I couldn't see the rest of the article. Where does the environmental crowd play into this story? When I was young, my ma was a leftie type, and she used to point out the deer from the car--oooh ohhh, look at the deer!--and she also referred to hunters in disparaging terms--beer swillers, drunks--and probably opposed deer hunting at some point if she got the opportunity. Is that how the enviros figure into this story? Here in NJ, we got plenty of deer. It's hunting season this week, I think. I don't hunt so I have no idea what the limit is on deer, and how that jives with our deer population. I'm always looking out for em while driving, that's for sure. Deer are definitely plentiful, and definitely a factor in the smaller growth and saplings, etc.
Only a week?? In Michigan we have deer hunting for months rifle season, Bow season and muzzle load season and the deer are still like rats, they are everywhere!!
Just across the Delaware from NJ is a "wildflower preserve". It is enclosed by a very expensive fence, about 12 feet high, with electric gates to let cars in and out. Why is this fence there? To keep the damn deer out.
There are also occasional special hunts to lower the saturation level of deer in a particular park or forest. These hunts typically last only a few days, and are announced late in the season with little or no public notice.
There are also other areas where the local community doesn't allow hunting at all and instead brings in "sharpshooters" and pays them to limit their Deer population. Princeton and Bridgewater New Jersey are both guilty of this idiocy. If I'm not mistaken, the meat and hides are all "disposed of".
Apart from the usual safety gear, weapon, and other implements of traditional deer hunting, in New Jersey there is one other thing you need....a lawyer.
Now that I've been in New Jersey long enough to get the lay of the land, I get the impression that the state realizes the costs of such severe limits on hunting, but they are unable to do much about it given the generation or two of constant anti-gun and anti-hunting indoctrination they've done.
Of course I could be wrong. It could be that the state is just run by a bunch of dim witted, tree hugging lefties that wouldn't know how to scratch their nether region without an environmental impact statement, and a state appointed committee.
In Northern Virginia, Loudoun County, the deer are like rabbits! I feel guilty that I haven't gotten a deer license yet!