Looking at ear tag rules and deer hunters

Posted on: December 26, 2017 | Bob Frye | Comments

An ear tag actually attached to the ear is the proper way to mark a deer.

Hunters who kill a deer in Pennsylvania are to immediately tag it by the ear.
Bob Frye/Everybody Adventures

It’s a regulation some don’t know about, others don’t understand and many ignore, at least when it comes to big bucks.

That’s how to legally apply an ear tag to a deer.

According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, when a hunter kills a deer he or she is to attach a tag to the ear. That tag must “remain attached until the animal is processed for consumption or prepared for mounting.”

Many hunters who shoot a buck – and plan to get it mounted – routinely ignore that rule.

“The funny part of that is, almost every animal we see on Facebook, the tag is around the antler,” said commission president Brian Hoover of Chester County.

Commissioners asked agency staff at a recent work group meeting if it might be possible to make tagging a buck by the antlers legal.

That would ease the concerns of some taxidermists, who have to stitch ears slit for tagging.

The concerns

Legalizing such a change is not as easy as it might seem, though.

“Our biggest concern if we would allow tagging on the antlers is we would lose potentially two thirds of our antlered harvest data,” said Chris Rosenberry, chief of the commission’s deer and elk management section.

Right now, he said, deer aging crews visit butcher shops during deer season. They examine deer heads to collect age and sex data, harvest locations and more.

With 65 percent of bucks, the antlers are already gone, Rosenberry said. Yet, because an ear tag remains, crews can still get the information they need.

If a hunter tagged his deer by the antlers, though, and then shipped them – and the tag — to a taxidermist before crews checked it, “it’s a worthless head to us at that point,” Rosenberry said.

“So we would lose a significant amount of data, which would make out deer harvest estimates and population estimates less reliable,” he added.

The answer, he said, is for hunters to tag deer using safety pins.

“It’s just a pinhole in the ear,” he said.

Many hunters use pins now, he said. They cause no problems for taxidermists, yet allow the commission to get the information it needs.

Seeking help

Hoover asked about requiring butchers to retain the ear tag from all bucks brought in. That would allow hunters to tag deer by the antlers without impacting data collection, he said.

Rosenberry’s concern is that butchers and other processors might be less than diligent – even unintentionally – about collecting and retaining tags.

“These guys are running through hundreds of deer. That’s one extra step for them,” Rosenberry said.

“We have a huge investment in that tag being in the ear. They have minimal.”

Even if processors did cooperate completely, he added, crews would get no age data from the ear tag.

Commissioner Charlie Fox of Bradford County asked is there is any value in adopting a rule that says if a hunter kills a buck and tags it by the antler, the tag has to be moved to the ear before the rack goes to a taxidermist.

That just adds another step and “another burden” for processors, Rosenberry said.

The “challenge and the risk there” is whether the right tag would end up with the right ear, especially with processors handling hundreds of deer within a two-week window, added executive director Bryan Burhans.

In that case, there are potential impacts for chronic wasting disease monitoring, too.

Were a processor or taxidermist to attach the wrong tag to the wrong deer, say one “taken three counties over,” and it turn out to have CWD, that could lead the commission to spending a lot of time and money chasing something that doesn’t exist, Rosenberry said.

Another idea

Commissioner Michael Mitrick of York County asked if it would make sense to make hunters use two tags, one that would go with the rack and one that would stay with the meat.

Rosenberry said he’s not sure that solves the problem, which is taxidermists having to stitch up slits cut into ears.

“In this case, from my standpoint, from a biologist standpoint, losing all of that data would be a significant hit for our deer program,” Rosenberry said.

“The simplest solution is just use a safety pin. You’re spending hundreds of dollars for a mount. Carry a couple of five cent safety pins with you,” Rosenberry said.

Education

Burhans agreed. A leader of the Pennsylvania Taxidermist Association with whom he spoke did as well, he said.

Burhans suggested the commission tackle this issue by starting a marketing campaign that might be called “pin a wallhanger” that explains what hunters can and should do.

“That could be a very achievable marketing strategy to educate our hunters,” Burhans said.

Bob Frye is the everybodyadventures.com editor. Reach him at 412-838-5148 or bfrye@535mediallc.com. See other stories, blogs, videos and more at everybodyadventures.com.

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