While I appreciate most wildlife and spend countless hours afield in
pursuit of it with a camera, I am more fascinated by whitetail deer and
elk than any of the other species. Even though I am primarily noted for
my interest in Pennsylvania Elk, if it came right down to it I would
have to choose deer over elk, if I had to pick one favorite species.
Whitetails have always been a heavily hunted species in Pennsylvania and
there are no areas of public land that I know of where one can easily
observe whitetails going about their daily life without fleeing at the
sight of humans. It is my understanding that one could see this at one
time at Gettysburg National Military Park, or at Valley Forge, but both
have utilized sharpshooters to reduce the herd. I cannot speak from
personal experience, but I am told that neither area is what it once was
for seeing deer.
Shenandoah National Park has been a
special place to so many of us because of its' easily visible deer herd. Since I worked for the Pennsylvania Game Commission for many
years, I have always been finely attuned to deer management issues,
which translated into concern that in time the herd reduction people
would focus their attention on the deer of SNP and attempt to manage
its' deer herd.. As I mentioned in the previous post, a study is now
underway which is being portrayed as part of a plan to protect the deer
from CWD, but many are concerned that it is more than this.
As
a result of the study, several of the deer in the big meadows area have
been fitted with radio collars, and/ or ear tags. Billie Cromwell was
at the park last week and photographed three bucks fitted with the radio
collars. He stopped by yesterday and dropped off 4x6 prints of them,
so the photos for today are scans of the photos. They do not do justice
to the originals, but they effectively show the problem and will give
those who follow the SNP deer herd a look at three of the bucks that had
collars as of early last week and may still be found in the Big Meadows
area. I wish to thank Billie for sharing these photographs with us and
granting permission to use them on the blog.
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| Mature Buck With Collar Big Meadows Campground: Photo by Billie G. Cromwell |
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| Buck Near Tanners Ridge Overlook: Photo by Billie G. Cromwell |
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| Ten Point Buck With Collar SNP: Photo by Billie G. Cromwell |
I was pleased to receive a comment on the previous
post from well known wildlife photographer, Jim Fields, who lives in the
area and has spent countless hours afield in the park observing and
photographing the deer. Here is what Jim has to say about the
situation.
"The secretive way this assessment was handled and the fact they have
concentrated their efforts in an area with a high habituated deer
concentration instead of distributing the test throughout the entire
park certainly leads us to believe there is more to this than a CWD
assessment. There are SNP documents from past years that elude to
other purposes for 38 deer being captured in Big Meadows out of the 70
being tested in total.
The SNP site does not have up to date
information on current status of Big meadows. To date I have found (7)
collared bucks in the Greater Big Meadows area. Park officials have
informed me that “bucks collared in the Big Meadows area will likely be
nine (plus one ear-tagged buck)”. Thus (18) collared deer and (20) deer
with ear tags just in the greater Big Meadows area. The parks estimate
is 20-25 bucks reside in this area so this give you an idea of the
percentage of bucks remaining. I can tell you that in the past 5 weeks
I have seen very few bucks without collars in Big Meadows. I am sure
there will be less habituated bucks showing up during the November rut,
but it will not be like years past. This has been a tuff hit for
wildlife photography in the park." --Jim Fields 10/29/2012.
Also
be sure to read the full comment by professional wildlife photographer,
Tom who expresses concerns that the National Park Service may be doing
this to discourage photographers. I will post a bit of it below, but
be sure and visit the comments on the previous post to read it in its
entirety.
"I suspect that the purpose may be that they want to discourage
photographers from constantly hanging around the deer with their
cameras. They may just think that if they put huge, obtrusive collars
on the biggest bucks, then photographers will not pursue the deer so
persistently. If that is the reason, or part of the reason, they the
NPS should be ashamed of themselves."
Tom goes on to
say, " I will get every image I possibly can, fully documenting the
collared bucks and the impacts of the "study".
Whatever
the reason for the study, it is sad to see so many of the Big Meadows
herd fitted with the collars and tags. The next few weeks will tell
what the short term impact on deer watching and photography will be. I
for one hope that this is not the beginning of a program to drastically
reduce the SNP deer herd as was done at Gettysburg and Valley Forge.
This would effectively destroy SNP as a haven for wildlife enthusiasts
and photographers.
Originally published by Willard Hill at
Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer.
