A drive-time traffic commenter in the Bay Area ("Ossifer Vic", KSFO) refers to deer as "antlered rats" when he has to report (two to three times a week) that a car has struck one on the highway.As a result, I am seeing deer everywhere. I sometimes even see one crossing my street when I go to work in the morning. They came into my yard last summer and ate up most of my vegetable garden. I think I'm going to have to acquire a taste for venison and shoot me one or two next season.
One problem for the deer - - which are too numerous - - are the black bears. Here in Pike County, PA on the same 90 acres three bears were taken during this past hunting season, but only one deer. A couple of miles away, 11 black bears were removed from a fish hatchery.
The PGC's studies have shown that as of a couple of years ago, black bears were killing as many fawns as coyotes.
When you have creatures that need 20,000 calories a day in the fall to bulk up before hibernation, meat is probably less of a hassle than getting 70 lbs of blueberries for the same calorie count.
As a motorcyclist, I can verify that there has been an explosion of various antelope including deer and moose. It is now unsafe to ride a motorcycle at night in many locations.
Most of PA is nasty. A good indicator is the number of bloody splotches in the road on the interstates. Route 81 coming south out of Binghamton, NY and going south to Scranton is just about the worst stretch of highway anywhere for deer hits. Vermont and Maine are overflowing with moose and deer.
Route 88 and 86 from Albany, NY to Erie, PA are a good place to avoid from dusk until an hour after sunrise as well.
Now, let's talk about mule deer in Wyoming and Montana...
Here in York County, southcentral PA, deer are numerous, so are homes and it's becoming too dangerous to hunt with high-powered rifles anymore. Soon, it'll shotguns and slugs. Up north, deer are more scarce because there aren't as many homes and people, so the deer population is kept well under control.
By MARK JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
January 15, 2005, 11:40 AM EST
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Forty years ago, Charlie Scheer rarely saw a deer near his 625-acre nursery in Laurel on the eastern end of Long Island.
Today, he regularly sees five or six just crossing the road when he drives to his local deli in the morning.
For Scheer, 63, president of the Long Island Farm Bureau, the animals are more akin to vermin than furry woodland creatures. Across the country, the rising white-tailed deer population is wreaking havoc on farms, changing the ecology of forests and causing ever more motor vehicle accidents and fatalities.
"We're a wholesale nursery and the deer can do a lot of damage in one night, both feeding and rutting," Scheer said. "They go after anything. They're not picky. It's one of our most pressing problems."
Deer damage to agriculture in New York was between $58 million and $60 million in 2003, said Paul Curtis, an associate professor and extension wildlife specialist at Cornell University.
New York's Department of Environmental Conservation estimates there are now 1 million deer living in the state. Nationally, the white-tailed deer population has increased from about 500,000 in the early 1900s to 25 to 30 million today, according to various researchers.
In pre-European settlement times, deer population density was 10 to 15 deer per square mile. In the 19th century, numbers dwindled as land was cleared for agriculture and commercial hunting became widespread.
In the early 20th century, states limited hunting, preserved open space and imported the animals. Much of the land cleared for agriculture has since been converted back to wild land as farmers abandoned the business.
Now, in places like southern New York and northern Pennsylvania, there are 30 to 35 deer per square mile, Curtis said.
"In some ways we've been too successful at bringing the deer back," Curtis said.
While they still have some predators in the Northeast, mostly coyotes or bobcats, their main animal predators, wolves, are gone. And the conversion of woodlands into suburbs has created a favorable habitat with year-round food sources.
Man is now a deer's most feared predator, but the number of hunters is declining, especially among teenagers who today have more options to fill their time.
In 2003, the total deer harvest in New York was more than 253,000, an 18 percent drop from 2002, according to the DEC.
The number of big game hunting licenses sold in the state dropped to 592,930 in 2003, from 684,462 in 1999, a decline of 13 percent. Meanwhile, the number of deer management permits, given to farmers and others to control deer numbers, rose to 685,696 in 2003 from 489,191 in 1999.
