Outdoor Notes / Earl Gustkey : Antlerless Deer Hunt Opponents to Speak Out

Although most of the attention at today’s state Fish and Game Commission meeting in Long Beach will be focused on the Department of Fish and Game’s highly controversial plan for a state mountain lion hunt, opponents of another DFG hunt plan may also be heard.

The DFG wants to schedule the first major doe hunt in more than 30 years in Northern California, for the Cal Creek herd in eastern Shasta County. DFG biologists say the herd, believed to have roughly 10,000 Columbia black-tailed deer, has too many older does. Some, biologists say, are toothless 15-year-olds.

“We’d like to issue permits for 1,000 does for the next several deer seasons,” a DFG spokesman said. “The herd is top-heavy with older does, and when there is competition for food between adult deer and fawns, the adults always win.

“By manipulating the numbers a bit, we think we can have about 600 extra fawns survive their first year, and roughly half of those will be bucks.”

Antlerless deer hunts have been sore subjects with some Northern Californians since 1956.

That year, hunters who hadn’t bagged bucks were allowed to take does in the season’s last three days. But on the last three days, a severe snowstorm drove deer to lower elevations and into open country, where what some describe today as a slaughter ensued.

“It was not a pretty sight,” recalled Paul Wertz of the DFG’s Redding office. “The department got such bad ink over that ’56 hunt that for years, you wouldn’t dare even whisper in the hallways about antlerless hunts.”

Another result of that hunt was passage of the Bush bill, which granted some counties the right to veto any DFG deer hunt plan.

Groups opposed to doe hunts are planning to speak at County Board meetings in Shasta and Lassen counties later this month.

Reversing the effects of Denny, a 1985 hurricane, an 8,000-acre strip of Louisiana marshland has been restored as a freshwater home for migrating waterfowl, according to Ducks Unlimited.

Ducks Unlimited, a hunter-conservation organization dedicated to maintaining and expanding waterfowl habitat in Canada and the United States, raised $200,000 for rehabilitation of the Marsh Island State Wildlife Refuge.

The facility’s levees were blown apart by Denny, and seawater flooded the freshwater habitat, covering the island with four feet of seawater for three days, destroying waterfowl food and cover.

Most of Ducks Unlimited’s $200,000 was spent on rebuilding the island’s levees.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed regulations that would establish nontoxic (steel) shot zones for the 1987-88 waterfowl hunting seasons, and would also schedule the phasing out of lead shot.

The schedule, affecting the next five years, would require federal hunting areas where 20 or more waterfowl are harvested per square mile to eliminate lead shot use in 1987-88. On a descending scale, those areas where the harvest is five waterfowl or fewer per square mile, would have until 1991-92 to get the lead out.

Opponents of a National Park Service plan to reintroduce the wolf to Yellowstone National Park said this week they haven’t given up, although the federal plan is nearly complete.

Opponents are primarily sheep ranchers occupying agricultural lands bordering Yellowstone. The reintroduction of the predators is part of a broader plan to save the endangered gray wolf.

Briefly Next stop for the pro bass fishermen on the U.S. Bass tour is Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico, Feb. 14-15, for an $80,000, 250-man tournament. . . . Nationally known outdoor writer Lefty Kreh will speak to the Sierra Pacific Flyfishers Feb. 19 at the Nob Hill Banquet Center, 8229 Van Nuys Blvd., Panorama City. . . . Showtime: Western Fishing Tackle & Boat Show, Long Beach Convention Center and Shoreline Village Marina, March 4-8.