gamespec

A few clarifications. The recommendations for reducing the archery season length both (29 and 34A) came from the awesome field people we have that are out there on the ground and know a lot more about the unit than us Jackwagons. Those recommendations were made by the Wildlife Managers in accordance with the survey data, harvest data, hunt guidelines, and their knowledge from talking to hunters in the field. The recommendations were then sent up throught the Game Specialist, Wildlife Program Manager, Regional Supervisor, Big Game Supervisor, and then Game Branch Chief. Us jackwagons between the WM and the Commission do not make the recommendations - our role is to simply make sure the hunt recommendations are consistent with the data and Hunt Guidelines that we all have to follow. In this case they clearly were, so the hunt recommendations in 34A and 29 were fowarded unaltered to the Commission for approval. It is unlikely that Wakeling's lateral (not demotion) will have any affect on recommendations such as this that are based on survey data, harvest data, hunt guidelines, and on-the-ground experience. If a member of the public disagrees with a recommendation there is plenty of opportunity to provide input and convince the Commission (with more compelling data or argument) that it is a bad recommendation. The Commission has the option of changing the recommendation on the floor of the Public April Commission Meeting as they often do when someone has a good counter argument (many years ago the Wards simply asked for an archery Sandhill Crane hunt and got it the next year). The WMs in this case are just making hunt recommendations that are consistent with the Hunt Guidelines developed by the Department and the Public during the last process. The current hunt guidelines the WMs are using apply restrictions in archery season length when archery harvest is more than 20% of the total harvest in a unit (not archery hunt success which is the % of archers who get a deer). These restrictions were put in the guidelines because rifle hunters felt it was unfair that in some units the archers were taking a higher % of the total harvest while the rifle tags were being reduced. They asked us to develop a strategy to limit archery harvest in cases were archers were getting "more than their fair share" (their words not mine or the Department's). We constantly hear complaints from rifle hunters about all the days archers get to hunt during the peak of rut and the amazing technological advancements in archery tackle in the last 20 years. The Department biologists and Jackwagons don't care how a deer dies as long as the overall harvest is appropriate for the population. We manage wildlife for the public and our public processes are how the public tells us what they want. If we were in this to make money to buy trucks we would set the hunt guidelines to 7-10 bucks per 100 does and not care about what the hunt success was. Mule deer research shows that even at 7 bucks per 100 does the reproduction is not impacted and you will not reduce the number of does that are pregnant. Also if we decide 100 bucks can be harvested in a unit, we could have 400 rifle tags (at 25% hunt success) or 1429 Archery tags (at 7% hunt success). So if the Department was in it for the money we would dramatically reduce rifle tags and have mostly archery tags. The public has told us through the years how they would like us to manage the weapon-type allocation and this public process contunues every year for those that are interested in engaging. The hunt Guidelines are currently being revised as they are every 2 years and everyone has the ability to be part of that process. We will be having public meetings to get your thoughts on what you'd like to see changed. The meetings in southern AZ will be May 28 (Sierra Vista) and May 29 (Tucson). If you can't make those meeting, comments can be submitted at azgamebranch@azgfd.gov, or by mail to Hunt Guidelines, Arizona Game and Fish Department, 5000 W. Carefree Highway, Phoenix, AZ 85086. If you want more information about this whole process, check out: http://www.azgfd.gov/h_f/hunt_guidelines.shtml The survey data I mention above is gathered in the same blocks year after year. We started doing this several years ago because WMs were flying surveys and collecting survey data in different places different years. So some years we'd run into a lot of deer and others not as many in a different place. This tells us nothing about trends in a deer population. Also we might just by chance survey more heavily hunted areas one year and get a low post-hunt buck:doe ratio and then a lightly hunted area the next year and have the B:D ratio double. That's just a bad way to collect meaningful survey data to manage a deer population with so we established consistent survey blocks to monitor trends through time as a useful index to what is going on in the population. I think it will be very interesting to see how those trends change in the next 10 years after the fire. Remember that venting on a forum is not engagment in the process of wildlife management. The Department provides plenty of opportunity to be a part of the process. The Wards came all the way to Tucson to my Open House on April 3rd and we had a great conversation about all this and I helped them get their comments directly to the Commission before the April Commission Meeting. Let's work together in a productive way, but keep in mind that there are alot of people wanting the Department to do a lot of different and conflicting things. Jim

