At its Nov. 21 meeting in Key Largo, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approved draft rule proposals aimed at managing Florida’s white-tailed deer at a local level by establishing deer management units (DMUs) throughout the state, each with its own set of antler regulations and antlerless deer harvest days.
Commissioners will take a final vote on the proposals at their next meeting in February. If passed, the changes would go into effect for the 2015-2016 hunting season.
The purpose of the proposals is to manage deer on a more local scale, tailored to habitat quality, characteristics of the local deer herd and preferences of local hunters and other stakeholders.
Two DMUs have already been created in northwest Florida’s Hunting Zone D (which includes Okaloosa and Escambia counties) and have been in effect during this current hunting season. If these proposals pass, there would be 10 additional DMUs in the rest of the state, seven in Northeast and Central Florida, and three in South Florida.
These rules were proposed because hunters had been asking the FWC to manage deer at a smaller geographic scale, the way many other states do. Many hunters surveyed wanted larger deer populations, more bucks in the population and a better chance to see and harvest heavier and larger-antlered deer.
These new antler regulations would protect most 1.5-year-old bucks and, if passed, would apply to all lands (private property, public land, wildlife management areas) within each DMU. However, youth (15 years old and younger) hunters in all DMUs would be exempt from the increased antler restrictions and would be able to continue to take antlered deer with at least a 5-inch antler.
According to the proposal, antlerless deer season on private lands would be modified in all of the 10 new DMUs. These newly proposed antlerless deer days reflect public input from farmers, landowners and hunters on how they would like to see the deer population managed in their unit.
For more details on these proposed changes and to learn more about deer management units, go to MyFWC.com/Deer.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Deer management units, new antler measures may expand statewide