A question about hunting

mnblade

mnblade

Joined
Feb 7, 2000
Messages
6,689
Now, I've never been a hunter, though I strongly support managed hunting. The concept of stalking, killing and eating Bambi bothers me not in the least (in fact, tell me when and where and I'll bring the wine and a side dish or two :p ).

But I have a question about hunting. Why do I keep reading articles about deer overpopulation and car crashes? I understand that there are fewer and fewer hunters these days as the sport loses popularity (a pity). And I know that the animals' habitat is diminishing. But it would seem like an easy solution to just allow the guys who DO hunt, to harvest more deer. Seems simple to me - just double the number of animals each hunter can kill. Hunters win, and drivers win too. Am I not seeing something?
 
I don't know where you live but down there hunters fear so much to exhaust populations that they self restrain themselves a lot more than necessary, whatever forestry officers or farmer complain (around here main problem is about damage to agriculture).
 
If you are talking about within the last month or so deer/car collusions are up this time of year because of mating season. The deer are moving at all times of the day with the bucks chasing does to breed. This causes them to dart out into traffic. The other problem is people are driving to fast and not paying attention. Hunter access in populated areas is down.
Scott
 
Not just talking about stories I've seen in the past month. I've been curious about this for quite a long time. Seems to me that with herds so thick, now is a very very good time to be a hunter.
 
There are many problems with hunting today. There is of course a license cost and safety training. So many areas are posted "No Hunting" now that even though they may be overpopulated you can't hunt on them. Owning a gun has become more complicated. And folks don't know how to dress out a buck if they do get one so they have to bring it to a butcher shop.

So we will let car drivers thin the overpopulated herds, not the hunters.
 
Within the past few years here in Kentucky, they have increased the number of does one can harvest for just those reasons. When the herd gets too large the solution is to remove more deer of the "egg carrying" variety. We can purchase extra doe tags and harvest all we want. Still can only get one buck though.
 
Here in MD we have a serious overpopulation problem with the deer.
They have allowed only a little more leneancy to the hunters, mostly due to the fact that the Liberal-Tree Huggers are anti-hunter, anti-gun.

Story: Overpopulation was identified years ago, so they opened the parks to hunting BUT, it was a lottery system, one hunter, per park, to take one deer. Big solution!! HA!
On top of that, each park , on that wekeend, was met with 50 or so TreeHuggers waving signs "Don't kill bambi" and "Murderer".
The hunters had to be escorted by park rangers passed the crowds.

Yet, the same tree-huggers will complain about all the dead deer along the side of the road and complain about all the car accidents involving deer. I work 7 miles from home. I can count the dead deer each morning. There are too many even for the Dead Animal Catchers to pick up.
Some just rot in place. Yesterday i believe there were 5 total on my route.
That's almost one per mile!

Discharging firearms in close-in suburban areas has it's problems, but why can't they open the season longer and/or allow more deer taken with Bows? Why not a summer season? Why not more bucks? The bucks are responsible for the offspring. One buck can father 20 or 30 fawns. Take a few more bucks and the population might come down a bit.

On my road, which is 1.25 miles long, dead end, there are 3 separate deer herds. Each with about 10 to 12 deer in them. Last year my neighbors, who hunt, took a total of 12 to 14 deer between them. This year before the season started, they counted again, there were more total deer than last year.
So despite legal hunting, the population is still on the rise. Seems to me they could extend the season or change the quotas or both.

It has gotten to the point that the deer are looked at as pests, classified the same as a crow or rat. They are destroying natural habitat, lawns and plantings.
 
Same in GA Scooby,1 buck and tons of does. I usually harvest and eat about 5 deer a year. Chris
 
We have just the opposite problem here in Vermont. Too few deer and the whitetails we have are small. Some of my friends don't even bother to hunt in Vermont anymore. They travel to Maine, Illinois, Ohio, etc.

The State just last year banned taking spikehorns in an effort to increase both the population and size of the deer. I think something like 50% of the deer normally harvested were spikes. Last year had some of the worst numbers on record because of the ban. Some of my friends don't even bother to hunt in Vermont anymore. They travel to Maine, Illinois, Ohio, etc.

