The snow had nearly completely melted off the fields at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area by last week.
Judging by all the white on the ground, however, you wouldn't have thought so driving down the tour road that cuts through the project.
The snow geese have arrived.
Normally, the big flocks of greater snow geese that spend some time at Middle Creek every year in late winter would have been there for several weeks by now.
But the giant snowstorms of February apparently kept the snows holed up farther south longer than normal.
A little over a week ago, however, the flocks began streaming north.
Some Middle Creek regulars guessed there were about 5,000 snows at the project the first week of March. As of March 10, Jim Binder, Middle Creek's manager for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, estimated there were about 120,000 snows flying in and out of the project every day.
Until last year, March 10 would have been the last day of Pennsylvania's snow-goose hunting season.
But since the advent of the special spring conservation season last year to help thin the ranks of the exploding greater-snow-goose numbers, waterfowlers now have until April 3 to chase these wily birds.
By all accounts, Pennsylvania snow-goose hunters have enjoyed much success the past three seasons.
In 2007 and 2008, Pennsylvania led all Atlantic Flyway states with its annual snow-goose harvests.
Last year, we came in third.
This year, snow-goose hunters committed to hunting the white devils over decoys are probably going to have a tough time of it.
Take a look at the flocks at Middle Creek and you'll notice the percentage of "dirty birds" is way down this year.
Those are the juvenile geese born last year.
They're often called dirty birds because they have gray feathers mixed in with their white plumage, as opposed to the solid-white coats worn by the adult birds.
Biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last summer reported the greater-snow-goose population experienced a poor hatch during the 2009 nesting season because winter hung around a lot longer than normal on the birds' Arctic breeding grounds.
When there aren't a lot of juvenile birds around, hunters have a tough time decoying the snows.
Snow geese are notoriously wary of decoy spreads. Naturally, juvenile birds are most susceptible to being fooled by the fakes, and if hunters manage to bag a few birds over decoys, most of them are likely to be juveniles.
Not only do hunters count on juveniles to fill their bags, they also count on them to pull adult birds down from the sky and into shotgun range.
Adult snows are more likely to follow other geese into a decoy spread than they are to float in on their own.
Aware of the lack of juvenile snows in the flock this year, I took low expectations for success into a field outside Middle Creek last Wednesday with Mike Clingan, of Biglerville, and Mark Shartle, of Middletown.
As expected, the birds put on a show for us, but they never ventured into shotgun range.
That was OK with us. After the winter we've all endured, it was nice to do something outside, other than shovel snow.
Whether you like to hunt them or just look at them, the snow geese are here now.
So get out and enjoy them before they continue their journey north.
• • •
Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania's leadership has read and reviewed the so-called "deer audit" commissioned and recently released by the state Legislative Budget and Finance Committee.
Not surprisingly, while Pennsylvania Game Commission staff view the audit as a vindication of the agency's deer management program, Unified believes the audit condemns it.
In a written analysis of the audit performed by Wildlife Management Institute, Unified says WMI "claims the scientific foundation of the PGC deer management system is sound, but there are important components identified that need revision, improvement, modification, abandonment and additional evaluation and assessment.
"With so many major recommendations by WMI that bear heavily on deer management, it is difficult to accept that the PGC's deer management is scientifically sound or on a fundamentally sound foundation."
Some of you might be thinking, "Enough with the deer audit already."
And with the warm days of the past week pushing my thoughts to trout and turkeys, rest assured, I'm with you.
But Unified's view of this audit is a critical component of the ongoing debate over the success or failure of the PGC's deer management program.
Unified is suing the agency for allegedly mismanaging the state's deer herds.
This WMI audit, no doubt, is going to be a hammer both sides turn to as the fight progresses.
Unified's report was crafted by the group's legislative liaison, Charles Bolgiano, of East Hempfield Township, and radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist Jim Slinsky.
As one might expect, Unified claims the audit found that the Game Commission's efforts counting embryos in road-killed does are insufficient and should be scrapped and that the annual harvest estimates and forest regeneration assessments are pure bunk.
Those flaws in the program, the Unified analysis states, have led to a "garbage-in-garbage-out" method of deer management.
"The determination by WMI that antlerless [license] allocations using PA's ... methodology, in conjunction with poor harvest data, is flawed and unreliable is a theme USP has emphasized for a decade," the Unified report states.
Unified rates WMI's audit a "5" on a scale of 1-10.
A glaring omission from the audit, Unified states, is any discussion of what Unified calls "the true, core deer management fallacy" which is "the absence/presence theory. If a tree species is absent from the woods, allegedly there must be too many deer present," Unified's analysis states.
"This is the erroneous mindset driving our deer management for decades. ... It would not matter if we killed every last deer in this state, we will not achieve satisfactory regeneration. Our soils are in terrible condition."
Unified claims acid rain is the main reason regeneration is so poor in Pennsylvania, and the organization recommends "liming and/or burning our forests" to improve conditions.
"WMI speaks of silvicultural prescriptions for our forests, which is a fancy word for tree farming," Unified's report states. "If we are going to tree farm PA, we will always have conflicts with deer.
"In essence, we are allowing foresters to establish our goals for regeneration in direct conflict with wildlife management."
(This point is particularly interesting, since researchers at Penn State University recently concluded the PGC hasn't been aggressive enough with its "tree farming" in recent years. And the PGC says that's because the agency doesn't manage forests for timber sales, it manages them for wildlife habitat.)
Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser said agency officials saw no need to respond to Unified's report on a point-by-point basis.
In essence, he said the report is what the PGC expected.
"It's clear Unified does not support the deer management program," Feaser said. "We're not surprised by that, and we are engaged in a lawsuit with Unified over the program."
P.J. Reilly is the Sunday News' outdoors writer. E-mail him at preilly@lnpnews.com.
