Suburban Deer Management: Killing Bambi may be necessary to preserve the Environment
White-tailed deer are a commonly known mammal that are very generic to almost the entire North American continent. There are an estimated 30 million white-tailed deer that live across the continent from southern Canada to southern Mexico. While an individual white-tailed deer may only have a home range of about a square mile. Deer are herbivores or plant eaters and their diet can be extremely dependent on where their home ranges are and what types of food sources that are there. However, their diet will dominantly consist of green grasses during the spring or summer months. Then in the fall, they eat corn, acorns, grasses, and other types of nuts. Lastly, during the winter, they mostly eat twigs and buds of woody plants. White-tailed deer are a large-bodied mammal that tend to have a tan or brown fur during the summer; then a greyish-brown coat during the winter months. These adaptations in their fur coats are for the protection of predators to blend into their natural setting. They are also known for having a large white patch under their head on their throat, around their eyes and nose, on their stomach, and the underside of their tail. Male white-tailed deer (bucks) have antlers and can weigh as little as one-hundred and fifty to three-hundred pounds. Bucks tend to travel in bachelor groups of three or four for the majority of the year except during the breeding season when they are solitary. Females (does) are antlerless and weigh ninety to two-hundred pounds. They tend to group up into family groups that consist of does and their fawns. (“White-Tailed Deer – Odocoileus Virginianus”/Natureworks/section 1,2,3).
White-tailed deer are very good at being a generalist with the different types of available habitats which is why their species has thrived. White-tailed deer are most commonly known to live in wooded areas that provide areas that have food, water, and shelter. Deer don’t have very many natural predators on the landscape anymore. Mountain Lions and Grey Wolves used to keep deer populations balanced but with the increasing human populations, their populations have declined while deer populations have increased. Fawns tend to be the most commonly the target of predation, and the most common predators are dogs, and humans. With the lowering number of natural predators, it allows deer populations in their environments to boom and exponentially grow. Hunters are used as a great tool to manage deer in rural, suburban, and urban areas, but if deer aren’t managed at all in a suburban or urban areas they can grow out of control very quickly (“White-Tailed Deer - Odocoileus Virginianus”/Natureworks/section 3,4).
As deer populations have continued to increase exponentially across the continent, so has the human populations across the globe. Deer populations aren’t encroaching on human populations as much as human populations are moving into deer habitats. This has become especially a problem that has been created in suburban areas. Suburban areas lack the natural predators causing the populations to continue to grow very rapidly. Deer in a suburban landscape can cause economic, ecological, and public safety risks. Economic risks such as car collisions that lead to significant damage and also poses a risk to the driver as deer are a large-bodied animal. There is also the risk that they are carrying Lyme disease, and deer tend to browse on homeowner’s ornamentals. In Maryland, deer-vehicle collisions summed up to a total of an estimated twenty-eight million dollars in damages and another four-point-eight million dollars in damages to residential and commercial landscaping (“Suburban Deer Management”/Sierra Club/ para 2). Lyme disease is both a public safety risk and an economic impact. Lyme Disease is a vector-borne illness that is carried by ticks and transmitted through a bite (“Lyme Disease”/para 2). Lyme disease poses an increasing threat to outdoor activities and can cost significant amounts of money to be treated with antibiotics after contracting the disease. But these ticks don’t just pose a danger to only humans but can be deadly to pets as well. High deer numbers living in a small ecosystem pose as many carriers of these ticks. But these large numbers of deer also pose as an ecological risk to our environment as high populations will over browse vegetation and reduce native plant biodiversities of trees, shrubs, and wildflowers potentially leading to invasive plant species moving into the environment (“Suburban Deer Management”/ para 2).
The number of white-tailed deer that can be supported yearly is extremely dependent on the number of individuals living there. “The whitetail deer carrying capacity of a property is based on the highest number of animals a property can support when natural foods are at their lowest. In most areas, carrying capacity is based on food availability during the winter. This is why we head out deer hunting in the fall, to harvest the equivalent of the year’s production and to ensure the welfare of the remaining deer herd.” (Buck Manager/ “Determining Carrying Capacity For Deer Management”/ para 6). Suburban deer management is important due to the fact that hunting is limited in allowing deer populations to continue to grow. This is putting the environment at risk as they over browse leading to potentially a die off in deer due starvation because of a lack of food during the winter months.
