Quality Deer Management, or QDM, is a hot topic among deer hunters.  Some love it, some hate it.  The QDM lovers tend to be folks with access to large blocks of private land, where it is easier to manage hunters.  QDM haters, on the other hand, are usually folks who hunt public land or who live in parts of the country where much of the hunting is done on public land, where it's a free-for-all when it comes to shooting bucks.

John Walker's latest Fish Report takes on the QDM movement from a Yooper perspective, although he takes awhile getting to that topic.  Can you guess where he is going on this?  Can you say "lotsa public land all over da place, by Yiminee!"?  I thought so.

Remember, John's books are available on Dan's Mall.  They're priced to sell and ready for Christmas delivery.  Read his story and then check out his books.

As always, "Fish Report" can mean whatever is on John's mind at the moment!

Fish Report: 11/2/04

Well here we are into November and needless to say there were a few days that it sure felt like it. If there were any pats out there you could see them now with the leaves all on the ground, but the hunting continues to be great, but the finding is slim at best.

This week I would like to talk about some of my favorite people in the Fish Report. First of all if you have read my books and articles you know that some of my favorite people are the "Exspurts." The other group of people that make my day are the "paradoxers."  It seems that we see and hear more and more from these two groups of people. So first let me make a point about the [base "]paradoxers[per thou]. Of course you have to remember that in a lot of cases these two terms are interchangeable.

In the Fish Report I have mentioned a couple of times this fall about all the hunters that have had a number of doe come in without any fawns. In the last week I have had some people reply about this fact all with the same reason, wolves! It was kind of interesting when the first hunter, who happened to be a lady, told me she had observed the same thing and there was no doubt in her mind that the reason for the missing fawns was the ever increasing wolf population. I later received a couple of reports where people felt the same way.

Later in the week, I received an E-mail about a hunter in the west end of the U.P. who was sitting in his deer stand when a small fawn went by. Just a short time later a pack of five wolves went through led by a large black one.

If this be the case for the missing fawns, this is where I find it interesting and a paradox that the same people that are pushing for a quality deer management area are the same people that have promoted the run away wolf population. How many future bucks are taken out of the equation by wolves? And how do you figure this in.

This is why this group of people falls under the category of "paradoxers" in my book.

Now we get into the "Exspurt" that we hear all the time. Let me first point out something that may better help you understand what an "Exspurt" is and this happened just last month so it should be fresh in your mind.

Do you remember when all the [base "]Exspurts[per thou] were telling everybody that would listen that the St Louis Cardinals were just maybe the best team there had ever been in baseball? This went on for half the summer and right into the playoffs. The St. Louis Cardinals were the best team baseball had ever seen; only someone forgot to tell the Boston Red Sox this. So much for the "Exspurts."

So we get into the Quality Deer Management program that the "Exspurts" are trying to force down our throats up here in the U.P.

Now one of the interesting things about my books is the fact I end up traveling all around the country speaking or attending outdoor programs. In a number of cases I have been there when some of the leading whitetail people in the country have been the speaker. One thing I gleaned from listening to these people is the real fact that there is a whole lot of difference between setting up a quality deer management program in areas where 90% of the area is farm land and setting it up here in an area like the U.P. In an area where most of those involved are farmers and it is private land you have all kinds of options in your favor to make it work. Up here in Yooperland it is a whole different world.

When you are managing an area of farm land you do not have a food problem and in most cases you do not have weather related problems. By this I mean U.P. winters. You also have mostly private land so you have control over who hunts and what method they use. In a lot of cases when it is private land that covers acre after acre they have the ability to plant special food plots and do other farming methods that really help the deer herd. Once again up here we do not have this advantage.

You can have all the dreams you want about having a super, big buck deer herd here in the U.P., but you will never succeed in doing it. There are too many uncontrollable factors up here to make it work.

When you sit and watch this TV program where this hunter is sitting in his blind trying to decide which monster buck he should shoot, needless to say he is not hunting out in the public hunting land here in the U.P. Usually this is an area of farmland where they control hundreds of acres, the food, and the hunters that get to hunt it.

I personally would suggest that some of the "Exspurts" look around and realize that it is a real world we live in here in the U.P.

I have suggested and others have suggested for years that the simplest way, and it should be the first step if you want to improve the deer hunting is to protect all the small spikes that are being shot. But I'm afraid that this is not a big enough program for the "Exspurts" pushing the quality deer management program to support.

BY the way let me say in closing that as I was typing this I received an E-mail from the DNR saying they are going to double the number of those that get to vote on this program from 1,000 land owners to 2,000 and from 1,000 hunters to 2,000. This is a step in the right direction and if they keep going maybe all of the hunters involved will get to vote.