LAST EDITED ON Mar-04-12 AT 05:34AM (MST)[p]Sagehunter... your right. The 30 deer unit split really won't do anything for the herd. And the reason is... The Units are too damn big. If you were really going to manage how many hunter were harvesting deer from a population you would use the old deer herd management unit that the DWR used up until the middle 80's or so. This unit map identified 89 deer units in the state. The map was based on "real" habitat units. In other words, where the deer summered and where the deer migrated to to spend their winter months. Deer are very habitual that way. They don't do a lot of lateral or random migration.
As a for instance... If you were really going to manage the Manti Mountain, which is a huge unit (currently know as Units 12/16B/16C) you have the same problem, or perceived problem, that you had with the previous 5 units in the state. That is no control over individual geographic biologically contained units. If you were going to manage based on the number of deer that you are going to remove, or not remove from that area you should (according to the old map) really have 13 units designated for that area.
Under the old "capitalistic" deer hunting system of letting hunters go where they wanted you had the "law of diminishing returns" to manage your herd. In other words... If I found deer on mountain X I would probably come back next year. If I didn't I would move over to mountain Y next year.
Under the new system mountain X is going to get "THIS" number of permits and those hunters are going to be there to hunt those deer come hell or high water. You have to... you can't go anywhere else! Period. So if the DWR is not extremely vigilant in the number they are issuing on these units you could be locked into over or under hunting the unit.
...and I'm going to throw out a hypothetical question here. These are just out of my hat numbers, they are not factual and for demonstration purposes only. It takes money to run a deer herd. So... Let's say the DWR is currently selling 90,000 tags and they are budgeting for that. Now, deer herd unit X is determined to be under the harvest quota so we have to reduce hunters, or worse close that unit. Are they going to shift that 10,000 or 15,000 tags and increase the pressure on other units to pay the bills, or are they going to eat them and fire a few biologist next year... or maybe take away the truck and make them ride bicycles... or raise the license cost to cover that years short fall?
