He Sets Sights on Saving Does, Fawns From Hunters : Environment: A hunter leads the fight to suspend the killing of antlerless deer until the herd can be counted, prompting vigorous debate among those involved.

When Bob Turner set out to save San Diego County’s deer, the Campo resident used his hunter’s logic to plan his strategy.

“When you flush a covey of quail, you only aim at one bird,” he said. “You don’t shoot indiscriminately, because if you do, you won’t hit anything.”

So instead of trying to stop all deer hunting in the county, Turner, 60, trained his sights on saving antlerless deer, that is, does and fawns. He wrote letters decrying the dwindling deer population. He drafted petitions protesting the four-month antlerless-deer hunt for archers and riflemen. And he won some powerful allies.

On April 26, when the California Fish and Game Commission meets to set the dates and conditions of next season’s hunt, it will consider a letter from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors that urges the suspension of the antlerless-deer hunt.

The supervisors’ letter, prompted in part by a 4,000-signature petition that Turner presented, notes that the most recent comprehensive study of the county deer population was completed in 1949. Since then, only loose estimates have been available. The board’s letter asks: Why not place a moratorium on antlerless-deer hunting--at least until the county can take a count?

In 1988, the state Department of Fish and Game estimated the county deer population at 3,400. The next year, 8,200 deer tags were available for hunts in the county. Hunters bagged 230 bucks and 45 antlerless deer.

The proposed moratorium has prompted a vigorous debate among hunters, wildlife biologists and animal-rights activists. All three groups agree that, overall, development rather than hunting is the deer herd’s biggest enemy. As civilization drives deer into the backcountry, where dry chaparral provides a poor diet, food gets harder and harder to find.

The three groups differ, however, on how to increase the herd’s chances of survival.

The Department of Fish and Game regards hunting as a management tool. This year, it proposes to reduce the number of rifle permits for antlerless-deer hunting from 200 to 170 and to shorten the archery season from three months to two. But, in general, the department believes that hunting can help keep the herd at its strongest.

“The herd is at carrying capacity--if there were any more out there, they would die” of starvation, said Harold McKinnie, a wildlife biologist with Fish and Game. “Hunting is a tool to aid the herd. It’s one small facet of everything that causes mortality in deer.” Hunters agree.

Bill Kughn, a legislative representative for the Southern Border Archery Assn., said: “The commission would not do well to acquiesce to the demands of an emotional plea for some moral reason. There’s not enough food for too many deer. And adding more deer to it does not solve the problem. It exacerbates it.”

Bud Duncan, a hunter and owner of Duncan’s Gun Works in San Marcos, also agrees.

“The environment is changing. These areas are being developed, and the habitats where deer flourish are disappearing,” he said, adding that he believes that, if Fish and Game loses the thousands of dollars generated by antlerless-deer hunts, the deer will suffer. (Besides the $19.75 hunting license, deer hunters in 1989 paid $11 for a deer tag.)

“That would be the most tragic thing, if they get this thing passed,” he said. “All the funds that are generated by hunters go right back into preserving these animals’ habitats. If you eliminate the hunting, no one will buy tags, and, in the long run, it will do more damage to the deer.”

Turner and his troops, many of them members of San Diego Animal Advocates, call that kind of reasoning “critters for dollars.” At one recent meeting of the Fish and Game Commission, they picketed outside the building with signs that read, “Conserve Wildlife--Harvest a Hunter” and “Shoot with Cameras, Not Guns.”

“I’m a hunter, and I’ve always been a hunter,” said Turner, a silver-haired man with a crew cut who estimates he has killed about 50 deer in his lifetime. “I have nothing against doe hunting, providing there’s enough deer. I can’t think of anything that’s more fun to me. But enough is enough.”

Turner maintains that Fish and Game has failed to accurately measure the size of the herd. Since 1985, the department has conducted a composition count each year, tallying the number of bucks and fawns per 100 does in the herd. That count is compiled by helicopter flybys--a random sampling.

The department has also collected teeth from all the animals killed in the county and had them analyzed to determine the average age of the deer, which turns out to be about 2 1/2 years. And, most recently, it has begun a necropsy analysis, examining 30 deer to determine their fat content and overall health.

This information is plugged into a computer program that estimates population. The most recent estimate of 3,400 deer shows a drastic decline since 1949, when another count for San Diego County and parts of San Bernardino County tallied 26,000 deer. And, because San Diego deer are non-migratory, McKinnie said, such computer estimates are the only way to approximate population.

“When you have resident deer that don’t travel, and you can’t count them from migration (when the deer are out in the open), there’s no way to count them other than computer,” he said.

Turner is suspicious of the computer. He puts more stock in his own sightings. And, he says, over the last several years he has seen fewer and fewer deer. If hunting continues before a thorough study is completed, he fears, a dwindling herd may become extinct.

“They’re going to annihilate the deer herd,” Turner said.

He acknowledges that highways, residential development and poachers probably contribute as much or more to deer mortality as hunting.

“But you can’t do anything about people moving into the state,” he said. “You can stop selling deer tags.”

McKinnie says one thing that can be done for the deer is to burn off more chaparral, clearing the land for younger, more nutritious growth. But it’s expensive, he says: His department pays the U. S. Forest Service $50 to $100 an acre to burn it off.

Kughn, an archery enthusiast himself, believes that more burning--not less hunting--is the answer. Recently, he watched Fish and Game perform necropsies on five deer. What he saw confirmed what he already believed, he said.

The deer were leaner than they should have been: Some had less than 2% fat in their internal organs; some were beginning to metabolize the fat in their bone marrow.

“That’s the immediate stage prior to starvation,” Kughn said. “I would much rather see a deer harvested and the meat used than see that deer starve to death. That’s a horrible way to die.”