This year, I haven't heard about rifle numbers, but bowhunters tagged a heck of a lot more deer. Despite a lot of moaning and groaning, I think the opportunity to see more deer and take more of a "trophy" buck is better for hunting in the long run than taking some little skipper with spikes.
 
Go to the MN DNR web site, they are in fact EXTREMELY liberal with the tags.
The insurence companies are driving this issue to reduce the herd, tho you you won't find this posted anywhere. WI is about the same in "tag" availability and the word is "what the heck is the DNR thinking, there aren't that many deer?" Hunting partner is in the insurence bussiness and so I get the inside scoop.
 
Shann said:
We have just the opposite problem here in Vermont. Too few deer and the whitetails we have are small. Some of my friends don't even bother to hunt in Vermont anymore. They travel to Maine, Illinois, Ohio, etc.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this continually amazes me. I live in CT and have a condo in NH near Jackson and have camped in NH for years. I even lived outside of Barre in a berg called Graniteville for a few months. We have many many more deer here in CT than in NH and from what I have seen VT. I almost never see deer or evidence of deer. See plenty of moose but no deer. Can't figure out exactly why other than the forest doesn't support them.

KR
 
The reason deer are overpopulated is due to managed hunting. Growing up as a kid in the 1980s, harvesting does was strictly prohibited. This was done so that there were as many breeding females as possible - in order to grow the herd. Go look at the old hunting magazines from the 80s - there were lots of articles about the plan to grow the population until it reached maximum equilibrium in the mid-90s. Only when I was a teenager did tags for does start to become available on a limited basis. Now doe tags are widely available.

Deer hunting is a huge tourist industry which brings in a lot of tourist dollars to areas that would otherwise not see much cash flow. There is a great deal of incentive to have a burgeoning deer population that will support local businesses. Hunters spend a lot of money. They go out to eat, they buy gas, they shop for stuff. Many hunters spend the majority of their disposable income on hunting.

In my opinion, the managed hunting of deer to grow the population to its maximum possible level was unwise. It was driven by economics, not sound management based on biological reality.

All that being said, don't think I don't appreciate how readily available deer are these days - it's certainly nice to be able to easily harvest a deer without too much effort. But such easy hunting is balanced against the spread of diseases like Lyme and an increase in insurance premiums due to vehicle hitting deer on the roads. Everything has consequences.
 
A think a big part of it is the increased urbanization of rural areas. All the yuppies move out of the city and try to tell their new neighbors what to do.

I worked on fire island over the summer, and since it's mostly a state park and always full of people, there's no hunting. There were diseased deer everywhere. You could see the bones through the fur, as well as the ticks crawling all over them. So far the only cure for chronic wasting disease is to thin out the herd to keep them from becoming too concentrated in one area to prevent the spread of the disease. Why more hunting isnt allowed is beyond me.
 
I get my share of time in the woods between grouse, woodcock, and deer hunting and over the past 8 years the deer populations where I hunt in MN and WI have been on a leaps and bounds increase. Both states in the areas I deer hunt give you the opportunity to purchase for the most part as many doe tags as you'd like, in fact in WI this year they dropped the out of state doe tag price to $2.00 ea from $20.00 and I don't believe there is a limit to the number you can purchase.
In WI over the past 6 years the locals I talk to are fet up and put out by insurance rates because of the car / deer collisions and love you to death if you walk in with 5 or 6 does to register and MN is getting there quick.
It will be interesting to watch it play out up here because even out side of Minneapolis I have at least 12 deer yarded up out back all winter and police just had to kill a moose on 494 that was crossing over the lanes of traffic back and forth in Minnetonka MN with in 4 miles of my house and I can be in downtown Minneapolis in 15 minutes on a good day. And it's all due to easy winters and less hunters, so I can pretty much guarantee we will start seeing a increase in predators around my area in the years to come and they'll have to do something about it because even the anti hunter / gunner gets a eye opener when they let out the dog and it gets taken by coyotes or god forbid a pack of wolves or a cougar.
I think the bottom line is if we don't harvest them chronic wasting disease and predators will so if anti hunters want to help bambi they should get a bow or a gun a couple deer tags and buy a extra freezer and help them selves and the deer. my .02.

