A new study says if the Pennsylvania Game Commission is going to stick its neck out in controlling the state's deer based on a healthy ecosystem, and not just so hunters can see more deer, then it needs to stick it out all the way.

"While Pennsylvania now has one of the most progressive deer management programs in the country, it still falls short of what the public has said it wants," says the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, a Washington-based nonprofit research organization.

Bryon Shissler, a certified wildlife biologist and former Lancaster County resident, and Marrett Grund, a former Game Commission deer biologist and leader, contacted wildlife agencies in all 48 continental states to see how they manage deer.

Shissler, who now lives in Somerset County, said they expected to glean the best deer-management techniques to recommend ways the Game Commission could improve on the bold and highly controversial initiative the agency launched to rein in the deer herd almost 10 years ago.

But, he said in an interview today, the team was "very surprised at the lack of scientific underpinnings and data to make decisions on deer and their impacts on society."

Moreover, Pennsylvania emerged as one of only two states that used forest regeneration and overbrowsing deer's negative impacts on the landscape as the basis for setting herd size.

Most agencies, the report notes, manage deer to get the highest number of deer that can be sustained by the forests. That's not surprising, the report notes, because the agencies are funded mostly by sportsmen's dollars.

But inadequate funding also plays a big role in the lack of science in deer-management programs around the country.

Beginning in 2000, the Pennsylvania Game Commission switched from managing deer on what habitat could sustain to a herd size based on deer impacts on society (crop damage and deer-vehicle collisions, for example) and the environment (destroying habitat needed by other wildlife).

It has been immensely unpopular in some quarters.

The Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania in 2005 sued the Game Commission, charging it lacked evidence for its initiative and was wiping out the deer herd, especially on heavily hunted public lands.

The case is still in Commonwealth Court.

The Legislature, meanwhile, has ordered an independent audit of the agency's deer-management practices, including how it estimates the number of deer from year to year.

Stephen Mohr, a Bainbridge resident, former game commissioner and current president of the Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania, today dismissed the new report by saying of Shissler and Grund: "Both of them are anti-deer; both of them are environmentalists."

The study says a majority of Pennsylvanians want a balanced approach to managing deer. It makes these recommendations to the Game Commission:

• Sample and survey all state residents, not just issue-driven citizen task forces.  

• Increase its use of science and broaden staff to include people knowledgeable in forestry, botany, hydrology, soil science, fisheries, geology and fire ecology.

• Increase research initiatives. For example, no one has studied the relationship between the condition of a forest ecosystem at varying deer densities.

• Merging the Game Commission with other agencies would not improve deer management.

• Because of declining numbers of hunters to fund the agency, a broader funding base, perhaps through general funds, will be needed to operate ecosystem-based deer management.

State Rep. Bryan Cutler, of Peach Bottom, a hunter and member of the House Game and Fisheries Committee, agreed the Game Commission has to involve the public more.

"It has to be a two-way street. They have to be able to take comments and criticism from sportsmen," he said.

Cutler said he was wary of using public money to fund the agency because "I'm afraid that with money would come strings."

Mohr contended the federal government did a study for the Game Commission about four years ago and found much higher deer densities could be maintained without harming forests, but that agency officials threw them out as inaccurate.

He said the state's sportsmen were looking forward to having their day in Commonwealth Court "because it's going to show that going into this deer program we had no idea of how many deer there were in Pennsylvania and today we have no idea how many deer are in Pennsylvania. So how can we continue to have a program where we issue 800,000 to 900,000 antlerless tags to maintain deer at their current level when we don't have the numbers to document it?"


Staff writer Ad Crable can be reached at acrable@LNPnews.com or 481-6029.