Today's high deer population may shape how the country's forests look decades from now. The animals are reducing the number of trees and seedlings and affecting which species will survive, forestry experts say.
In the 14,000-acre Letchworth State Park in western New York, a 1,200-acre "safety area" for recreation where hunting is forbidden has seen vast damage from overbrowsing by deer.
"There are no saplings, no underbrush for ground nesting birds," said Richard Parker, regional director of the Genesee State Park Region. "There will be no regeneration of the forest. In 40 to 50 years, as the current forest dies, there will be nothing to replace it."
The deer are "eating anything and everything that's there," he said.
With voracious deer gobbling red oak, sugar maple and white ash seedlings, species like black birch and beech are gaining an edge.
Michael Conover, a wildlife professor and director of the Jack Berryman Institute at Utah State University, estimates deer cause at least $750 million in damage to the United States timber industry annually.
The loss of ground-level trees also removes habitat for several species of songbirds that need them for nesting.
Humans, too, face increased dangers. There were 1.5 million deer and vehicle crashes in 2003, injuring 13,713 people and causing $1.1 billion in vehicle damage, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released in November.
Control programs vary, with some towns and cities hiring sharp shooters to cull the herd, some states expanding their hunting seasons, and many encouraging the hunting of female deer.
Those programs have had mixed results with many hunters still reluctant to take female deer after years of chasing antlered bucks. And most hunters only take two or three a year because they don't have the time or space to butcher more.
"We view it as problem of our own making," said Laura Simon, field director of urban wildlife and sanctuaries program for the Humane Society of the United States. "We have created an ideal landscape for deer."
Fencing deer off from suburban areas, using repellants and planting undesirable vegetation can mitigate some of the problems.
"Hunting certainly doesn't provide a long term solution," Simon said. "Deer compensate by showing more productivity in reproduction. You just can't hunt out enough deer and people living in suburban areas don't want hunting. It's not a safe or socially acceptable solution."
Scheer says many farmers in his area have taken to putting up fencing to keep the deer out, but that forces the deer onto neighboring farms. He allows hunting on his nursery, but the deer that are taken are soon replaced.
"Deer are supposedly wards of the state," Scheer said. "The state is really going to have to step up to the plate. There has to be better management of the herd."
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/state/ny-bc-ny--deerproblems0115jan15,0,7089728,print.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork
Send the hunters to the Kansas City area, specifically the area around Longview Lake and the James A. Reed wildlife refuge!
A recent "census" by the MO dept of conservation says that there are about 140 deer per square mile there! Other area parks have 65 or 70 deer per square mile.
It's gotten to the point that they've opened up archery seasons in what are pretty much suburban, residential areas, or at least, right next door.
Mark
We had a record kill in Missouri with new regulations last season (2004).
There was no limit on numbers of antlerless deer killed as long as you had a tag for each one. There was a antler minimum size of 6 points (2x3 or 1x6) for bucks that protected younger bucks. Unlimited any deer permits for antlerless deer.
And the season was extended a few days with muzzle loading, youth hunts age 15 and under, and archery season.
Mo. Dept of Conservation has been under fire by auto insurers because of the high number of deer -car collisions caused by large deer populations. I was not real happy with the new regulations as our hunting party was unable to harvest several nice bucks we would have had easily last year. We had to settle for smaller antlerless deer, with one exception of an 11 pointer. But now I think the program will increase the size of bucks and might actually work better for hunters and reduction of the car/deer collisions. We will wait and see.
I have noticed a trend to urban people buying into rural farmland and forming hunting clubs so they have guaranteed places to hunt. I can see this might make less land available for some hunters, including our party, but overall it has not hurt our hunt since fewer hunters are on adjoining tracks. Although one tract of land has been bought by a self proclaimed environmental wacko that is completely off limits to hunting. This trend is the danger to hunters in the future.