CHL Newsletter

Official publication of the CHL Hunting Associates, Inc. Winter 2001 Vol. I, No. 2

Winter Deer Habitat-

White-tailed deer have fairly basic nutritional requirements. They need energy, nitrogen, essential fatty acids, and fiber. They also require a variety of vitamins and minerals in their diet to remain healthy, and these requirements must be met year?round. A deficit in available browse during any season can impact deer survival. However, it is usually during the winter that nutrition becomes a problem and that we may start to see animals that are dying of starvation. The natural human tendency when we see an animal suffering is to try to help that animal survive, in this case by providing supplemental food for the deer. This, however, while potentially helping one or a few deer, can have a negative impact on the overall deer population. Maintaining a deer population above the winter carrying capacity of the habitat degrades it and reduces the number of deer it can support in the future Starvation is one of the natural ways that a population regulates itself. If deer are starving, it means that the habitat used by those deer cannot support the current population. By feeding those deer, the population is maintained above the carrying capacity of the habitat. All those extra deer continue to overuse the habitat, which further degrades the habitat and reduces the number of deer it can support in the future. This will likely end up making the problem worse the next year. There will be more starving deer, and the cycle will begin again. Instead of providing supplemental feed for the deer, your money and time would be much better spent in improving the habitat on your land so that it is healthy and vigorous and can support a healthy population of deer. Improving your land's carrying capacity by logging, for instance, can yield new growth, openings, and extra income. Some aspects of improving your land for deer, such as removing trees to create openings, can actually provide you money. Imagine, improving your land for deer and making money, as opposed to continually spending more and more money on supplemental feed each year! General deer habitat requirements consist of the basic needs of food, water, and shelter. During the winter, especially in northern Michigan, deer survival is balanced on the availability of quality shelter and adequate food. If a lot of quality browse is available, deer can make do with poorer shelter. If the food is not available, the shelter becomes more important. Coniferous trees such as northern white cedar and hemlock in northern Michigan and white cedar, red cedar, jack pine, and white and blue spruce in southern Michigan provide shelter. The preferred browse in the north is white cedar and hemlock, and in the south it is a variety of woody brush and shrubs, including red maple, aspen, crabapple, elderberry, and sumac. Management practices such as maintaining openings, planting palatable brush and tree species, and planting conifer trees that provide good cover can all help ensure winter survival. Food plots, especially ones with highly nutritious plants, are another method of providing food for deer. If you can find it, a good reference on white?tailed deer Initiative (CRMI) resource professional. The Resource Professionals (RPs) can be contacted through your local Conservation District or find out which RP covers your area by looking at: www.dnr.state.mi.us/pdfs/wildlife/CRMIdirectory.pdf. An excellent reference on habitat improvement is Improving Your Land for Wildlife: A Landowner's Guide, available from the MUCC (phone 1-800 777-6720) or at the DNR's Web site. As you consider improving your land for wildlife, remember to try to benefit all wildlife, not just deer. Managing land for a variety of wildlife and habitat types using natural systems will provide for a healthy ecosystem that should increase your hunting and wildlife viewing experience. Reprinted from Michigan Outdoor News

