BUD BLISS, RICHARD COLLEY, BROCK DAUGHTRY BSEN 5220 FINAL PROJECT

WHITETAIL DEER HABITAT ANALYSIS

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Abstract

Odocoileus virginiaus, commonly known as the whitetail deer, has been hunted for sport

and survival for many years. In Alabama, deer harvesting records have been kept for an extended period of time. This report provides an analysis of overall whitetail deer habitat and harvesting records in the state of Alabama for 2011. The maps of hospitable land were then overlain on to the map containing the deer harvest records to see which areas are most apt to produce high deer populations. It was determined that the land with the highest deer inhabitance probability coincided with the areas possessing the highest harvest numbers. The county found to have the most productive hunting area was Clay County at 42% of the total land mass. From our findings, it could be considered accurate to assume that the areas highlighted by our final raster file have a higher probability producing trophy whitetail deer.

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Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Methods and Procedures 3

Results and Discussion 6

Data Concerns 7

Conclusion 7

References 8

Appendix 1:

Alabama Land Use raster 1

Favorable Alabama Land Use Rasters 2

Alabama Tree Canopy Cover 3

Alabama LANDFIRE Data 4

Favorable Habitat for State of Alabama 5

2011 Deer Harvest Data per County 6

Final Alabama Favorable Hunting Environments Map 7

Favorable Environment and Harvest Data Overlay 8

Clay County Aerial Image 9

Clay County Favorable Hunting Locations 10

Urban Centers Overlay 11

Alabama GAP Project Habitat Map 12

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Introduction: The purpose of this project was to determine ideal places to hunt in the state of Alabama.

Whitetail Deer hunting is a method of both fun and survival for many families across this state,

and even for students attending Auburn University. By knowing the areas that produce the most

Whitetail Deer, hunters can save time and resources making them more efficient at their craft.

Our analysis of the state of Alabama produces raster file consisting of the ideal places to hunt.

The habitat for whitetail deer in Alabama consists of various herbaceous environments.

The optimum environment consists of tree canopy coverage, sufficient brush for both food and

camouflage, a source of water, and significant distance from highly urbanized areas. This report

provides an analysis of the many areas within Alabama that provide any type of habitable land

and then divides those areas into optimal habitats for Whitetail Deer. This data was then

compared with state wide harvesting records from 2011 in order to determine how strong the

correlation was between the data. Our goal through this project was to provide an easily

interpreted map to give an individual interested in hunting a ball park idea of highly productive

hunting regions.

Methods and Procedures: For this laboratory analysis, GIS data of land use, tree canopy, and county outlines were

collected from the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), Alabama View, and other sources.

Alabama whitetail deer harvesting records, aerial imagery, and information about deer habitat

were all collected for use in ArcMap. Within ArcMap, these maps were converted to the NAD

1983 UTM Zone 16N projection to ensure accuracy and compatibility between files. The

habitable land raster found on page 5 of Appendix 1, consists of factors of: land use (Appendix

1: page 1), tree canopy and LANDFIRE data.

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The land use maps were reclassified with values related to the level of hospitability of

that specific raster cell. Cells with highly hospitable land were given a value of two, areas that

were slightly less habitable were assigned a value of one and inhabitable cells were given a value

of zero. This reclassified land use raster (Appendix 1: page 2) was a component of the final

multiplication map, which indicates the best habitat for deer in Alabama.

Tree canopy data (Appendix 1: page 3) was obtained from the USGS “National Map”

data collection, this data was provided in three separate zones for Alabama. This provided a

challenge because it had to be accurately be combined using the “Combine” tool under the

“Spatial Analyst” tab. This data was then extracted through the mask of the “Counties Layer”

obtained from the Alabama View Website. Tree canopy raster values are expressed in terms of

percent coverage, with 100% being full canopy coverage. Values from 1-100% were

implemented into the final multiplication raster, because habitable areas for deer typically have

more canopy coverage. However, sometimes land use rasters and tree canopy data can

occasionally be misleading, for this reason we employed data from the LANDFIRE program.

The LANDFIRE program provides a raster data file with more specific land use

assignments than the standard data files. This data was incorporated in order to ensure areas

with misleading tree canopy and land use values would not be included in the final multiplication

raster. For example, small one acre parks in a highly urbanized areas may possess favorable tree

canopy environments, and “Mixed Forest” land use values, but would be highly unfavorable for

hunting. Favorable values from the LANDFIRE file were selected and reassigned to a value of

1; while other cells such as “Urban Herbaceous” cells were assigned a value of zero (Appendix

1: page 4). By making this file one of the three major components of our final multiplication

file, a method of differentiation from misleading land use and tree canopy values was obtained.

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Finally, our multiplied raster (Appendix 1: page 5), consisting of filtered land use, tree

canopy, and LANDFIRE data, was multiplied by Whitetail Deer harvest data (Appendix 1: page

6). These harvest totals were obtained from a mail survey taken from 3,097 licensed hunters

across the state of Alabama; this data did not include hunters who hunt only on private property

or those who hunt illegally. The data was projected for the total number of officially licensed

hunters in the state amounting to a state harvest total of 150,000 kills with 2.3% error. For our

analysis, this data when parceled into countywide areas was sufficient for the estimates we

desired.

