Friday, November 5, 2010

How To Access Our Ideas On Pennsylvania Elk Management

Elk In Hunt Zone 2 October 31, 2010: Photo by W.Hill
 Today I return after being in Pennsylvania Elk Country since Friday Oct. 29 to observe first hand events leading up to the hunt and activity on the first three and 1/2 days of elk season.While we will delve into specific details of the trip in future posts, today I wish to address the core beliefs that drive this blog. At one point I joined several persons in contributing to the Support PA Elk Blog.  The mission statement that blog is as follows:




"The Pennsylvania Elk Herd is a unique and valuable natural resource that should be managed for all of the citizens of the Commonwealth. Hunting may be a necessary management tool at times, but it should be used only to control populations and not promoted as a viable trophy hunt. At present much of the herd is comprised of acclimated animals, which raises serious questions as to the fair chase nature of any hunt. The herd is of far more value as a viewable resource to the citizens of The Commonwealth than a limited hunt can ever be and a truly satisfying tourist experience cannot be based on a herd that flees at the sight of humans. A significant expansion of the No Kill Zone is essential! We also need to support some method as to gain funding for the PGC from tourism as this would give them a vested interest in tourism rather than as it is now when they receive little to no income from it."



One of the major disadvantages to a blog versus a website is that the material is being continually updated and important informant is eventually lost in the shuffle.  This is especially true of our personal photo blogs where the management/issue related posts are scattered among posts dealing with a wide range of subjects.There is little point in re-writing the same articles over and over, so for those who are interested in Pennsylvania elk management issues, I have compiled a list of certain posts from the SupportPAElk Blog.  Another option is to simply go to the Support PA Elk Blog and read all of the posts.

I bring this up as I was talking to a person that was interested in elk management issues and referred them to Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer blog as a source for information on elk management from the non-consumptive users point of view, but after they left I realized that one has to sort through a lot of material to find the elk management related writing and that the links to other elk information are not the most intuitive.  Hopefully putting this information in one post will help new readers interested in elk issues, until I can come up with a better layout for the blog. Simply click on the title to go to that specific post on Support PA Elk.
 
Why Hunt Our Elk?: By Coy Hill-Explores the reasons for the Pennsylvania Elk Hunt.

Scientific Wildlife Management? By Willard Hill-Raises the questions-does science dictate that we have an elk hunt and have our elk management policy decisions always been based on sound science?

Who Really Pays For Elk Mangement -Is A Change Needed? By Willard Hill- Raises the point that much of the public land in the elk range is owned by DCNR, which is not funded by hunting license dollars so to a certain extent the hunting public is being subsidized by taxpayer dollars.

More Questions Than Answers? By Coy Hill-Asks the important question-who really owns the elk?

Pennsylvania Elk: The PGC & The Money By Coy Hill-Further explores elk funding issues.

Pennsylvania Elk: Two Compelling Reasons To Expand The No Kill Zone: By Willard Hill-Discusses why there should be a larger No Hunt or No Kill Zone.

Pennsylvania Elk Management: A Need For More Mature Bulls: By Willard Hill-Discusses the size and composition of the elk herd , includes PGC Elk Biologists Jon DeBerti's thoughts as to herd size and large bull survival.

Genetics And The Hunt: By Jim Borden-Discusses the possibility that we may be damaging the genetics of the elk herd by removing the biggest and best.

Also be sure to visit Benezette Elk on Facebook for interesting discussion and photographs

1 comment:

Heritage Farm Village said...

hi willard! glad you are back. you might want to 'tag' your posts so that the reader can access old stories specific to their interests. then on the sidebar there will be a list of contents related to subject instead of date. hope this helps. i have it like that on farmtails. haven't done it for heritage yet. take care and have a good sunday! ;-) jill