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In all the years I've hunted deer, deer have never been scarce. The first year I harvested a deer, Pennsylvania reported an all-time record harvest. Since then, I've done my part in killing deer, and the population steadily climbs.
Anyone who drives the rural roads of southern New York and northern Pennsylvania can see evidence of a high deer population. The unlucky drivers slam into them, causing thousands of dollars of vehicle and other property damage.
Right now, deer are transitioning from forest food sources to fields where they feed on autumn grass, clover, crop leftovers, and other "salady" foods as their stomach enzymes change to enable them to digest sticks and leaves that will see them through the winter. That's one reason it's common to see dozens of deer in a short drive.
While some hunters consistently announce, "There are no deer in [ ________ ]." (You can fill in the blank with a Wildlife Management Unit, a county, or some other geographic area). Plainly, it's a tired joke. Deer are everywhere. And you don't even have to drive a country road. They're showing up in towns -- nearly any town in southwestern New York or northwestern Pennsylvania. More and more deer are living where hunters don't have access.
It's not just towns. Properties surrounding the towns -- many once were busy farms -- are now private sanctuaries. These properties are home to deer and to people whose land use is primarily recreational. Gentleman farmers with a back-to-the-land mentality (that's a good thing) grow gardens, making room for deer to play among the cantaloupes (or other veggies).
Some rural homeowners have an insular purpose. Five to fifty acres gives a barrier that insulates them from neighbors, traffic, noise, and even minor disturbances. I don't blame them. Today's rat race is at an Indy 500 level, and who doesn't want peace and quiet?
Still other landowners have a very poor understanding of land and wildlife. "Leave nature alone! Don't harm the deer! Don't harm the trees!" Never mind that humans are now and for the longest foreseeable future will be the overwhelmingly dominant species on the globe. Conservation (stewarding resources) -- not preservationism -- is the answer. Preservationism sounds good but it's impossible because what we don't change, Mother Nature will. What Mother Nature can't overcome is the shrinkage of wildlife habitat. Private, corporate, and public landowners must make the best use of it.
For a herd of deer to thrive, some individuals must be killed. The greater harm is to put a barrier between deer and hunters. That only results in overpopulation, which is proven to produce smaller, malnourished deer. These high deer populations take food and cover from other animals in the habitat and degrade the habitat -- the forests they live in -- so that the land can no longer support a healthy population of deer or an abundance of other species.
Do you like seeing deer? Do you like seeing healthy, beautiful deer? Then some of them must be killed to make room for others and for other species that share the habitat. In the short-term people favor seeing deer. The long view is that if we allow increasing overabundance, it will eventually be addressed by Mother Nature's severe mechanisms -- malnutrition and disease (not to mention more collisions) -- all crueler than the hunters' arrows and bullets.
Since the days market hunting ended, licensed, regulated conservation hunting has provided the financial basis for managing wildlife, which has made North America's wildlife the most abundant and accessible in the world. Today's problem is that access to hunting land is in decline. If we continue the present course, we will continue to lose hunters because they can't hunt where most of the deer are.
We have plenty of public land, but deer are gravitating to private land where we can't kill enough of them for their own good. That will eventually produce a crisis, a crisis where the current system for managing America's wildlife will be replaced by government sponsored sharpshooters, or some other tax-burdening scheme.
You've probably heard someone call squirrels "Tree Rats" and pigeons "Flying Rats." Will we soon call deer "Road Berm Rats" or "Shrubbery Rats," or some other nuisance name?
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When "The Everyday Hunter" isn't hunting, he's thinking about hunting, talking about hunting, dreaming about hunting, writing about hunting, or wishing he were hunting. If you want to tell Steve exactly where your favorite hunting spot is, contact him through his website, www.EverydayHunter.com. He writes for top outdoor magazines, and won the 2015, 2018, and 2023 national "Pinnacle Award" for outdoor writing.