Page 1 2 
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
Delmarva Sika
 Login/Join
 
Booshway
posted
In the early MZ season thread a few were asking about sika, here's some pics.

Whitetail and sika stag on the rack for size comparison. Stags average 60-80lbs dressed, although a few will go just over 100. Hinds average 45lbs dressed, but I've seen a few go 80.



My best day on sikas, if I could get a snow during gun season again I'd be ecstatic. When you can track them in the marshes in fresh snow they just can't get away!



One of the coolest nights, I got to go along with a tagging study, covering it for my newspaper column. Netted nearly a dozen sikas, they all got eartagged and a few got radio collars. Very cool to be laying on a small stag, holding him still while the researchers did their job.

 
Posts: 429 | Location: Delmarva | Registered: 22 December 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
posted Hide Post
Mid-sized stags from Assateague along the coast.



 
Posts: 429 | Location: Delmarva | Registered: 22 December 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
Picture of 1720Todd
posted Hide Post
Really cool info Osprey!! Thanks!!

We go to Assateague all the time and that is where I have seen the biggest Sika. I took a photo once of a pony and didn't notice it until I prosessed the picture that a stag was lying in the grass behind it.
I live in southern Delaware, about 45 mins from Assateague, and not too many around here in the marsh. They are here, I've seen the tracks, but they are illusive. Lots more down that way.
 
Posts: 88 | Location: Delaware | Registered: 07 January 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
posted Hide Post
Very interesting. Cool stuff.
I've been to Assateague, but had no idea that such exotics existed there.
When I lived in Michigan I sometimes hunted whitetails in the reeds and cattail marshes along Lake Erie. I could hear the deer walking through the muck and ankle deep water only 20 yards from me, but I couldn't see them due to the thick reeds.
On Belle Isle in the middle of the Detroit River there is a small herd of Fallow deer. They are half tame, however, and cannot be hunted.


Know what you believe in. Fight for your beliefs. Never compromise away your rights.
 
Posts: 1296 | Location: Cherokee Land, Tenasi | Registered: 06 January 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Hivernant
Picture of Fincastle
posted Hide Post
So Osprey, about what year were the Sika introduced to the area? And does the DNR have a good idea of the numbers that out there? I'm also interested to know harvest limits, and tag availability versus Whitetail for resident/non-resident.

Cool pics, and thanks for sharing. That's what I love about this forum, sharing info, skills, and a little glimpse of the lives and activities from good folks all over the country.


A nod's as good as a blink to a blind horse
 
Posts: 143 | Location: Indiana Territory | Registered: 22 September 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
posted Hide Post
Check http://www.dnr.state.md.us/nat...summer2003/sika.html for info from the DNR on sika. Licenses are over the counter, limits and info at http://www.eregulations.com/maryland/hunting/ .
They say we've got a herd of around 15,000, but after some of the stuff I've seen from our DNR I'm never sure if they know exactly what's going on with anything!

Blackwater NWR has them, too, with lottery hunts and separate bag limits. Assateague Island National Seashore has separate bag limits, too, but they've hammered their population the last 5 years and it's hardly worth hunting there anymore.
 
Posts: 429 | Location: Delmarva | Registered: 22 December 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
posted Hide Post
HOLY CRAP I didn't know they went that big! I guess the ones that I'd seen were young, and I thought it was like shooting a dog..., BUT if they go that big, not that I'm that particular anyway..., I stand corrected..., and shall have to go across The Bay.

LD


It's not what you know, it's what you can prove
 
Posts: 3843 | Location: People's Republic of Maryland | Registered: 10 November 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
posted Hide Post
There are plenty of small ones too, I've seen some yearlings brought into check stations that only dressed 14lbs!

The bigger ones are older deer. They are very curiuos deer, which sometimes gets them in trouble, but the old ones are very smart. They live almost twice as long as whitetails, which gives them plenty of time to learn every blade of grass where they live. We all know how smart a 5+ year old whitetail buck is, but stags will live to 15. The oldest wild one I've heard of was a hind that was eartagged as a fawn and killed when she was 22 years old.
 
Posts: 429 | Location: Delmarva | Registered: 22 December 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
Picture of 1720Todd
posted Hide Post
You ever need a hunting buddy Osprey, let me know. Heck, I won't even carry a gun, I'll take my camera. Been trying to get some good shots of them for years.

My brother got one several years ago and it was 90 lbs. I was shocked at how big it was. Of course, he also got a little 20 pounder once.
 
Posts: 88 | Location: Delaware | Registered: 07 January 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Hivernant
Picture of Fincastle
posted Hide Post
Thanks Osprey, great info, that's exactly what I was looking for, appreciate it much.


