Dynamic Programming for Deer Management Planning

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Abstract
Deer herd management has many attributes in common with the general economic problem of resource allocation for land management. A mathematical model for any specified deer herd, ecological environment, and management resource situation on a given land tract was constructed as a dynamic linear programming problem for computer analysis. The results of these analyses were found to conform reasonably well with the general behavior of actual deer populations and provided considerable planning information for the deer manager such as estimates of the optimum size and structure of the annual harvest and leave herd. By varying the coefficients of mortality, productivity, and values for harvested deer, the sensitivity of management programs to these factors was indicated. Timber production was introduced as a specific management alternative and the problems of joint timber and game management were studied. One result was a method for imputing the minimum value of harvested deer required to justify deer management on different timber sites.

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