Suburban deer management consists of two different types of management strategies such as Lethal and Non-lethal. Lethal strategies consist of eradicating high numbers of individuals from the landscape to ensure the safety of the environment for the future. Non-lethal consists of using many different strategies that are more focused on not harming the animal but using other strategies to cause fewer damages to the environment. Both management strategies cause a lot of controversy from several different types of stakeholder groups. Types of management used in certain areas can be extremely dependent on stakeholder opinions. Lethal management strategies are the best types of management strategy because it is both more efficient and cost-effective at lowering deer populations and relieving the browsing pressures on the environment.
Lethal management strategies require the killing of animals which is where the pushback comes against the strategy. Lethal management consists of the use of hunting, and culling. Although lethal strategies require a lot of different hands-on work of wildlife managers and ecologists it proves to be very effective in lowering populations. Hunting is one of the biggest tools that wildlife managers use as they can manipulate population sizes. Hunting of white-tailed deer goes all the way back to when Native Americans first settled in North America. Hunting has grown to become a very popular recreational sport over the recent decades reaching a total of around 16 million hunters. However recently reached a point where the sport has begun to decline as people have lost interest and others aren’t able to with the lack of land to do so. In suburban areas, this especially is a problem as the ability for hunters to hunt these deer that are overpopulating these areas has become extremely difficult.
The sport of hunting still has an impact on the economy as it annually creates a revenue of 11.8 million dollars (“Hunting in America”/Protect The Harvest/ para 4). Revenues are generated from the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937, or also known as the Pittman-Robertson Act. It is an eleven percent tax that is added on to all hunting related items such as firearms, ammunition, clothes, and other hunting equipment (“Pittman–Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act”/ para 1,3). The eleven percent tax is then put back into the environment and the wildlife. It also pays the salaries of the people who may work in the wildlife management fields. This is why wildlife managers typically turn to hunting as the first management strategy that can lethally manipulate the deer populations. But in suburban areas it tends to be much more difficult than increasing the amount hunters can take from a population. Suburban populations can be doubled in a year and hunters struggle to get access to land. Firearms are limited in suburban and urban settings because of the public safety risks that they portray in a highly populated area. In Kilpatrick et al.’s “Assessing Strategies to Improve Bowhunting as an Urban Deer Management Tool” released a nine-page survey to the hunters of a residential area. They found that encouraging people to harvest the antlerless deer they had passed on, and the possible use of a small crossbow season would help to stabilize the climbing deer populations.
Kilpatrick’s study was to determine ways in which hunters can be better educated in these suburban areas of the problem with the climbing populations and the best management strategies. They are giving education back to the hunters so they can bring that into the woods when they go hunting and have a conservationist mentality. By that, Kilpatrick wants hunters to shoot as many of the does that they see rather than letting them walk and adding to the climbing populations. Also, the use of a crossbow season enables a wider range of people to take the woods such as younger children and the elderly who can’t use compound bows effectively. Crossbows allow them to hunt deer and have an opportunity to potentially kill a deer. In another study by Kilpatrick et al. of the “Acceptance of Deer Management Strategies by Suburban Homeowners and Bowhunters” he addressed the willingness of homeowners to pay for deer management and how long they would wait before they would address deer overabundance conflicts. Kilpatrick et al. found that “Most homeowners supported using lethal strategies to reduce and manage deer populations. Most homeowners were unaware of the cost (94%) or effectiveness (92%) of birth control agents to manage free-ranging deer populations. Of lethal strategies, bowhunting was preferred. Establishment of a special crossbow season outside the existing archery season received the greatest support by bowhunters and was also acceptable to homeowners” (Kilpatrick et al./ “Acceptance of Deer Management”/p. 2095). Kilpatrick et al.’s findings also showed that most homeowners were supportive of hunting as a lethal management strategy but don’t allow hunting on their property. Hunting as a lethal management strategy is one the highest in support but finding places to hunt for hunters in a suburban or urban area can be extremely difficult. However, hunting is a tool that wildlife managers continue to turn to as it is the oldest management of deer that we have used. Hunting is found to be very popular among various different stakeholder’s groups in urban areas. But the biggest problem with using hunting as a management strategy in the suburban area is it’s extremely difficult to get access to hunt the deer and without the use of a rifle success rates of kills go down.
