Deer Depopulation Methods

[Henny peeny]

I hunt and my husband hunts deer and here in NC we can kill as many does as we want we get our takes and we have deer or anterless deer so we can shoot two bucks and 4 does but we can get more does tags as many as we want at 10 dollars for each one. We have a lot of deer here and this is how we (NC) in my county rules are. Mind you hunts have abd rep from the bad hunters that kill for sport and not use the meat and you have this sort of hunter all over so be aware of this. The deer that is too many will either die of starvation or sickness around here we have wastings disease I reckon it is called that because the deer waste away gets real thin and dies a awful death in my book so to control the population I think best to kill them if you don't eat deer meat I am sure the game warden would know a charity you can give the deer to or you may know someone who would like deer meat.

The idea of hunting deer is to fill the freezer not to kill everyone I see I don't shoot spots either FAWNS WITH SPOTS and no one bring any in to me because they would never hear me stop telling them how wrong it is. I don't shot a female with spots either but once they don't have spots they are fair game. the mother can be killed they can be on their own. We hunt turkey and sqirrel to. But you know a good hunter will take down a animal as quick as they can and not let the animal suffer any.


I hope this helps


If you try to spay the does there is to many to do and you most likely would not have the finds for them if you give the deer a shot to kill them then you are wasting the meat you can't eat it after you give a shot to kill it the drug will still be in the deer and harmful to humans.

 

[Peaches Lee]

Perhaps the deer are flocking to areas without predators. I know in my area and on my farm the deer were quite scarce until we put hunting restrictions up due to trespassing hunters damaging our property/animals. Now it is something if you see 10 of them together. Educate me about the CWD, I thought that was due to being fed corn?

 

[The Dark Unicorn]

The corn feeding brings larger groups together which makes the transfer of the wasting sickness easier. That's why some states have banned the corn feeders and salt licks.

Keep in mind there were also some lazy hunters that used those stations for bait for an easy kill rather than actually having to go find good game trails.

 

[donrae]

So, I just happened to have a biologist from Oregon Fish and Wildlife over tonight and asked him how things are for us. He and my honey are actually going out on a population count tonight

He says we have much the same issue. Not as severe as it is in your area, he says your white tail deer have a higher reproduction rate than our black tails.

He says they've had limited programs with the contraceptive, but as you've found out, darting deer is a PITA and expensive and time consuming. Plus, he says we have so much National Forest here we have a large source population that makes it logistically impossible.

There have been limited archery programs in some of the towns, but this is also limited by local politics and animal rights feelings.

He says it's just a hard problem with no good solution, especially with the folks that think of them as pets.

According to him, over twice as many folks are injured by deer annually than by all the North American predators combined. In Ashland, there have been instances of deer walking down a city street, getting startled and jumping through plate glass windows of a shop. There have been folks attacked in local parks by deer. Plus all the landscaping destroyed. They're an incredible nuisance, and it seems there's no good solution.

I do know in Montana they're liberal with doe tags, my honey got I think 5 one year. Harvested them all out of a farmer's alfalfa field. That was a great year, I don't think I bought meat for over a year!

 

[donrae]

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[wekiva bird]

Hunting is the only way. Bow hunt near city limits. Reg. Need to change to get more deer in your area. All the deer we get goes in to food for us and family that needs meat.

 

[KristyHall]

The main predators are gone. Wolves and mountain lions are rare in the unpopulated areas. If one DOES manage to wander into a neighborhood you would think the world was ending!

We humans have disrupted the natural chain for the deer. Now it is up to us to "fix" it. Personally I would LOVE to have some venison but I myself don't hunt (yet).

I also think the movie Bambi didn't help much. Awww MOM the mean nasty hunter killed Bambi's Mom!!!!! WAH!

I personally have no problem with a true hunter. A person who is out there to bring home the most natural meat available. Now a trophy hunter is a whole other story since that type ticks me off! I personally would find the carcasses of deer that didn't meat the "trophy status" for a full head mount but would take the top of the skull and rack.......... Grrrrrrrr..... It was also a trophy hunter that SHOT at me when I was a kid riding my quad on land that belonged to MY family. We didn't allow outsiders on the land due to "US" kids. So we had several large racks on the harvested fields. That quad had the hole in the fender until it was finally sold 10 years later. Yes the idiot went to jail but after listening to the "But they have the BEST trophy deer here and I got permission".....