This is indeed a rare condition and taxidermists probably know more about this topic than deer biologists. I did mention them briefly in my article on other hair/pelage variations (toward the end of the article). Click here Jim Heffelfinger Regional Game Specialist Arizona Game and Fish Department

I'm in the middle of spring hunt recommendations now so I have to be brief. I have done some genetic work and have written/read about Merriam's elk some. The history of Merriam's elk and our genetic work is summarized in this article: Merriam's Elk Article I have procured one of the Merriam's Elk DNA samples we were not able to get during the research and I think I know where another might be that was not archived correctly at the American Museum. I have plans to do more genetic work with the more refined methods now available but I need to get a couple big projects off my plate first. I also coathored a chapter with Dave Brown and Neil Carmony in the upcoming AZ Wildlife Trophies book (2010) that does a pretty good job of documenting historical AZ elk and all translocations in the state. Bottom line is they were apparently not very common from the mid-1800s on (when people started writing about wildlife here). Not sure how many we may have had before that. One of the last ones killed by Nelson for the Smithsonian already had a musket ball and some buck shot in it, so the last few may have been pursued pretty intensively. JIM

Looks like a Goulds with all the white on the rump - there really isn't any other kind in SEAZ except for domestics. I got word today that there is a group of 5 turkeys in Rancho Sahuarita and one has a yellow streamer tag. Sounds like it might be the same group that crossed the highway this morning headed east. Who needs telemetry with so many observers out there! JIM

This came to me today: Tom Argyos just called and said his buddy just saw 8 turkeys cross I-19 from 36A to 34A near green valley this morning and one had a yellow tag on it.... just fyi, The yellow tag means that bird was one we released in Josephine this February. Problem solved I guess. Let me know of any other 36A sightings. JIM

We have indeed been releasing turkeys in the Santa Ritas, in Josephine Canyon. A few radioed birds worked their way to the southwest into the flats (a few of those died). We also have a few in Madera Canyon. Some of them must have made their way towards the riparian bottom of the Santa Cruz and then up a side canyon into 36A. I'd be very interested in a Lat./Long. or description of this location along with the classification of what kind of turkeys were there. You all are our eyes and ears out there and I appreciate this kind of information. JIM

The data I have on hooves and antlers are not in the same computer file. I have antler data in a DBase IV file and the hoof data in a spreadsheet. Both files have to be put in a one file and matched up so its more complicated than just running a summary. I've got a big meeting all this week and then will have to jump into the hunt recommendation process until March 1, followed by the world famous Junior Jack Kamp 2010 in the Altar Valley the following weekend. So, I can't get to that analysis for a while. I agree that tracks and body size are closely related (although we've all seen a big guy with tiny feet). Antler size might be less correlated, but still big mature bucks leave big tracks more often than not. I don't have any doe hoof measurements (or antler measurements). Hooves do shrink when they dry - not sure what that does to the measurement. About the elk/pronghorn hunt success data: Because we changed the time of the draw, this info was not summarized for the fall 2009 hunts when the regs were printed. There is no way to get the questionnaires back from the Dec cow hunts and enter them and summarize them by the time these regs are printed in early December (some hunts probably haven't occurred yet). As for pronghorn, I'm not sure that same thing is true. I'll ask our statistician. This information is used primarily to guide the management of these species along with survey data and other information. It helps everyone decide where to apply, but the reason EVERYONE (right?) returns these is to help us in management so please fill those out and return them. I'll be at a meeting in Salt Lake City the rest of the week and maybe not able to get back here. JIM

