has negative deers per acres....theyve all identified as goats and moved to walker county

If you're saying you'd like a full plan explanation from a competent and trustworthy director for how they plan to gather, understand and use accurate, dependable data to manage OUR deer for US I couldn't agree with you more. If you're saying you want them to not only give us the data, tell us how they arrived at it and how they plan to use it I agree as well. Honestly I don't see that we disagree at all. I think it was a definite error to not fully explain the point behind game check to us. I also think it would be an error to just go around willy nilly making changes based solely on the data we get from game check. If you think that's what I've been saying I'm sorry I wasn't more clear.

My skepticism of Gamecheck comes from the HIP program. When I buy a license, rarely am I asked what I killed or hunted. Most of the cashiers simply fill in numbers randomly. The HIP stamp became another reason to ticket careless migratory bird hunters.

But, but, but, what if you are, what if a LOT of hunters are in one of these ridiculous zones where we are limited to only two weeks to kill does, but yet we are over freakin run with deer? Can't report the kills because they are 'illegal kills', so you are not getting ANY data from an area that is wrongly classified as a low population area! You are not getting the data you want from an area that you need the data the most from. Does that make sense???? DAMN..

If they are doing this then it's fraud of a federal document even if it is "just" a bird count survey. If you're allowing this to happen then you should tell them to stop and that you are required to do it. If they object then you should object.

I've never heard of anyone doing what you're saying, ever.