HUNTER'S RIGHTS - ANTIS AT WORK-

Sportsmen on the front lines of protecting and advancing our outdoor heritage rarely have the time to relax. Sure, there are euphoric moments when a key sportsmen's bill is passed or a negative ballot issue is defeated. But there are organizations and people who believe passionately that their values and lifestyles are so superior to others' that they are hell-bent on imposing them on the populace. There is a constant, unrelenting series of "anti" events occurring daily in our country. It is primarily due to the vigilance of national groups like the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America (WLFA) and similar state groups that these attempts to stop hunting are monitored, controlled and, hopefully, but not always, defeated. Here's a small sample of what's been happening, good and bad, on the anti-hunting front. Sportsmen in Beverly Shores, Ind., mounted a vigorous campaign to keep wildlife management in the hands of professionals. The nation's largest anti-hunting group, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), stuck its ever-present big nose into a deer over-population problem and proposed birth control as a solution. Bowhunting and other traditional forms of population control were shunned as solutions by the city council when it adopted the HSUS plan. To rub salt in the wound, the city council is using the HSUS' senior "scientist" to directly assist in the program. At this writing, the Clinton administration continues its unrelenting attack on the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment by bullying gun manufacturers with threats of lawsuits and ranting unceasingly about trigger locks and the gun show loophole. On another front, he has given sportsmen and rural Americans a massive backhand by proposing an unthinkable 60 million-acre gift to environmentalists from the beleaguered National Forests (not National Parks, National Forests). Already 34 million acres of the 190 million acre National Forest system is off limits. As a former U.S. Forest Service ranger, I see this loss of multi-purpose land and roads, if it happens, as the death bell for our public forests. This core area of multi-purpose lands is where Americans hunt, fish, harvest timber, ride snowmobiles and 4-wheelers, camp with the family, and engage in activities like berry?picking and fall color tours. A wise-use group, the Blue Ribbon Coalition, says this is akin to "putting the earth in jail." Their executive director, Clark Collins, said, "King William and Albert have found our public lands guilty of providing enjoyment for their subjects. Now they are slamming the gates shut on the King's forests." Locking these lands up will simply destroy rural lifestyles that are based on proximity to National Forests. Keep in mind that roughly 250 million acres of public land are already set aside from commercial use. This is a land mass almost equal to that of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Holland, Belgium and Israel combined! And all this simply to salve an egomaniacal impeached president in search of a legacy. Another animal rights group, In Defense of Animals, has formed a Youth Corps for Animals (YCA) aimed at recruiting children and teenagers into their fold. The Youth Corps website www.youthforanimals.org contains messages such as: "It is extremely helpful to brainstorm on different ways to put pressure on your target. For example, find out where he/she works and organize an office demonstration or candlelight vigil. Perhaps you can find out where that person will be giving a speech, attending a conference, or receiving an award, and you can be there to speak out for the animals." Humor Department: PETA People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or, depending on your sense of humor, People Eating Tasty Animals ? does not want to see the lobster icon return to Maine's automobile license plates. PETA wrote this to Gov. Angus King: "We hope you agree that a license plate is no place to put the image of an animal that has to be boiled alive." The Governor responded, "If God didn't intend for us to eat meat, why did he give us those two sharp front teeth?" Way to go Gov! Speaking of kids and PETA, Gr-r-r magazine, their publication for children, encourages youngsters to protest medical research aimed at advancing cures for heart disease and strokes. PETA tells young readers that testing medicines and surgery techniques on animals is cruel and does nothing to help human patients. If a school has a fundraiser for the American Heart Association, says PETA, kids should refuse to participate, or else raise money and send it to PETA instead. Right, sure. Ask those kids who's going to help Grandpa when he has a stroke - bunny huggers or doctors? On the financial front, HSUS has teamed up with a Wall Street firm, Salomon Brothers Asset Management (a division of Smith Barney) to establish the Humane Equity Group. This mutual fund group will only invest in businesses that meet HSUS "animal friendly standards." They are initially investing $8 million (don't sportsmen wish for that kind of moola). If you would like to voice their concern over Salomon Brothers' alliance with a group that seeks to end all hunting, fishing and trapping, write Salomon Brothers President Sandy Weill, 333 West 34th St., New York, NY 10013, call (212) 816-6000 or go online to www.salomonsmithbamey.com.

Ballot watch: In Arizona, sportsmen promoted a legislative resolution requiring a two-thirds majority vote to pass ballot issues concerning wildlife. In Alaska, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Pete Kelly sponsored an amendment to the state constitution that would exclude wildlife management issues from the ballots. In Virginia, voters were asked to safeguard the right to hunt, fish, and harvest game in accordance with existing laws. Reprinted from Buckmasters Whitetail Magazine

C.H.L. HUNTING ASSOCIATES 2000 SURVEY

Please take a minute to fill out the following survey and mail it to Kevin, so we can serve you better. Your input is very important.

