The problem isn’t the deer or the lack of predators, the problem is people. Shooting deer doesn’t solve that problem.
What? Problem is clearly the lack of predators to control populations, overgrazing is real. People aren’t going anywhere.
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There are many studies on the effects of deer overpopulation. I haven’t seen a single serious study touting the benefits of allowing deer to manage themselves in the absences of predators.
The eastern U.S. had many predators historically that have now been extirpated. Gray Wolves in the northeast and Red Wolves in the southeast. Eastern Cougar which is now extinct. These predators would have taken adult deer as well as fawns. Our current predators, Black Bear and Coyote take primarily only fawns.
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We can’t escape responsibility for our choices on hunting. We’re a part of the system, whether we want to be or not. If we choose to allow hunting, individual deer die or are hurt. If we choose to prohibit hunting, deer populations increase, all the deer suffer from lack of food, and some of them die. However, the harm doesn’t stop there, as the plants suffer and the other animals that depend on those plants for food and shelter also suffer. There isn’t a third, benign choice, with deer in eastern North America. (Maybe there will be some day, but researchers haven’t found one yet that is practical.)
It is true that hunters enjoy hunting. That can bias their perceptions. However, we who don’t hunt, don’t want to, have the responsibility (I think) to look as objectively as we can at the pluses and minuses of hunting as we make our choices. When we do, we find that the arguments for using hunting to control deer populations are logical, whether we choose to support hunting or oppose it.
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Western north america still has apex predators (wolves, grizzlies, cougars, etc.) Eastern North America… doesn’t really. Yeah we have black bears, but not everywhere, and there’s some cougars in florida, but for the most part there just aren’t significant enough populations of large predators on this side of the country to stop white tail from just devastating the environment.
Here is just one of many many articles about the effects of deep overpopulation/overbrowsing that you can find from google https://njaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/White_Tailed_Deer_and_Forest_Management_Fact_Sheet_NJAS.pdf
It would be great if we could just leave it be and not hunt, but the impacts on other species would just be too great. Its the same reason that there’s currently campaigns in the east to report and get rid of spotted lanternflies - humans caused that. That is our fault, and runs the risk of seriously damaging populations of native vegetation. Now of course, white tail aren’t invasive but we’ve disrupted the environment enough that they do have the potential to cause tons of damage.
I say this all as a person that doesn’t hunt and barely even fishes. Like, my only skin in the game is not wanting to see our eastern forests altered for the worse because we have massively disrupted the environment.
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Also, yeah, if people all vanished in a poof today, things would probably right themselves relatively quickly. Predators would eventually move back in and things would eventually get under control.
But see, that’s not going to happen. Predator reintroduction is going to happen slowly, if at all, and to be honest I imagine if anyone even floated dropping cougars in appalachia people would lose their absolute minds. FFS every time someone sees a black bear in my area in ohio they freak out for weeks, nevermind that black bears almost never attack humans unless someone is stupid and starts feeding them.
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At least here last decades were pretty good, both bear and wolves are growing in numbers and reappear in regions they were abcent at the start of XX century.
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I never quite know how to react when some news story reports a coyote spotted in a suburb, followed by precautions for keeping your children safe. Um, first of all, coyotes have undoubtedly been living in that town all along, whether or not anyone saw them. Second, coyotes are smaller than your average dog – a 40-pounder is at the large end of the spectrum.
You are right, people are completely irrational about carnivorans.
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Even with something as large as black bears, attacks are really rare, and when they do happen, its usually because the bears have been getting in to human food and/or a campsite isnt properly storing their food.
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article262489172.html
Like this article from last year. The bear was obviously used to people.
Realistically though, bear attacks in GSMNP are so rare its hard to find data on it. I’d basically only ever be worried in the park if i came across a momma with cubs or other campers at a shelter werent handling their food responsibly
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Can’t forget about coywolves either, even better than coyotes at blending in to my understanding!
Second, coyotes are smaller than your average dog – a 40-pounder is at the large end of the spectrum
I’ve seen some dang big coyotes here, approaching german shepherds size, and they still only take fawns, and yearlings occasionally.
But I would love to see a cougar or black bear here on the land we care for…black bear is more of a possibility someday as they could come down the cumberland. All we have are coyote, gray fox, and bobcat. They keep the rabbit and squirrels in check for sure, but not much of anything larger.
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That joke was actually bandied about by wildlife biologists as they carried out a project to restore wild turkeys to their native habitat around here. Not hunters.
There is this little thing called the law of unintended consequences. I realize I’ll never convince anyone that there is value in hunting (and I’m not a hunter) there is this thing called reality. I live in a very rural area. People around here hunt and garden. I have one friend who only eats wild game and will not eat meat from a store. Be that as it may, here is the reality.
Our state maintains large tracts of land as gamelands for…hunting. (I actually make use of the gamelands in non-hunting seasons as they are great places to observe nature). The farmers and landowners around here also maintain large tracts that they rent out to hunters. Many of us have worked hard to convince farmers not to mow hedgerows and ditches in order to provide habitat for quail. For hunting.
If you eliminate hunting, the humans involved will find other uses for all of that habitat. And the farmers will go back to keeping the ditches and hedgerows mowed down to the nub. Conservation organizations and governments can’t keep all of that habitat intact no matter what anyone thinks. There is a LOT of private land providing much needed habitat that will simply be converted to other uses if there is no hunting.
Not to mention all the money poured into habitats via various routes (e.g. federal and local governments via hunting licenses, etc, organizations such as Ducks Unlimited, etc.).
That’s the reality, humans being what they are.
I have no doubt that within a generation or two hunting will be eliminated due to the widespread villification of hunters and ignorance about hunting and hunters. And when habitat loss accelerates along with the acceleration of specie loss, people will scratch their heads and moan, “But we ended hunting–what went wrong?” Yes. Unintended consequences.
Wildlife has to represent some value to the common man other than, gee–isn’t that Starling great? Hunting provides an avenue for some folks to get out and interact with nature on a very personal level. I prefer wildlife photography myself, but I support anything that gets people away from social media and outside. And I’m well aware of the law of unintended consequences.
And yes, the restoration of wild turkeys in our area (which began over 25 years ago) was successful. There is now a hunting season on wild turkeys. And they are doing great. So I guess those wildlife biologists who said “If you want to preserve a species, open a hunting season on it.” were absolutely right.
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Nailed it. There’s ethical ways and non-ethical ways. Almost all of them make me uncomfortable because of the death part, but still.
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I’ve been a vegetarian for 13 years, and I have great respect for people who can pull off a vegan lifestyle. But yes, I can see that if all-the-world went plant-based, that would mean converting more land to cropland, including what is now wildlife habitat.
Okay, so most of the world’s soy crop is grown for livestock feed, not for tofu and soymilk. So? Replace the demand for meat with demand for tofu, and all that soy still needs to be grown. How many acres of natural woodland for X number of grams of protein from venison equals how many acres of soybean fields for the same number of grams of protein from tofu? If we are comparing plant-based with domestic livestock, plant-based seems more environmentally sound; but does it hold when comparing plant-based with wild?
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Also a vegetarian trying to tread lightly. Foraging in the wild works for a small rural population with access to foraging space. I was reading about the San - old people remember their hunter-gatherer ways. But young city-dwellers change to supermarket food. It would be good to promote commercial crops of traditional food.
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