I have measured a few hundred hooves (length and width) and have mainbeam length, spread, base circumference for all those deer. Cool, right? Well, no... I have not been able to summarize all those data yet so I don't have great stuff for you. But I can describe how I took the measurements so you can do it consistantly. Whenever you have different people collecting measurements it is important that everyone does it the same way or you'll end up with a lot of numbers that are not very useful. I took all measurements in millimeters so I didn't have to deal with 1/8s. Width was the outside measurement at the widest "bow" in the hoof -- the widest part. Length is a little less clear, but i did mine all the same way as pictured below. From the tip of the hooves to the back of the hoof. Now, the hoof gets soft and is rounded at the back so you have to eye-ball it. I pushed in on the spongy part on the back of the hoof a little and then read the mm measurement at back edge of the hoof (my pushing sort of made it bulge a little so I could measure the back of the bulge). You might think of it as what would be the back of the track if it left a good track (that was my intention - so you could measure a track and have basically the same measurement). Of course front and rear hoof measurements have to be kept separate. My interest was not to compare antlers but to look at the overlap in WT and MD. I was interested in where the cut-off was. So if you saw a track that was larger than some measurement, you knew it was a mule deer. For bucks 1.5 years and older, 58mm in length seems to be the breaking point where most larger are MD and most smaller are WT. There seems to be a lot of overlap in width -- maybe you want to just focus on front hoof length to make your data collection easier. Any small track could be a fawn or yearling of either species. It was not a serious analysis, really a "gee-whiz" thing, but sometimes i wonder about random things too. JIM

Heres what a Hybrid metatarsal gland looks like (arrowed on the east side of the Galiuros). Look at the furry ridge under the label "Metatarsal Gland" Also a live one (different one): Also a mounted one. This picture was given to me and apparently taken in Phoenix - I don't know anything else about it: JIM

There are weird deer sometimes, but a pure mule deer is never going to have a whitetail tail. All hybrids I have seen have tails that look more WT than MD. Most are black on the back, but some pure WT are black on the back of the tails also so you can't just use that characteristic. That tail of this deer was certainly not a mule deer tail. I don't know what the WM meant, but if I were to guess I'd say that the front of the deer looked mule deer and if you shot it without seeing the tail with a WT tag I'd say you shot a deer that looked like a mule deer. But, seeing the tail (as I'm sure he did) would make me feel confident in shooting it. Hybrids are disqualified from B&C and P&Y. If you shoot a hybrid there is no violation - maybe we should give people half the fine . There have been cases where a hybrid deer was shot with a WT tag and it looked mostly mule deer (probably a case of 3/4 MD:1/4 WT). In those cases you have a WM looking at a deer that looks 75% MD and someone shot it with a WT tag. That would make me question the decision to pull the trigger. We don't need genetic tests to tell a hunter if he can take the deer home or not. The metatarsal gland shows the difference in the field. The problem is our current genetic research is showing that "hybrids" are not always 50:50 and thats when things get "funny." Male hybrids are sterile (at least 99% of the time), but females can back cross to either parent species (usually mule deer). So you have some 1/4 WT and some 1/8 WT, and some 1/16 and 3/16 WT...... You can see that this is a more complicated issue than we all first thought. Althought the mule deer metatarsal gland (4"+) and the whitetail metatarsal gland (<1") are very different, what does a 3/16 whitetail and 13/16 mule deer metatarsal look like? If you see a Coues WT with a black tail and one G2 forked, do you shoot it with a mule deer tag? This is where you have to be careful. Luckily hybrid survival is low and most hybrid fawns don't survive their first year so the species tend to stay fairly pure. If you know you deer identification, you won't shoot the wrong species. The problem is sometimes the WM has a deer that is a whitetail with forked G2s or a young 3x3 mule deer with all tines coming off the mainbeam and the hunter has the wrong tag on it and trys to convince the WM its a hybrid. The bottom line is, a mule deer won't have a whitetail tail and vice versa. The metatarsal glands are very different (>4" and <1") so there is no mistake what the deer is when you get a close look. If you're not sure, don't shoot. If you have one on the ground and these characteristics are intermediate, there is a good chance its a hybrid. Because of this discussion, I will block out some time at our March Regional meeting and give a presentation about hybrids to the Region 5 WMs so they all know what to look for and there is no misunderstandings in the field. We have some new WMs in the region and they probably have not run into this issue yet. I didn't know squat the first 2 years in this position and I'm still learning after 18 years. I usually include a bunch of photos and discussion of hybrids when I talk at the ADA hunter clinic.