Does your club normally plant crops that provide year-round nutrition to deer? ____ (Yes or No) If YES, put the approx. number of acres (fractions accepted) in front of each crop that you plant: _____ Alfalfa ______ Clover _____ Rye Other: __________________________ If NO, does your club plan to plant any deer friendly crops in the future? ______ (Yes or No)

Prior to the current ban on baiting, did you put out bait for deer? ________ (Yes or No) If yes, approx. how much? ____ a few bags/buckets here and there; or _____ by the yard(s)

Do you agree with the current ban on baiting deer? ________ (Yes or No) If no TB were present would you favor baiting for deer? _________ (Yes or No)

Does your club practice Quality Deer Management? _________ (Yes or No) If YES, what is the minimum criteria for your deer management plan? _____ 8 points or more ______ 6 points or more ______ 4 points or more Other: (please specify) ________________________________________________________

Do you encourage the harvest of does? _________ (Yes or No)

How many does did your club members/guests harvest in 2000? ____________ How many acres on your club? _____________

How many years have you been a member of the CHL association? _____________

Which best describes your club's usage (please check one or the other): _____ Seasonal/Mainly Deer Hunting _____ Year-Round/Multi-Recreational Usage

What is the biggest deer (rack size) taken from your camp during the 2000 season? _____ No bucks taken _____ 4-6 pointer _____ 7-9 pointer _____ 10+ pointer Other: ____

Club dues and gate-pass fees have not risen in over 12 years, while the cost of money has more than doubled. The board is considering ways to off-set increasing costs and to expand services, such as: property improvements (example - better road maintenance, and we need a new sign over the entry gate, using the old hardware), improved communications (quarterly newsletter, the Huntinggetaway.com web-site), etc. One suggestion is to have club dues based on club size? For example - 1- 99 acres $40; 100 - 199 $50; 200 - 399 $60; 400 - 799 $ 70; 800+ acres $80. Would you like club dues at (check one): Stay at $50 ______ Based on club size _____ , and Would you also support an increase in gate-pass fees from $10 to $15? _____ (Yes or No), or Would you rather have an increase in gate-pass fees to $20 with no club dues? ____ (Yes or No) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please return survey by February 1st to: Note - garbage in = garbage out. CHL Sect/Treas. K. Clark Please be as accurate as possible. 9435 Cherry Bend Rd. We will run surveys in the future Traverse City, MI 49684 to compile and compare data.