Helle
 
In Iowa, we have way too may deer. Several towns are holding bow hunting in towns. We kill 400,000 deer ever year and the population in steady to increasing.
 
Helle said:
I get my share of time in the woods between grouse, woodcock, and deer hunting and over the past 8 years the deer populations where I hunt in MN and WI have been on a leaps and bounds increase. Both states in the areas I deer hunt give you the opportunity to purchase for the most part as many doe tags as you'd like, in fact in WI this year they dropped the out of state doe tag price to $2.00 ea from $20.00 and I don't believe there is a limit to the number you can purchase.
In WI over the past 6 years the locals I talk to are fet up and put out by insurance rates because of the car / deer collisions and love you to death if you walk in with 5 or 6 does to register and MN is getting there quick.
It will be interesting to watch it play out up here because even out side of Minneapolis I have at least 12 deer yarded up out back all winter and police just had to kill a moose on 494 that was crossing over the lanes of traffic back and forth in Minnetonka MN with in 4 miles of my house and I can be in downtown Minneapolis in 15 minutes on a good day. And it's all due to easy winters and less hunters, so I can pretty much guarantee we will start seeing a increase in predators around my area in the years to come and they'll have to do something about it because even the anti hunter / gunner gets a eye opener when they let out the dog and it gets taken by coyotes or god forbid a pack of wolves or a cougar.
I think the bottom line is if we don't harvest them chronic wasting disease and predators will so if anti hunters want to help bambi they should get a bow or a gun a couple deer tags and buy a extra freezer and help them selves and the deer. my .02.

Helle
Click to expand...

Yea, what he said.

Friend of mine flys balloons and spotted two Cougar loungeing on a golf green in Lake Elmo this fall Helle:D Outta get the city folks attention.
 
Re the DNR and the cougars a couple of years ago my father in law had two in the area and could hear another screaming at night, had one that was taking weaners from the hog barn. they would squeal at night and the cougar just took one a night, father in law never saw the one when he had a gun in his hand but his neighbor did. Called the DNR and complained they said it was just a bobcat there were no cougars as far south as Northfield. He said and there is a season on bobcat right? they said yup, with a license, he said "fine i killed me a state record bobcat its hanging from the tractor right now, you want someone to come and look at it". DNR guy was shocked, shocked i tell you, when he drove up the drive and saw a 120 pound plus male cougar hanging from his bucket loader. More shocked when the other in area screamed for his buddy from about 60 yards away.

In my Minnesota Zone we can kill up to 6 deer, one buck 5 does, My wish is that they would include the Thanks giving day weekend for deer too easier to get away and more likely the rut will be happening or past.
My parents have a place in wisc and enough apple trees to get a deer management or depredation permit. I shot seven deer this summer in Door County. All by flashlight using a 44 mag trapper walk around the orchard, flip on the light, smack them in the head, all the meat from that has to go to the County sheriff, (i think it feeds prisoners or food shelfs)

Minnetonka last year killed 84 deer in the city limits, that i know off.

Blaine as killed something like 60 and columbia hieghts has killed at least 50. I saw one officer dragging one from the water plant to the cruiser with a bow in one hand...
 
1000 deer/car accidents in the Ottawa, Ontario region last year. Lots more tags available now for the taking. They're everywhere.
 
Razorback - Knives said:
If you are talking about within the last month or so deer/car collusions are up this time of year because of mating season. The deer are moving at all times of the day with the bucks chasing does to breed. This causes them to dart out into traffic. The other problem is people are driving to fast and not paying attention. Hunter access in populated areas is down.
Scott
Click to expand...

Another reason is hunting season. Hunters in the woods move deer...right out into traffic...away from heavily hunted areas to less hunted areas.

Another factor is the weather. Mild winters kill less deer so they will be plentiful the next year. Everybody tallies the count or herds and decide to increase the amount of deer taken. So it will be another year before this happens. Another mild winter and the herd has doubled.

At least that is how I see it.

Reid
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top