CMF QDM Coop

A QDMA cooperative is a group of landowners, farmers, hunters and members of the community willing to work together to improve the quality of the deer herd, crop damage, ornamental landscape damage, and overall hunting experiences. Thousands of dollars are lost to crop damage, ornamental landscape and forestry damage in our community every year. This cooperative is a collection of landowners, farmers and hunters who agree to abide by specified deer management guidelines to improve management over a larger area.

QDMA Member Benefits include an opportunity to better manage the density, age structure, sex ratio and distribution of the local deer herd. These characteristics are difficult to manipulate on small properties since deer spend much of their time on adjacent properties that do not practice QDM. This makes it nearly impossible to control crop damage, deer density, sex ratio of 1/1 and buck age structure. This is the reason that QDM on small properties fail. Perhaps the most obvious benefit of a QDMA coop is for hunters to have the opportunity to hunt a high quality deer herd containing an increased number of older bucks. Other benefits include the improved relationship with surrounding landowners and hunters. As this coop unites everyone in a common goal and helps develop a sense of pride and accomplishment in our efforts. In time this trust will bring a sharing of information and expertise that will improve the hunting and the economic value for the landowner, farmer and hunter. The CMF Hunting lodge has a community walk-in cool box available for donated deer for the "Farmers and Hunters Feed the Hungry" program. Another advantage of the cool box is to insure that we harvest as many mature does to reduce the sex ratio as close to 1/1 as possible. The lodge is also the location of the logbook for data collection. Vehicle decals will be placed on member vehicles for better control of trespassing and poaching.

Communication is critical to the success of this cooperative. Collecting reliable harvest data is essential for making sound management decisions and tracking the progress of our cooperative over time. We will conduct meetings throughout the hunting season to track progress and also throughout the year to fine-tune our goals. We will also have incentive programs like a doe harvest per farm per square mile. We need harvest reports from farmers, complaints from community members about landscape damage and harvest records from hunters showing we are doing our part to succeed in our overall project. Every member must be committed to passing immature bucks (3 ½ years and under) and harvesting as many mature nanny does with fawns as possible for this program to succeed.

This cooperative is a proven program that will enhance the relationship between landowner, farmer and hunter. The landowners will see an improvement in habitat and more economic value. The farmer will no longer see the drastic crop damage losses due to high deer densities. Ultimately we are striving for a healthy balanced deer herd without sacrificing crops, ornamental landscaping and forestry. The hunter will then enjoy a better hunting experience and more mature bucks than ever before.

CONTACT TEMPLE RHODES AT 410-310-8165 FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO JOIN THE COOPERATIVE.

Id Attribute