Why People Hunt

For nearly thirty years now, hunting has steadily lost approval; during this same period, increasing numbers of people have taken up hunting. The majority of Americans disapprove of sport hunting unless it's done for food "meat hunting" and most of these people find trophy hunting especially improper. Even among hunters, trophy hunting often rates low in esteem. It's an undisputed fact that enthusiasm for hunting and fishing attracts most "wildlifers" into the field. A colleague of mine at the University of Georgia yearly scheduled for the wildlife majors a seminar entitled, "Shoot `em and Leave `em Lay." He challenged the students' ethical belief that they should eat what they kill. He insisted that trophy hunting is the wise ecological policy: by leaving the carcass in the field the hunter indirectly provides winter food for everything from mice, jays and crows to bobcats and foxes. Whatever remains will decay naturally, recycling nutrients back into food webs which eventually support big game herds and better trophy specimens. To remove whole animals, many of which would die and replenish the earth if not taken by hunters, is to obstruct natural cycles and reduce the carrying capacity of the land and the complexity and stability of biological communities. Vehemently the students disagreed. The logic was right but it insulted a deep?felt sense of moral obligation to waste not the sacred animal. If men hunted to serve ecological ends, the professor's seminar would have been well received, but the fact is they don't. The problem with these kinds of debates is that there is nothing rational about sport hunting in the first place, but then neither is there anything rational about falling in love, sex, sports or most of human life. So deer herds will starve if men don't kill a portion of them each fall. So what? Let them. Let's face it, men don't go out into the woods to control game populations or maintain productive habitats for them. These are but the effects of hunting hoped for by professional game managers. And even if most hunters feel obliged to eat game, the fact is that they don't hunt primarily for food. Sure, a lot of hunters like wild game food, and some relish it, but if food were the motive, hunting would be downright foolish considering the expense. The average pheasant costs a hunter well over $ 200, and a pound of venison many times more than a pound of the most expensive cut of beef. Under assault, hunters and game management agencies remind us of all the habitat, research and benefits to non?game wildlife that accrue from hunters' dollars. In the early 1970s, at the peak of the anti?hunting campaign, Professor Gene Decker of Colorado State University said that 95 percent of all the money ever spent on wildlife, game and non?game alike, came directly or indirectly from hunting ? the license fees and taxes on firearms and ammunition paid by all hunters, and direct acquisition or reclamation of wildlife habitats, as by Ducks Unlimited, which has purchased almost 8 million acres of waterfowl breeding grounds (at a cost of $1,000,000,000). Many hunter?conservation groups like Ducks Unlimited and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation have put millions of dollars into wildlife habitat. Despite the problems posed byhunting, in no way do these come close to outweighing the overall benefits to society at large. Having been employed as a wildlife research biologist by the Washington State Department of Game, I can speak with some authority about the situation in that state, where over one million acres have been purchased and permanently set aside for wildlife. The critics will argue that, "Oh, yeah, so they can go there and hunt. That's fine justification for acquiring wildlife habitat." The fact is that hunters do not eliminate game populations on these lands; what they do is kill a portion annually, which does not have significant impact on these populations' ability to reproduce and maintain themselves. Of course, wildlife managers know this, and they apply controls as need be. But the critics miss the point: without these lands being set aside by hunters' dollars the State would have much less wildlife. The same properties would be used for grazing livestock, farming, housing and other forms of development which would mean not only fewer species and small populations, but also fewer places for non?hunters to visit for hiking, bird watching, nature studies, camping and the like. The first requirement for wild things is a place to live: no habitat, no wildlife, that's all there is to it. Hunting makes possible millions of acres of habitat for wildlife, hunted and non?hunted, and we all benefit from it. "There is a passion for hunting - something deeply implanted in the human breast." Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist Irrespective of personal attitudes about hunting, anyone who is genuinely concerned about the perpetuation of wildlife in America should give serious consideration to the immense economic importance of hunting. The most prevalent anti?hunting position, which is that killing animals for sport is wrong, would put an end to hunting without compensating for it economically, and that would mean that far more wild animals would die in the short run, and we would have much reduced populations in the long run. It's not a means versus ends argument, but a matter of priorities: no hunting and fewer wild things and places or hunting and more wild things and places. Until and unless anti?hunters can put up, they would do well to shut up. Otherwise, in trying to end hunting, they are actually asking for a change that is counterproductive to their own position - if that position is for wildlife and its needs. I am not saying that hunting is perfect; it isn't, and I have been a staunch critic of it myself. The problems are numerous, but the most pressing need is to develop hunter education into an actual path of initiation which connects people to the earth, the animals, the human community and the Divine. Hunting, like growing things to eat, should be as fundamental to human learning as reading and writing. From 'The Sacred Hunt' by Dr. Randall L. Eaton

U.P. Hunter Bags Trophy Whitetail Calumet, Mich -

The wait is over for Jake Jackovich. The longtime deer hunter shot a trophy 23?point buck at 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 20 while hunting a scrapeline in Keweenaw County. "On opening day of 1998 I got a shot at a big buck and missed," said Jackovich, of Calumet. "After that I decided to just hunt for a trophy. I passed some 6 points, and a small 8-point, and a couple 4s earlier this year, and it paid off." The rack green scored 198 as a non-typical, and 173, after deductions, as a typical 17-point. It features a 22-inch inside spread, one 12-inch tine and one 11-inch tine. The buck dressed out at 189 pounds. "I think this is the same one I missed in `98," Jackovich said. "I'll know better once the taxidermist gets done with it and I can have it aged."

Editor's Note - As I indicated during the presentation at the annual meeting on Nov. 17th - often times when smaller bucks are passed on, bigger bucks that you may never see may come out. With four hunters on 140 acres this past season we passed on a six-pointer, several four-pointers, and many spikes. The result - we bagged a nice 6, a nice 8, and a big 11-pointer. The 11 was the best buck we have taken in the last 10 years! Hunting hats off to the 10 CHL clubs that have joined the Quality Deer Management Association. Hopefully we can share our successes with other clubs and get them to join in the future. Kevin Clark, CHL Sect/Treas.

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