Relax, its a hybrid. The one photo that includes the hind legs seals the deal. You can see the metatarsal glands are intermediate in location and length between WT and MD. I was going to produce a brochure on the differences but there was no interest for it in our publicaitions dept. The focus was too limited. I'm sure they are right, and I have already published all the differences in depth with photos and details of how to tell a hybrid. The metatarsal glands are on the OUTSIDE of the lower hind legs. If you look at the pic with the bow laying on the deer, the lower cam is directly over the metatarsal gland. It is a furry ridge on the outside of the deer's lower leg. I am now working with Boone & Crockett and a geneticist in Maine to develop a genetic marker to tell not only 50:50 hybrids from pure breds but to be able to diagnose 1/4:3/4 and maybe the next generation after that. Our work is not done yet, we are having trouble getting the geneticist to wrap it up and provide a final report. When he does (6 months or less) it will provide a test that any one can use to tell for sure it a deer is the product of hybridization in the last 3-4 generations. You should also be able to use antler drillings and old skin from mounts. Keep in mind these hybrids are rare so don't pull the trigger on anything that looks "funny." They do crop up from time to time. The key is to keep the whole back legs for diagnosis. JIM

I signed up on Twitter with another account 6 months ago and then checked it out. When I got my first tweet that said "I'm at the tire store waiting for new tires to be installed" and I thought "Why on earth would anyone ever want to join twittter?" I never went back to the site. But, I thought game info might be interesting. I promise I won't send tweets that say I'm taking the kids to the doctor.

I'm going to try something a little different and a little geeky. I've started to "Twitter" random information about things going on in the Game Management realm in southeastern Arizona. It's not all deer, but basically the things that are going on that day or that week. The kind of stuff I talk about when a friend calls and says "What's goin' on?" It may be interesting to forum members or may not. If you don't know about Twitter, its a place where someone can send out very short messages, like text messages, and they are posted on their own Twitter page. Sort of like a mini-Blog. Messages are limited to 140 characters. You can visit the site periodically to see what's up or you can have each outgoing message (called "tweets") be sent to your phone as a text message (if you don't have unlimited texting you may not want to do this). I intend on "tweeting" maybe once a week, but will send any random thing that I think someone may be interested. Lately I have sent tweets every day, but that will slow down as the newness wears off. The topics will be game animal biology and management ionformation in SE Arizona. You can check out my page by going to https://twitter.com/GameTrax When you go to the twitter website you can sign up (free - username and password is all you need) and then you can choose to "follow" my account called "GameTrax". If you do this, all my "tweets" appear on your own Twitter page and you can add lots of others also. To receive my tweets as text messages just elect to "follow" GameTrax and when you click on the list of people you are following, it will allow you to turn on the option for "updates to be sent to your mobile phone" as SMS text messages. I won't be taking requests for certain Tweets or information, but it might be a interesting way to get the inside scoop on things that you may not see anywhere else. If course the emphasis will be on deer because of their reigning superiority in the animal kingdom. Let me know what you think of this idea.

Correction to this earlier post. We have not used the current-year harvest data since that transition (it was not just that transition year). We moved the draw earlier to accompodate public requests and that moved the whole hunt recommendation process back to the point where we finalize the elk & pronghorn recommendations at the December commission meeting and there are still elk hunts occuring at that time. We knew this when we made the change and didn't see this as a problem. JIM

When the lion season was closed I don't remember anyone making an argument that it was a biological decision. As a biologist I would love it if all wildlife management decisions were about biology. (am I still in the corner?) As for the dove hybridization...I have heard non-biologists say that they interbreed. I have not seen any record of that happening yet, and because we are talking about North/South American doves vs. Eurasian doves I don't think it is going to happen. JIM