Ocala National Forest's Deer Population On Rise

September 22, 1985|By Don Wilson, Sentinel Outdoors Writer

Three years after they sounded the alarm about the Ocala National Forest's vanishing deer population, state wildlife biologists say the decline has turned into an upswing.

From a low of only 3,400 animals, the forest herd has increased to an estimated 7,700 deer, and biologists are encouraged that their management techniques are working.

The dramatic improvement means that hunter curbs, imposed as emergency measures in 1982, may become permanent. It also means that stepped-up law enforcement aimed at nabbing poachers also will be an annual effort.

The biologists won't reveal the findings and recommendations contained in a just-finished three-year study of the forest herd until it has been formally presented to the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.

But the biologists say the restrictions imposed to halt population declines are likely to remain in place.

''Something out there that we have done has helped the deer herd,'' GFC Regional Biologist Mike Brooks said. ''But I can't pinpoint it now.''

The ''something'' has included curbs on the use of CB radio equipped four-wheel-drive vehicles and a drastic reduction in the amount of land on which hunters may use dogs to chase deer.

Biologists contend that the use of the radio rigs and dogs make hunters too efficient for their own -- and the deer's -- good.

The game commission's law enforcement division also has doubled the number of manhours spent patrolling the maze of logging trails that honeycomb the forest.

Dog hunters contend that the poachers were responsible for most of the disappearing deer.

Alan Egbert, head of the commission's wildlife division, said poaching was a serious problem.

''We had a lot of illegal killing of deer, in both the dog hunt and still hunt areas, until we doubled the law enforcement effort,'' he said.

Since the restrictions were imposed in 1982, the herd has increased annually.

In 1983, biologists estimated there were 4,450 huntable deer in the forest, excluding those in refuges where hunting is prohibited. This year, in those same hunting areas, there are an estimated 5,850 animals.

The greatest densities are in the 117,662 acres of still-hunt area in the northern end of the forest, where dogs are prohibited.

There, Brooks estimates, there is a deer for every 48 acres, a dramatic increase from the one animal per 200 acres that biologists counted in 1982.

On the 220,156 acres where the use of dogs is allowed, the herd density works out to one animal for every 65 acres. In 1982, the same area was one deer for each 135 acres.

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