Statewide deer harvest up slightly in 2010, bear harvest down

Karen and I just came back from dinner here on Sanibel Island, with a temperature reading of 82 degrees. It was well over 90 degrees today with no snow on the ground.

We had a good trip south to Florida from the north country last week—though it snowed while we were going through the mountains of Pennsylvania.

We visited Savannah on the way and took a trolley ride around the old part of the city. The azaleas were in bloom as well as flowers in the gardens around many of the old houses.

I saw a variety of birds along the way south. Barn Swallows were checking out some bridges in Virginia and I saw some Purple Martens fly over the highway in North Carolina.

I heard my first warbler, a Common Yellow Throat, singing in South Carolina.

On my first trip to the lighthouse here on Sanibel there were a few warblers: Prairie, Palm, Indigo Buntings, female Orchard Oriole, Red-eyed and Blue-headed Vireo.

On a trip off the island today (4/11) we saw Black and White, Pine, Parula, Yellow-rumped, Common Yellow Throat Warblers, Painted Buntings, Meadow Lark, Bluebirds, Screech Owl, Swallow-tailed Kite, and a Loggerhead Shrike feeding young in a nest. In all, we saw a total of 44 species.

Bear-take numbers from last fall’s harvest have been released with a total of 1,064 taken in the state.

The bear-take is broken down statewide. In the Southeastern region, 401 Bears were taken; in the Central-western region, 142; and in the Adirondacks, 521 were taken.

A further breakdown shows that in the Southeastern region, half of the Bears were taken during the bow hunting season and the other half were taken during the gun season.

In the Central-western region bowhunters were responsible for 65% of the harvest. Both of these harvests were down approximately 20% from 2009.

In the Adirondacks the take was down approximately 35% from 2009, but is consistent with the long term average for that area.

Bear harvest in the Adiron-dacks seems heavily influenced by variations in key food resources and this year’s harvest follows those trends.

In years when the soft mast (apple, cherry, raspberry) is abundant, bear harvest during the early season tends to decrease.

This year these crops were available in September and October and bear-take during the 2010 early season dropped approximately 40% from 2009.

That was a year with a poor soft mass crop and a high early season bear harvest.

Conversely, in years when beech nuts are abundant, bear-take tends to increase during the regular season.

This past fall was lacking for beechnut production, and bear-take during the regular season dropped about 25% from 2009.

Hunters play a pivotal role in bear management by reporting their harvests. Hunters are also asked to submit a tooth sample from their bears for DEC to determine the age of bears.

DEC uses these ages to determine age profiles and population numbers in all these areas.

A complete summary of the 2010 Bear harvest with a breakdown by county, town, and Wildlife Management Unit is available from the DEC website.

The 2010 statewide Deer harvest is up slightly from last year’s totals. DEC Commissioner Joe Martens announced on March 28 that hunters harvested just over 230,000 deer in the 2010 hunting season.

That is up about 3% from 2009.

The Junior Big-Game License was popular again this year, with over 16,000 junior hunters taking advantage of this opportunity to hunt big game.

That group harvested approximately 4,900 deer.

The 2010 deer-take included approximately 123,100 antlerless deer (adult females and fawns) and just under 107,000 adult bucks. Deer harvest in the Northern Zone were very comparable to 2009, with adult buck-take (approx. 16,100) essentially unchanged and antlerless take (approx. 12,500) increasing about 3%.

In the Southern Zone, excluding Long Island, adult buck-take (approx. 89,900) increased nearly 6% while antlerless-take (approx. 108,600) increased only about 2%.

Deer populations and harvest vary widely across the state. The 2010 and previous year’s Deer harvest by county, town and Wildlife Management Unit are also available from the DEC website.

Some new things have been seen here in Florida, but that’s another story. See ya.