A nod's as good as a blink to a blind horse
 
Posts: 143 | Location: Indiana Territory | Registered: 22 September 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by 1720Todd:
I'll take my camera. Been trying to get some good shots of them for years.


Assateague is definitely the best place for photos, the places I hunt in Dorchester are way too thick for much of that. Stags hold their antlers into April, I always had good luck in the State Park and National Seashore in February and March for pics.

It's hard for me to take people along hunting. Mainly go in by kayak and it's always a last minute decision based on tides and winds. I hunt all public ground for sika and the easy to reach spots get hit pretty hard all season.
 
Posts: 429 | Location: Delmarva | Registered: 22 December 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
Picture of 1720Todd
posted Hide Post
I just figured I would throw that out there, lol.

Thanks again for the links!!
 
Posts: 88 | Location: Delaware | Registered: 07 January 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
posted Hide Post
Todd, I wish I had a good private place to take guys sika hunting! I'm only about 7 miles from the Island where they started, but they went out the other side of the tidal river and kept going east. I'm constantly amazed that they've never backfilled the area where I live, they seem to have spread everywhere else in the county. I've got great whitetail and turkey and duck and goose hunting, but no sika on my farm. Frowner
 
Posts: 429 | Location: Delmarva | Registered: 22 December 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
posted Hide Post
congrats


"But I swear, a woman's breast is the hardest rock that the Almighty ever made on this earth, and I can find no sign on it." Bear Claw Chris Lapp
 
Posts: 516 | Location: Ft Parker/Ft Manuel Lisa | Registered: 15 April 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
posted Hide Post
How do they taste compared to whitetail? Do they use the same habitat as whitetail or different habitat and forage? In other words if they were introduced to an area would they compete with whitetail or be an additional game animal? Thanks.
 
Posts: 54 | Registered: 14 November 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
Picture of 1720Todd
posted Hide Post
I ate them before. It was pretty tough and gamey. They can live for many years and it affects the meat. I'm sure an nice young one would fare better on the table though.

Research conducted in Maryland indicates that white-tailed deer and sika deer can coexist and it does not appear that they directly compete with each other. However, more research is needed to confirm this relationship.

Sika deer inhabit marshes, swamps, and associated woodlands and agricultural fields. Sika Deer are a small elk introduced from Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) by private citizens into Maryland in 1916. Recently, their range has expanded and some individuals have been found in Delaware. As a result, the Division will allow Delaware hunters to harvest sika deer while hunting for white-tailed deer. The sika deer population in Delaware is still very small and the Division would like to keep it that way. Sika deer are not native to the State, so following the Division’s goal of not promoting nonnative species they may be harvested.
I have eaten sika and it was tough and gamey. They can live to be quite old and eat marsh grasses and flora.

We consider them additional game, however, in Delaware you have to use a whitetail tag if you take one. We don't a separate tag.
 
Posts: 88 | Location: Delaware | Registered: 07 January 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
posted Hide Post
Todd you must have gotten the only tough sika ever killed. They are by far better eating than whitetails, plenty of guys come down here just to hunt them for the meat. I'll take a sika over any type of game animal every day of the week. Similar to elk, but of course we don't have those here. Only problem is sika are small enough you have to shoot several to fill the freezer!
 
Posts: 429 | Location: Delmarva | Registered: 22 December 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
posted Hide Post
Bubba, for a long time the thinking was sika displaced whitetail, but it seems more that they favor marginal whitetail habitat and co-exist with whitetails on better habitat. Our strain came from Yakushima Island and are one of the smallest of the sika strains. Oddly enough, while they favor marshes (the adage for hunting them is find a place they can keep their feet wet) their original habitat in Yakushima is mountain conifer forests. Some of the research I've seen points more to a liking for acid soils, which would explain both habitats.

Dang things eat like billy goats. They love corn, but they'll eat salt hay on the marshes, phrag, acorns, field crops, bayberry leaves, even holly leaves. They can live out on a salt marsh two miles from the nearest tree and thrive, places whitetails would never stay.
 
Posts: 429 | Location: Delmarva | Registered: 22 December 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
posted Hide Post
The reason I ask is there is a larger "deer/elk"- the sambar- that is on some coast islands and I believe they eat wet succulent grasses, etc- food whitetail deer normally don't eat, SO....if you put sambar on an Island with deer, their presence doesn't reduce the whitetail population- at least in theory. It sounds like the Sika might be a similar situation.
 
Posts: 54 | Registered: 14 November 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
Picture of 1720Todd
posted Hide Post
I must have. My brother cooked it up and it was not to my liking. Probably the way he cooked it though.

We mainly eat whitetail Does. I haven't shot a buck in quite a while. I take 3 or 4 a year for the freezer.
 
Posts: 88 | Location: Delaware | Registered: 07 January 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata Page 1 2  
 


2014 Historical Enterprises, LLC