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By GEORGE SMITH [email protected]
Sunday, February 10, 2002     Page: 12C

WILKES-BARRE – Gary Alt is excited about the $1 million, 3-year
white-tailed deer study that is under way in Pennsylvania.
   
Alt, of Moscow, is head of the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s deer
management section. Known for his work with black bears, Alt has shifted his
focus to deer.
    “We want to learn how deer live their lives, and we want to get rid of a
lot of myths. We want to know where they go when they are hunted, and we want
to know if antler restrictions will result in a greater number of bucks. We
want to know everything about them,” Alt said with enthusiasm.
   
The research is being touted as the most extensive radio-telemetry study of
deer dispersal, survival and antler restrictions attempted in the United
States.
   
It involves capturing and radio-collaring deer using drop nets, walk-in
traps, dart guns and helicopters.
   
The helicopter captures are being conducted by Hawkins & Powers Aviation
Inc., of Greybull, Wyo.
   
Yet the extensive, big-dollar project is not without detractors.
   
Alt likens the nay-sayers to those that would have curbed his research on
black bears.
   
“It’s just like it was 25 years ago with bears when I ran into stiff
opposition to some of the programs.
   
“They said I would kill off all the bears. Now we have four times more
bears and two times more bear range,” Alt said.
   
Alt said biologists will try to monitor 600 antlered deer in two study
areas in Armstrong and Centre counties.
   
Results of the study will not only interest hunters, but also those who
maintain that deer are overgrazing the state’s forests.
   
“This is the right thing to do. Data from this study will be used as a
foundation for Pennsylvania’s deer management regulations, and it will be data
that will be used all over the world,” Alt said.
   
Funding for the project will come from the Game Commission and the state
Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Additional grants from three
unnamed foundations are being coordinated by Audubon Pennsylvania and
Pennsylvania Habitat Alliance.
   
“I can’t name the foundations because they asked not to be identified. They
don’t want to face the hassles we are facing in dealing with negative
responses,” Alt said.
   
Alt said that, contrary to rumor, the foundations are not anti-hunting or
animal-rights oriented.
   
“I’m a hunter, and these foundations are asking, `How can we help you?’
What more do you want?” Alt said.
   
The study should answer a question that is paramount to hunters: Will
antler restrictions result in greater numbers of older bucks?
   
“I had no interest in starting antler restrictions unless I could find out
what happened to the deer,” he said.
   
Proposed antler restrictions would assign a three-point on one side minimum
throughout most of the state, including Luzerne and Lackawanna counties,
through the 2002 hunting seasons. Hunters in 11 western counties could face a
four-point minimum.
   
That proposal could be approved at a Game Commission meeting in April.
   
Pennsylvania deer research has already revealed that their breeding cycle,
or rut, in 1999 lasted five months, from Sept. 9 through Feb. 16. Ninety
percent of the does conceived between Oct. 16 and Dec. 16. But, the peak of
the rut occurred from Oct. 31 to Nov. 23, when 67 percent of the does
conceived.
   
And an antler measurement study of 256 bucks in Pike and Wayne counties
revealed that 31 percent of yearlings were spikes, but none of the older bucks
was a spike.
   
That helps debunk the old theory of “once a spike, always a spike.” More
surprising, perhaps, is that 54 percent of the 2.5-year-old bucks in Pike and
Wayne counties had eight or more points, according to the study.
   
Alt insists more research is warranted and absolutely necessary.
   
“If we choose to fight, to sit and scream and yell at each other, hunting
is doomed,” Alt said.
   
George Smith, a Times Leader staff writer, can be reached at 829-7230.