Culling or also known as sharpshooting is another form of lethal management that can be used in urban areas and be highly successful in lowering the deer populations very quickly. Sharpshooting requires the hiring of a sniper or a highly trained shooter to come into an area with a high powered rifle. These rifles are always equipped with a silencer to not scare both the deer and the people. Sharpshooting can be done at night or during the day and typically is done from an elevated blind sitting over a large field with a baited area. In hopes of a quick and ethical kill, sharpshooters typically are limited to less than a fifty yard shot from elevated blinds so that bullets go into the ground after exiting the deer. Shot placement to ensure it’s a quick ethical shot are in the neck and head to ensure an almost immediate death. This is because most hunters would shoot for the lungs of the deer. This would cause the deer to run off and risk a wounded deer to run through a residential area and potentially cause the general public to fight back against the culling program (Jordan et al./"TRAP-AND-SHOOT AND SHARPSHOOTING METHODS”/p. 100). Deer killed by all sharpshooting programs (culling) are donated to the local meat pantries to help feed the hungry (Drummund/“LETHAL AND NON-LETHAL DEER MANAGEMENT”/p. 106). Culling programs can vary greatly as some states have hired snipers that are paid to come in and remove hundreds of deer from the landscape. While in Doerr, et al.’s “Comparison of 4 Methods to Reduce White-Tailed Deer Abundance in an Urban Community” she had three different types of sharpshooting program’s going on at the same time. They used the Bloomington Police, Hennepin Park, and Conservation Law Enforcement Sharpshooting Program. The three programs were each culling deer out of different areas and the deer killed were all recorded to see what the total deer removed from areas were. From the years 1991 to 1993 in these three sharpshooting methods, there was a total of nine-hundred and eighty-one deer killed (Doerr et al. “Comparison of 4 Methods to Reduce White-Tailed Deer”/p. 1110 table 2). This shows that culling methods can lethally eradicate deer from the landscape in high numbers in a short period of time effectively.
Culling is a very effective method of eradicating high amounts of deer from a landscape to relieve the browsing pressures that high deer populations can have on an environment. It is highly rejected from the general public as it has been proven to be very expensive and it doesn’t always work. For example, when the culling of eastern Long Island occurred and they paid large amounts of money to have sharpshooters kill deer, less than ten deer were killed. This resulted in an embarrassment for the sharpshooting method as social media took the story and ran with it making it a national story. This was one of the many reasons that lead to a general public dislike of the management method. They looked to use other methods even though in the right setting it’s highly effective at lower deer populations; however, in an area such as eastern long island with high house densities, sharpshooters were unable to get ethical safe shots for the deer and the houses surrounding. Culling in the right setting and with the right strategy can significantly lower a deer population efficiently and cost-effectively.
Other than lethal means, there are other ways in which to manage deer populations other than lethally and that being through the various different non-lethal management strategies. More often than not the general public especially in urban or suburban areas would look to manage deer non-lethally first because it typically makes them feel better as the animal isn’t harmed. The general public in this regard isn’t always as concerned of the cost-effectiveness or that non-lethal tends to require more time and field work for a biologist. But there is a large amount of the population even in the urban and suburban areas that do understand that deer populations have become a problem and need to be managed. Non-lethal management can be such a broad topic as there are so many different types of strategies and some are birth control, repellants/deterrents, and exclusion ("Non-Lethal Deer Damage Management Techniques."/Para. 6). When lethal means of managing deer populations are extremely limited the use of several of these non-lethal measures at once can prove to fix the problem temporarily.
Birth control is commonly used as a way of taking the number of receptive does out of the breeding populations without having to kill them. Wildlife biologists will find deer and dart them to be able to study the individual doe and then inject it with porcine zona pellucida or PZP. The vaccine causes the deer to be infertile for a short time of twelve months (Goldfarb et al./"Using Birth Control”/para. 5). Other means of causing infertility in deer have been used by capturing does and then having veterinarians perform a procedure of snipping the fallopian tubes to prevent the egg from reaching the uterus and potentially finding a sperm cell and fertilizing. But birth control as much as many people like a push for the movement requires a lot of hands-on work and is partially inhumane for the deer. Birth control has proven to be ineffective as well since does are still able to be bred as the success rate isn’t that high. The vaccine works and the procedure of snipping the fallopian tubes just puts stress on the deer and can cause potential injuries. Birth control as a management strategy has proven to be extremely ineffective as does can still get pregnant and continue to add to the growing population.
