Satisfaction of Public Land Hunters During Long-term Deer Population Decline

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations and deer hunter participation on federal public lands within the Appalachian Mountains of the southeastern United States have been declining over the last 30 years. Our study focused on Chattahoochee National Forest hunters in North Georgia, a region that has sustained a 64% decline in buck harvest success rates and 68% decline in hunter participation during 1979-2018. To better understand factors influencing satisfaction of remaining hunters, we sent mail questionnaires to 1,271 hunters in February 2019. We received 441 completed questionnaires for a 36% adjusted response rate. First, we used principal component analysis to identify 4 unique motivations for deer hunting: 1) escaping the daily routine and spending time outdoors, 2) harvesting deer for food, 3) socializing with hunting partners, and 4) harvesting trophy bucks. Second, we used ordinal logistic regression, which indicated that perception of a low deer population density was associated with lower levels of satisfaction. Perception of the right number of hunters on the landscape was associated with higher levels of satisfaction. In addition, greater importance ratings of harvesting trophy bucks were associated with lower satisfaction levels. Last, we applied revised importance-performance analysis to 19 aspects of WMA deer hunting, which revealed that managers should focus on increasing opportunities for hunters to see deer and harvest bucks for the best chance at improving hunter satisfaction. Considering the 64% decline in harvest success rates between 1979 and 2018, the positive relationship between hunter satisfaction and perception of deer density, and hunter desires to see more deer and have more opportunities to harvest bucks, we recommend managing the deer population to increase numbers. Overall, our findings suggested that hunters and managers agree on the direction of deer management on North Georgia public lands for the near future. (c) 2021 The Wildlife Society.