An editorial article by Ian Johnson?
Hoonah deer hunters under report their deer harvest amounts and harvest effort. In fact, a 2023 survey of 14 hunters conducted by HIA found that 68% do not report hunting effort when they report their harvest. Does that matter? I think it does and here is why.
There are two main things we report each year to the State of Alaska when we get the notification that “our hunt report is due”. The first is the number of deer we harvested on our permits, or any permits we proxy hunted on. Reporting the number of harvested deer is pretty straight forward – what sex was it? What month was it? The second key question is about “effort”, and this is where things can be a little be harder to quantify. How many days you hunted can be difficult to remember. And besides, what counts as a day of hunting? If you go out trolling king salmon with a rifle on board knowing you would shoot a deer if the chance came up…is that hunting? What about going to get firewood with a gun on board to shoot a deer if you get a chance? For us in small communities we know we are opportunists and there are many times we harvest multiple types of things on a single outing depending on what we find. So, what is effort as it applies to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Reporting system? The answer could be: effort is any day that you went out intending to hunt a deer.
Good data matter. The entire reporting system is based on your honest participation in it, so reporting with accuracy the days you shot deer and intended to shoot a deer but did not have success is important.
How does your data get used?
Your data is used to answer a few questions. How does harvest compare to previous years? Does harvest amount seem sustainable for the population? How many days does it take on average to harvest a deer? Depending on the answers to these questions, managers may change deer harvest limits. Let’s look through two examples of how your data are used.
This is from a report to the Southeast Regional Advisory Committee. You can see the number of days reported for hunting by rural (FQU) and non-rural (NFQU) users going back to the year 2000. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game can use the total number of days reported and the number of deer harvested to decide how many days it takes to harvest a deer. You can see that before 2007, the number of days reported hunting by rural users was much higher than recent years.
Here is an example of how reported harvest data is used. You can see the total number of deer harvested since 2000. Note, these harvest numbers are only for the north end of Chichagof Island. One interesting thing is to see what the 2006/2007 winter did to deer harvest! That winter is a good example how of deer harvest numbers can change regulation. In that case fewer deer tags were given, and it was bucks only.
So what if the data aren’t right?
Annually, the reporting rate of harvest in Hoonah is about 40%. Hoonah and Hoonah have some of the lowest reporting rates in SE Alaska and it means 40% of hunters that get a tag report what they harvested. The Department of Fish and Game needs a minimum of 60% of hunters to report for a full analysis of deer numbers and hunter effort. If you think of a puzzle, would it be easier to finish a puzzle that is 40% complete or 60% complete? It should be noted that 60% is the minimum and that 80% or higher is the gold standard. Unfortunately, without adequate reporting rates, it can be hard to get good results. That could lead to issues for Hoonah hunters.
Since 2021, there’s been an ongoing talk about deer hunting on the north end of Chichagof Island and west side of Admiralty Island. Two questions are driving the conversation: 1) Is competition from non-rural users impacting the ability for rural users to harvest deer. 2) Is there a population issue with Sitka Black-tailed deer in those areas? The data collected from hunt reports has been used to analyze both of these questions.
One way to analyze competition is to determine whether rural users are harvesting deer in a “reasonable time” or if rural users take less time to harvest a deer than non-rural users. Using the 2021 numbers in Figures 1 and 2 rural users harvested 300 deer in the analysis area in about 700 days of hunting which is one deer every 2.3 days of hunting. Non-rural users harvested 300 deer in the same area in about 950 days of hunting which is deer every 3.2 days of hunting. If the the effort for a rural hunter is less non-rural hunter, then it is reasonable to conclude that competition is not impacting the rural users hunt much. However, we know that Hoonah hunters users do not report hunting effort well. Analysis of when competition is occurring is an example of how not having quality and well-reported data data may create results that are not beneficial to rural users.
What is the point of this article?
This article isn’t about determining if competition between user groups is or isn’t an issue, and I am not going to speculate on what the actual numbers are in the example above if 100% of hunters reported accurately, because this article isn’t about getting the historical numbers right – it’s about getting them right from here on out. I hope you can see that we need good data to make decisions and that with good data managers can understand deer populations and make better decisions for all users groups. When you fill out your hunting reports from here on out, please know that good data matters. Be forward thinking for yourself and future hunters that benefit from good management and accurately report the numbers of days you hunted – even the days you did not get a deer. Your data are important and help federal and state managers make decisions that best reflect Hoonah’s needs. Gunalchéesh! ]
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