Once the multiplication raster was combined with the per-county harvest data, the result

was a Final Whitetail Habitat Analysis map (Appendix 1: page 7). Raster cells in this data set

ranged in value from 0 – 200; with the higher numbers being more favorable places to hunt. A

raster calculation was performed to restrict the cell values to greater than 185; this allowed a

reasonable amount of area to be displayed throughout the state. This raster was placed on top of

the deer harvest map for better visibility on the 8th page of Appendix 1.

After the conclusion that Clay County (aerial in Appendix 1: page 9) possessed the

highest percentage of favorable hunting land, the Final Whitetail Habitat Analysis raster was

extracted through the mask of the county’s shapefile (Appendix 1: page 10). For a final

comparison of Urbanized areas, an Urbanization shapefile was obtained from the Alabama View

website and was overlain on the Final Whitetail Analysis raster (Appendix 1: page 11). For

further discussion and comparison, results for Whitetail Deer habitat areas from the Southeast

Regional GAP Analysis Project were included in page 12 of Appendix 1.

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Results and Discussion: After completing the multiplication raster map, we multiplied it by the deer harvest

values assigned to each specific county. The resulting raster file correlated very nicely with the

county harvest record values, with the majority of counties possessing large deer habitat areas

also having high harvest numbers. The densest county, in terms of final analysis raster cells per

county area, was Clay County where 42% of the land is viable for whitetail deer. The band of

counties including Lowndes, Montgomery, Crenshaw, Butler, and Monroe counties were also

found to have significant percentages for favorable hunting land. Displayed below in Table 1 are

the top 10 ranking counties in the state:

Table 1: Top 10 Alabama Counties ranked by % Whitetail Habitat per county

It was also noted that there was little to no habitable land around the state’s major cities,

Birmingham, Montgomery, Huntsville, Mobile, Tuscaloosa, Dothan, and the Phoenix

City/Columbus, GA area. This is to be expected because whitetail deer do not live in places that

have a lot of noise or unnatural smells because an unnatural environment throws off their major

natural defenses. These types of places also do not have adequate amounts of shrubs and plants

for eating, or water for drinking, both of which are needed to sustain the life of whitetail deer.

The final results for our hunting suitability map can be viewed on page 11 of Appendix 1.

County Rank County Name Area (Acres) Raster Cell count in county Percent Habitat per County Area1 CLAY 387,769 732250 42.012 COOSA 426,499 804439 41.963 BUTLER 426,499 632415 32.984 CRENSHAW 387,769 547413 31.405 CONECUH 387,769 466095 26.746 COVINGTON 426,499 484878 25.297 TALLAPOOSA 426,499 415823 21.698 TALLADEGA 387,769 374076 21.469 PIKE 387,769 343517 19.71

10 CLEBURNE 426,499 344481 17.97

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Data Concerns:

One anomaly we found in our map was the large density of hospitable area around the

Talladega/Clay County area. Here we had a very dense cluster of pixels that signified hospitable

area, however, the deer harvest records did not reflect a large amount of deer being killed there.

We concluded this was a problem because the Talladega National Forest is a conservation area

located in these counties and also has a very dense tree canopy; this could have caused our data

to be skewed. In addition to this, the deer harvest data we obtained from the Wildlife

Restoration Program was projected for all licensed hunters and did not contain data for Whitetail

Deer killed by hunters harvesting deer on their own property or hunters illegally poaching deer.

This assumption could lead to potential flaws in the final raster map. However, because of the

strong correlation between maximum values on our final habitat map and maximum values of

harvest values it can be inferred that our final raster is reasonably correct.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this project showed how different files from different data bases and the

ArcMap software can be used to reach a desired solution to a given problem. In this case, the

problem we chose to diagnose was where in the state of Alabama would have the best chance of

seeing a deer. We used many different files to determine where we could find the best habitat for

whitetail deer by narrowing down things such as land cover and urbanization. After we

determined the best habitat, we correlated it with hunting records and found that our data

strongly matched with the harvest records for the state. This match confirms that our process was

done correctly and we have now found the best spots to hunt in Alabama.

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References:

Alabama Gap Analysis Project (AL-GAP), Alabama Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit (ALCFWRU). “AL-GAP Vertebrate Predicted Habitat Distribution Map of Alabama (Provisional)” 2007. Auburn, AL: Auburn University. www.auburn.edu\gap.

“Clay Public GIS.” Clay Public GIS. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. Homer, C.G., Dewitz, J.A., Yang, L., Jin, S., Danielson, P., Xian, G., Coulston, J., Herold, N.D.,

Wickham, J.D., and Megown, K., 2015, Completion of the 2011 National Land Cover Database for the conterminous United States-Representing a decade of land cover change information. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, v. 81, no. 5, p. 345-354.

Liles, Randy. Alabama Hunting Survey 2011-2012 Season. Federal Assistance project, Grant

Number W-35, Study 6. August 2012. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Census TIGER 2010 State and County

Demographic Statistics by State. 2010. www.usda.gov Wildland Fire Science, Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, U.S. Geological

Survey. “LANDFIRE.US_130CBD” 2012. Sioux Falls, SD. www.landfire.gov