Getting rid of deer! (wild, populous, area, population)
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Chronic Wasting Disease is sweeping into Kansas in the deer population. People are advised not to eat the deer. They can be tested. So far, it hasn't been known to transfer from deer to humans, or livestock. The deer are also know to carry Lyme disease through deer ticks. Right now, the deer are really on the move and I am starting to see multiple dead deer on the highway daily. The populations increased years ago through restocking programs. I have read there is now a way to reduce the population through a birth control added to deer feed, but I don't know if there has been wide spread application of it.
Seems to me a lot of these complaints are coming from folks who built or purchased their property in what was clearly deer habitat, which certainly didn't have Alberta spruces or rose bushes (other than Cherokee roses) growing on it originally.
The deer were there first, and they're just doing their deer thing, trying to raise their young-uns and keep themselves alive. Too bad their natural predators were wiped out by people who wanted to live on deer land.
If there were a few more wolves around, there would not be so many deer. Coyotes are filling that hole in the ecosystem, as you note. Get rid of the coyotes, and your deer population will boom all over again. Let them be, add sturdier, higher fencing to your property - and you may be able to co-exist more satisfactorily.
Guess what? I didn't build Huntsville, Alabama. I moved into a well established area (and as noted I did put up a higher, sturdier fence. I was simply relating my experience with them here to the OP. If you use that reasoning that we took their territory then there should be no towns or cities or housing pretty much anywhere in the US. Stupid humans... building homes to live in. They should have chosen those areas of the country where no animals or birds lived in and built there on the places that were uninhabited by anything and clearly marked out by God as "build home here".
We have a rather large lot (3/4 acre) in CA with a creek, lots of trees and bushes in the “back 40” that we don’t landscape other than doing a yearly weed abatement for fire safety.
We just like it rather natural.
We do landscape and garden the 1/4 acre where we mainly are though.
It has a 6 foot fence surrounding it.
A few years ago we had a doe that choose our “back 40” to raise her fauns.
At first I was like “oh this is really cool”.
And then I realized that I had the worst tenant ever.
She ate all my strawberries and we had a strawberry field.
She then ate everything else that I planted and paid dearly for.
The straw that broke the camels back was when she attacked my old dog.
She literally sent my old Australian Cattle Dog to the grave.
She beat this poor old dog for several minutes before my daughter got into a fight with her.
My daughter took the water hose to her and then she turned on my daughter.
My daughter sadly had to beat the doe with the hose before the doe relented.
The dog was never the same and died after suffering back injuries for a year.
Bad deer need to be culled.
I would have shot it if I had a safe shooting zone.
In personal review, I was wrong.
I should have never allowed this to happen.
It just seemed right to help a mommy deer.
Let's kill off all the deer because they eat our flowers. Awesome.
No one is suggesting that but the fact remains that there are more deer in North America in 2020 than there were in 1620.
In many areas the deer are in numbers more than the carrying capacity of the land by 4, 5, 6 or more times. That sort of density is inviting starvation and is breeding grounds for diseases like Lyme (which impacts humans), Chronic Wasting Disease (which can also impact humans) and Blue Tongue not to mention the billions of dollars of damage and two hundred or so deaths every year caused by deer/vehicle collisions.
The increase in the deer herd is a direct result of our development patterns. The clearing of forests and woodlands increases edge habitat and deer are creatures of the edges.
Here in my part of Maryland thirty five years ago it was odd to see a deer and the hunting season was a week long. Now, due to development you can't go anywhere without seeing deer, both dead on the road and standing in the fields. I grew up in Pennsylvania and rarely, if ever, saw a deer in the middle of the day. Here now you can't not see them feeding in the fields at noon. That's an indicator of overcrowding, which you can see on your own with the absence of any browse or plants in the woods below eight feet above the ground.
I mentioned hunting season here decades ago. Now the archery and black powder seasons last not days but weeks with firearms season being two weeks long with a bonus season in January. The bag limit has gone from one deer period to twenty spread out over the different hunting types. Western Maryland has more or less kept the traditional season and bag limits but the rest of the state is, as you can see, is almost unlimited. And yes, I know a few people whose deer harvest is counted in the double digits, much donated to Hunters Feeding the Hungry.
I just think you can be smarter than this if you try just a bit harder.
We have always had bad deer probably here.
It is like playing chess.
Did you check all of your boxes and see what will happen when things are done?
You just might find an easy and environmentally friendly solution to this.
Good luck.
Andy.
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