Deer Cull in New York, East Hampton by Farm Bureau Stopped by Lawsuit

[Beringia]

40. Deer populations

need to be commensurate with forest size. The solution to keeping down deer populations is to kill does. However hunters rebel and want to kill bucks.

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Effects of deer on forest

A recent book called “Deer Wars” by Robert Frye, 2006 discussed the problem of hunters interfering with proper deer management, and the adverse effects of too many deer on Pennsylvania forests.

Richard Gerstell, a biologist with the Game Commission in 1938, tried to educate sportsmen about the need to balance deer with their habitat in an article he wrote for the Pennsylvania Game News magazine entitled “Pennsylvania Deer Problem in 1938.” Gerstell warned of the need to balance the deer herd with the forest ecosystem. “Steps must be taken to remedy present conditions or both the deer herd and the deer range will suffer unprecedented and irreparable losses,” he wrote.

What concerned Gerstell was that deer were dying in winter because of malnutrition. Field officers for the Game Commission did a survey from December 16, 1934 to May1, 1935, in which they collected 964 deer that had died from “pathological causes” – that is, something other than old age, gunshot wounds, accidents, or the like. Of those deer, fewer than 1 percent died from poisoning. Fewer than 1 percent died from parasites. Another 7 percent died of unknown causes. The majority – 881 of the deer, more than 91 percent – died from malnutrition.

“The demand for food exceeded the available supply and all suitable and attainable food was consequently devoured without fulfilling the demand. The deer, therefore, consumed various greens, twigs and other materials in an attempt to satisfy their craving for food and in doing so filled their stomachs, but the material contained therein was so low in actual food value that although the stomach was full, the animals perished from lack of nourishment.”

Gerstell concluded that the only real solution was for hunters to shoot more does, thereby decreasing the deer population enough to let the forest repair itself.

The situation persists today, nearly four decades later. The population of Pennsylvania has grown by 3 million people since 1944. The deer herd is also larger, numbering somewhere around 1.5 million animals. (p. 22, Deer Wars)

Deer have drastically changed the makeup of Pennsylvania’s forests. instead of a diverse system – where trees sprout, mature, and produce seedlings that grow to replace them, where the understory is thick and varied, much of Pennsylvania’s forest is made up of hundred-year-old trees reaching toward the sky, lots of ferns blanketing the forest floor, and little in between. (p. 58, Deer Wars)

http://www.angelfire.com/dragon2/leavesandtrees/hunted/myarticles/deerhunting.html