From the June 17, 2007 Lancaster Sunday News
IN MY OPINION
By Steve Mohr, Special to the Sunday News I would like to comment on John McGonigle's column [May 13] concerning the involvement of legislators in the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
John stated that a small number of unhappy deer hunters, who are only interested in themselves, have gotten the attention of some legislators. I'm not sure what he uses to calculate small, but from my vantage point I think John is only counting part of the troops. There are many unhappy hunters, so many that I would suggest that the majority are unhappy.
John states that no elected officials should have control over the PGC. How ironic to try to keep politics out of the PGC when everything about it is already tied to politics. These very legislators that he would like to exclude are already involved, from the selection of commissioners to the regulation of certain hunting laws and license increases. No matter how "independent" an agency claims to be, the reality is that they are not. Every agency needs a system of checks and balances, and if not the legislators, then who?
The job of legislators is to represent their constituents, the hunters included.
The PGC's credibility was hijacked when our current deer management program started six years ago. The program is still limping along on theory, not science.
A $5 billion dollar hunting industry has been destroyed to benefit another big business -- timbering. You're correct, the PGC is sworn to manage all wildlife, but who takes control when they mismanage through faulty science?
Remember Gary Alt, our famous deer "savior" and his theories? The first to come to mind was the embryo recovery data that he thought would prove once and for all that we didn't have enough bucks in our herd to service all the does in a timely fashion. Wrong. After two years of collecting data for this study, it was scientifically proven that our bucks were doing their job superbly, and the fawns were coming on time as they should.
Dr. Alt's next bungle was to try to show that predators do not have a major impact on our deer herd. Wrong again. The PGC's fawn survival study revealed that 50 percent of the fawn crop is dead before they have a chance to enter a hunting season. Amazingly enough, the very animal that gave Alt his fame was the No. 1 culprit in fawn deaths. How could someone who claimed to know more about bears than bears themselves, not know what a major food source fawns were to the bears eight weeks out of a year?
When I began my term as a PGC commissioner, I was told by the executive office and my fellow commissioners that I would be presented with the scientific argument for all my PGC decisions, but it would be up to the commissioners to add the political and social aspects before making decisions. It sounded OK. When I suggested that hunting plays no role in the overall population of squirrels and rabbits, the PGC biologist agreed 100 percent. I then suggested that we allow a much longer season for pursuing these critters. Time after time I was told that my suggestion was scientifically sound, but socially it would not be in the best interest of the PGC.
So why the complete turn around now? What's different? Now we are told that only science should be the determining factor. Seems to me that the rules are changed to support the PGC's desired outcome.
Don't think for one moment that every PGC employee is in agreement with the present deer management program. From the bottom employee to the top man, they all see things that should be done differently. So why no change? That is the 865,000 doe license question. Just who is calling the shots? I don't think it is the biologists. Would they all stake their careers on bogus science?
The PGC has many fine, talented and dedicated employees, but they've been taken in a new direction by outside entities, ones who are not the deer hunter's friend, but who will eventually be revealed. Until then, pick a side my friend, because the deer wars are about ready to explode.
For all those sportsmen and women who belong to organizations and clubs, one major word of advice: Make sure the group you belong to is representing your views. You who are members of the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs would be wise to take a good look at your organization and where their funding comes from. I understand that the article from May 13 was only the writer's opinion, and I hope the other readers realized this too. This is the USA, folks, so get involved -- it's your right. May I suggest that before joining the battle, you roll up your pants. It's already too late to save your boots.
Steve Mohr, of Bainbridge, served as a game commissioner from December 1997 to June 2006.

Consider the source...    enough said.

I've just read the above post very carefully. This is another case where some one wants to shoot the messenger, rather than accept the message.

Nissan

"I am willing to bet more employees get hired through politics than on their own merit. It is a state agency."

Virtually all jobs are civil service therefore exempt from political pressures.  

--Last edited by neville on 2007-08-08 07:15:06 --

As every day passes I am learning that everyone has their opinion about the deer situation in Pa... good...bad..or indifferent......

Here is a reply from a nationwide hunting chat forum in response to questions about Pa deer licenses and if folks there thought they were worth the non-resident rates...

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I would def say its worth it. Im from MA and were lucky if we see 6 deer in a week here. Wellllllllllllll down there youll see 6 deer in a minute. I went down for 1 week and saw over 150 deer. There everywhere. Its nice to hunt and not see anyone else and the bucks actually follow rub lines out there. You will Def have fun with a bow. You can go to the PA webstite and findout the cost but i dont think its more than 150 with doe tags but hurry up i think the deadline for doe permits is soon!

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To each his own I guess  

Quote :

Penn wrote : [Virtually all jobs are civil service therefore exempt from political pressures.]   Legislative John Doe: Your kid takes the test and passes and I'll see what I can do for you. Constituent: Thanks, John. Here is my cash. At least the kid will have a job upon graduation. Like this doesn't happen in the real world.

Penn,

I don't think it would fly. He had better be at the top of the civil service list, they go down the list and interview 3. Vets get 10 extra points added to their score!!!

Mohr takes some cheap shots, and backs away from the “full story.”
Studies are done “to learn.” Embryo recovery data may have provided a somewhat different quotient than was suspected prior to the studies but that was the reason for the studies, versus simply guessing. The results were published and used as management information.

He then plays games with numbers with the implication that 50-percent of fawns are dead due to bear predation, before hunting season.
First off, to say bears do all that would be a lie! Anyone who has had even the slightest interest in what is being learned knows that the mortality percentage includes coyote predation, road kill and natural mortality –-- Who’ll be first to jump on his, lets-lie-our-way-through-this, bandwagon?

What Mohr is incapable of understanding (he really is known to be not too smart), is that when you have an overpopulated deer herd, you could actually lose a majority of newborns and still have too high a survival rate. The predation rate is a direct indicator of the reproduction rate; low predation = low reproduction. High predation = high production. In other words lots of dead fawns means a burgeoning deer herd.

His stupid implication that somehow Alt should have known, during his bear study tenure, precisely what percentage of fawns were taken by bears is absurd. That is not a “bear impact factor,” it is a “deer impact factor.”
Nice job of weaseling around the facts to impress the easily impressionable, but that is nothing new for Mohr.

Heck, why doesn't Mohr point out whatever wasn't learned in the first week of bear studies and ask why it took a month, instead of a week, to learn?
Reminds me of a story of a US Congressman in the 1930's introducing legislation to close the patent office because, "everything that could be invented has already been invented" --- small minds!