The East Texas Deer Herd: Is it time to worry?
By Rick Davenport
It’s rough being a game biologist in east Texas. Since opening weekend of the rifle season in the Pineywoods, they’ve been hearing the same question from friends, neighbors and worried hunters: “Where have the deer gone?”
Deer processors have been getting it, too.
“Everybody is talking about it,” says Terry Tyer of Tyer’s Processing in Crockett. “I can’t remember a worse year. It’s scary. We usually process 250 to 300 deer a year. This year we did 113.”
The Pineywoods Region of east Texas
It’s the same story in Fairfield at J&S Meat Processing where 4 years ago it handled 1400 whitetail from loyal customers. But the numbers have been going down every year since: 1000 last year, 800 this season. “I think there are a lot of reasons for it,” owner David Baker says of the low numbers this season. “We had warm weather the first two weekends, the economy forced some people to give up their leases, and the drought wiped out a bunch of the deer.”
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) biologists answer the question about declining deer numbers this way: A plentiful acorn crop that dropped a month early (perhaps as a result of the drought), a full moon opening weekend and warmer than usual temperatures. They say it was a perfect storm that kept sightings, and the harvest in east Texas, down. But, they don’t think the drought caused a massive adult deer die-off.
“We have heard that concern a lot this season, but I am almost 100-percent certain the drought did not kill a lot of deer,” Daniel Price, TPWD biologist based in the Rusk office, says. “But, we are in a long-term drought condition, so we are keeping our eye on it.”
This 12-point buck was one of two bucks taken from a Houston County lease this season. Normally, hunters take 5 bucks
Price’s colleague, TPWD biologist in Lufkin Sean Willis, agrees. “I’m a hunter too, and I noticed a big drop this year in the number of deer coming to feeders. But, for whatever reason, they started coming back during the last two weeks of the season.”
The Pineywoods includes the Davy Crockett National Forest where the old-timers remember seeing a lot more deer in these woods years ago. On a personal note, as a hunter in the same one-mile radius of the DCNF since 1989, deer sightings have dramatically declined. I was accustomed, for example, to seeing 10-20 deer each day of opening weekend. This year, my father and I spotted three deer in two days.
So, is it time to get worried?
Well, short of a long-term scientific analysis with hundreds of man hours in the field each year, we really can’t know for sure.
However, we do have deer density numbers and fawn survival rates from TPWD surveys. For one section of the Pineywoods referred to as Resource Management Unit 14, which includes the DCNF, here are the numbers from 2005 through 2011:
|
Year |
Deer/1000 Acres |
Fawn Survival Rate |
|
2005 |
13.69 |
82% |
|
2006 |
15.25 |
42% |
|
2007 |
21.23 |
28% |
|
2008 |
24.38 |
32% |
|
2009 |
23.63 |
20% |
|
2010 |
23.96 |
25% |
|
2011
|
24.52
|
18%
|
Based on these figures, the number of deer is actually growing — nearly doubling since 2005. However, the number of fawns has steadily decreased. How is that possible?
“I can see where one might think these two figures contradict each other, but not necessarily,” says Alan Cain, white-tailed deer program leader at TPWD. “The low fawn crops are most likely attributed to the drought, however, TPWD survey efforts may not be capturing an accurate depiction of the fawn crop, which may be higher than what we are finding in our deer herd composition surveys. Either way, we have no indication of a die-off.”
Cain says the low fawn survival rate, although not ideal, is not a reason for concern — yet. “Ideally, I would like to see the rate between 40 and 50 percent. But even at 20 percent, the deer numbers are not declining; there are enough young deer recruited into the population to replace the deer removed from the population through natural mortality and hunter-harvest. However, if the population saw a significant decrease over time we would certainly consider a change in regulations.”
Currently, many east Texas counties allow the taking of does without a permit.
Despite the lower harvest in east Texas, deer appear healthy and the bucks are sporting larger racks. Some hunters say they killed their best deer this season and saw plenty of deer. Many others spotted very few deer and never crossed paths with a legal buck.