The Game Commission and the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources announced this week they will be flying over more than 500,000 acres of Pennsylvania woodlands with an infrared camera-equipped plane to get a better grasp of the size of its white-tailed deer population.

Sections of six state forest districts, seven state Game Lands, and two wildlife management units will be surveyed in aerial flights continuing into early spring. Results will be compared to on-the-ground measures of deer density and habitat conditions to provide a clearer picture of deer browsing impact on the forest ecosystems. The over flights double the area covered last year.

Targeted acreage includes the PGC's doe and fawn mortality study areas, as well as portions of the state forestland enrolled in the Game Commission's deer management assistance program allowing hunters to kill additional deer.

"Until we have the best consensus around the deer population and habitat destruction, we will be forever locked in a battle of too few versus too many," DCNR Secretary Michael DiBerardinis said. "We are committed to working with the Game Commission and others to build a better understanding of how to both improve the health of the deer herd and restore forest habitat."

"It is important to remember that forward-looking infrared data represents those deer sighted on a particular parcel, on a given day and time," said Pennsylvania Game Commission Executive Director Carl G. Roe said. "It represents the minimum number of deer that may be present and shows grouped deer numbers that are then used to calculate an average per square mile number for an area.

"In selecting which state game lands to include in these flights, the agency chose areas with differing sizes, topography, proximity to populated areas and regions," Roe said. "While the data is unable to be used to make deer management decisions across entire wildlife management units, we do believe that this data will help in demonstrating deer dispersion at the time of the flights and provide another source of information to help us understand deer and their activities."

In the 2005 survey, the highest concentrations of deer were found in the Promised Land area of the Delaware State Forest, Pike County, where 23.69 deer were found per square mile. The second highest whitetail concentration was 20.29 deer per square mile in the Denton Hill area of the Susquehannock State Forest, in Potter County. Lowest concentrations were in the Cedar Run section of Tioga State Forest, Tioga County, 9.64; followed by the southern section of Sproul State Forest, in Clinton County, 10.69.

The State forest districts, game lands, and acreage targeted in the survey include:

Moshannon, Clearfield and Centre counties; Elk, Elk and Cameron counties; Tioga, Tioga and Bradford counties; Susquehannock, Potter and McKean counties; Sproul, Clinton and Centre counties; and Tuscorora, Juniata, Perry, Mifflin, Huntingdon, and Cumberland counties.

Game Lands: 13, Sullivan County; 14 and 311, both in Elk County; 37, Tioga County; 75, Lycoming County; 210, Dauphin County; and 211, Dauphin, Lebanon and Schuylkill counties. Also, a total of 2,773,415 acres in the Game Commission's wildlife management units 4B and 4D, in the north central section of the state.

For more information, visit the DCNR Deer Population Aerial Survey webpage.

NewsClip: Gov. Rendell – State Works to Protect Hunting

State Expanding Aerial Deer Survey Program

2/24/2006