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Abstract
Management of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations by natural resource agencies is shifting to accommodate new and diverse sets of stakeholders and incorporate advanced analytical techniques that can improve decision-making. In Georgia, managing deer effectively is complex and requires balancing biological objectives related to population abundance and herd health with social objectives from a variety of stakeholder groups. I examined multiple facets of deer management in Georgia, including the utility of citizen science (CS) for helping to achieve wildlife management and conservation goals, hunter perceptions of management techniques and regulations, and the ability of a Bayesian state-space model (BSSM) to incorporate existing deer harvest data and prior information on demographic parameters to estimate population abundance. I distributed a quantitative, web-based questionnaire to biological staff employed in natural resource agencies in the United States to understand support for CS. Survey results indicated that support for the practice was high and was primarily driven by positive perceptions of the public engagement benefits of CS but was strongly negatively impacted by perceptions of limitations of CS to produce credible and defensible data. I also distributed a quantitative, web-based questionnaire to resident deer hunters in Georgia to examine perceptions of deer management and drivers of compliant behavior with mandatory harvest reporting requirements. Satisfaction with harvest reporting was positively influenced by hunter attitudes towards the regulation, trust in the state agency, and satisfaction with hunting. Noncompliant hunters were, on average, older and had more experience hunting than compliant hunters. Lastly, I developed a BSSM using age-at-harvest data from wildlife management areas (WMAs) in Georgia to estimate deer population abundance and trends in abundance over time. The BSSM was able to accurately estimate abundance at the WMA scale and produce reliable estimates of uncertainty for population parameters. My results demonstrate that state agencies can take advantage of citizen scientists to assist with reaching management goals, managers should target efforts to increase compliance with regulations towards specific hunter user groups, and the BSSM is a powerful tool for integrating commonly collected harvest data and has distinct advantages over traditional harvest-based population models.