There needs to be culling allowed and there has to be a way to use the meat rather than it going to waste. So many states have deer herds with sicknesses due to the overpopulation.

oh yeah, Trophy hunters tan my hide. Grrrrrr. A responsible hunter thins the herd of the old, the weak, and the small, leaving the healthy and larger deer to reproduce. They take only what they need. Personally i prefer doe because the meat is more tender, but I will take out a buck that is not of good breeding material. My land is overrun with big bucks with large racks because of careful hunting and management of the local populations. then we get idiots for the city coming down, trespassing, shooting at anything that moves with high powered rifles, leaving carcases lying around, killing livestock, and acting like THEY have been insulted when people tell them to go away.

 

[duckinnut]

I don't believe that there is any one correct answer. Even a multi pronged approach might not suffice. While contraception and spaying may help the problem short term as older deer eventually die or killed by car or hunter and new ones will move in to take their range. Then you have to start the costly and time consuming process all over again. Lets say deer live an average 6-8 years but could be more or less pending on many factors. Those factors could be from where they live as far as heavily wooded areas to suburban sub-divisions to even urban areas.Hunting and hunting pressure as pressured deer will move into less active and quiet areas. Availability of food sources and type of food also enters into the mix. Like you I live in the Northeast and the deer around usually max out at age 6. That came from the head biologist from Mass Div. of Wildlife. I asked why and he said because of their diet more so in winter time the browse they eat greatly wears down their teeth and their ability to chew. Hard Northeast winters or multiple hard winters take their toll forcing more browse shortens their life even further. He also said that deer have an uncanny knack on knowing how much food is available and does will have as many as 3 fawns a year(2 being average). So I believe hunting is probably the most effective and cost efficient way to maintain a sustainable herd but to a point.

I hunted down Nantucket Island for 30 years and there are more deer down there now than there ever was.They claim that there is 50 deer per sq. mile which I find hard to believe because I have hunted over miles and miles of that island never seen that many. Why you ask? First when I started hunting down there as a young teen with my father, brother and group of about ten guys you had to apply for a doe permit. So if a group of 14 guys got 3/4 doe permits that was great. As it was a drawing to which at the time they were giving maybe 150 to 200 tags. They wanted you to kill the bucks as early thinking was they were the problem. But the biologist I spoke of earlier figured out that the bucks were not the problem and that the does were. One buck will fertilize many doe. So eventually they switched to everyone who applied for a doe tag got one. They saw scant results in the herd. So they upped the number to 2 permits per hunter, a small bump in herd reduction but still no where near what they wanted. At this point in time you can kill as many doe as you can find but the population of deer is still enormous and hard to control. Those factors include as more land became developed less hunters are hunting down there. Its an expensive venture. With that development decreases hunting area but the deer don't leave that area. A subdivision down there is not cluster housing by any means. Most houses are built on 1/2 to 2 acres lots. More than enough for deer to live but not enough to hunt. Deer have thing thing called adaptive plasticity meaning they are are extremely flexible in the diet and surroundings. The list of what they won't eat is very short. I was down there on a hunt when we were going back to our place where we were staying in this giant neighborhood after dark and we saw at least ten deer on the way. This one guy uttered the truest statement I ever heard. He said and I quote "these deer will never know what a hunting season is". How profound. And he was right except maybe the young bucks that were still with their mother that would be eventually chased away by her. Those does will live breed and die all in that area amongst the houses. The basic problem is not only on Nantucket but most regions, far to many deer on far to much un-huntable land. Although Nantucket poses special challenges in its terrain unlike any where I have ever seen. Not in Maine or Pennsylvania. There is no open hardwoods and few pinewood stands but those are limited to a few hundred sq. ft. There are open fields but the deer just don't roam around they stay in the thick scrub oak that covers the island. All chest and head high in other words miserable hunting. Without a big group to drive them out successful hunting is no guarantee. So like I said hunting can help to a degree and most likely the best way to control herds but by no means the end all solution.

I think states should open up conservation areas that don't permit hunting to ease the burden. Those areas hold tons of deer and while it serves its purpose in conservation but contributes to overall deer population. It is a fawn factory and as they grow move beyond those borders of conservation to our backyards to school campuses to our windshields. Lyme disease not withstanding. On that subject most people don't know that the only role the deer plays is mode of transportation in the cycle of a deer tick. While not all deer ticks have Lyme disease, all deer have ticks. Simply put.
Well I hope I gave you some food for thought while not giving you a defined answer.