Repellants and deterrents can be easily paired together to help in aiding keeping deer away from the area of interest that deer shouldn’t be. Residents of the suburban areas can easily search through google and find deer-resistant plants and that’s one easy way to keep deer out of the garden. For the plants that aren’t deer resistant, the use of several different types of resistant sprays on plants. Also predator’s urines such as coyote or fox’s in your yard will keep deer away as they will avoid areas that predators are known to be. The problem with repellants and deterrents is that most of them can be weakened or diluted from a rain event and they would have to be refreshed regularly. The use of exclusion tactics paired with repellent and deterrents can be more effective. Exclusion is effective at keeping deer away to limit the deer and human conflicts. These tactics can be easily deployed around the homes in the suburbs. As winter approaches and the deer are running out of food availability in the woods, they turn to woody plants that people are growing in their gardens. Putting up fencing in late fall is an easy way of keeping the deer away from the plants being grown in the garden. These methods can be effective ways of keeping deer away from homes for usually a short period of time but deer adjust to these repellents and these methods do nothing to control the exponentially climbing deer population.
Another option in areas of high tick densities that is a non-lethal management is the use of a 4-poster tickicide device. The device is a baited station with corn and the deer have to stick their head into a pipe to get the corn. When they do so they rub their necks against a roller that applies Permethrine Tickicide to the deer’s neck. This device covers an area of up to 40 acres that can lower tick populations of up to ninety-percent. These devices are significantly expensive at four to eight-thousand dollars per device. They also attract unintended users such as raccoons raising the risk of disease-transmitting (Quinn/“Suburban Deer Management Lecture”/Slide 24,25,26). Tickicide devices are extremely effective on lowering tick populations and doesn’t harm the deer but they are very expensive and attract unwanted users.
Common counter-arguments to the suburban deer management movement are the “do nothing” people or the animal rights activists. These groups of people look at the sport as the murder of innocent animals rather than the conservation of the environment to preserve it for the future. “Hunters cause injuries, pain and suffering to animals who are not adapted to defend themselves from bullets, traps and other cruel killing devices. Hunting destroy animal families and habitats, and leaves terrified and dependent baby animals behind to starve to death.” ("Hunting" /In Defense of Animals/para. 2). Arguments are emotionally driven as they are extremely against the killing of any animal as they are “defenseless”. Typically, are not supporters of the state agencies decisions as most of their decisions push for hunting as it lowers populations and state agencies make money from the sport. “Because state wildlife agencies use hunting, trapping and fishing licenses as a source of income, today’s wildlife management actively promotes the killing of wild animals” ("Hunting"/In Defense of Animals/para. 3). Commonly referred to as crippling, murder, orphaning, and harassment of wildlife, they believe that management by hunting is unnecessary and inhumane. These groups are extremely against the use of sharpshooters as this can be looked at as a form of mass murdering of defenseless animals. As far as non-lethal management, they support most of the tactics but consider the sterilization of deer to be inhumane and added stress to the deer. For these reasons, most of the pushback against deer management comes from those who are a part of the animal welfare groups who believe that the better method would be to do nothing.
Therefore, suburban deer management can be extremely difficult based on that fact that there are many different limitations such as high house densities and a constant general public push back against the different management strategies. Lethal management strategies are the best types of management strategy however, because it is both more efficient and cost-effective at lowering deer populations and relieving the browsing pressures on the environment. Other management strategies can be used and it’s better to use multiple different types of management strategies at the same time to enhance the results but lethal management is necessary in order to lower the exponentially growing populations in suburban areas.
Works Cited:
"Determining Carrying Capacity For Deer Management." Buckmanager.Com, 2013, http://www.buckmanager.com/2013/07/16/determining-carrying-capacity-for-deer-management/.
Doerr, Michelle L., et al. “Comparison of 4 Methods to Reduce White-Tailed Deer Abundance in an Urban Community.” Wildlife Society Bulletin (1973-2006), vol. 29, no. 4, 2001, pp. 1105–1113. JSTOR www.jstor.org/stable/3784133.
Drummund, Frank. “LETHAL AND NON-LETHAL DEER MANAGEMENT AT RYERSON CONSERVATION AREA, NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS”. The Wildlife Society. 1995. pp. 105-109.
http://wildlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/McAninch1995_UrbanDeer_300dpi_opt.pdf#page=103.
Goldfarb, Ben et al. "Using Birth Control To Manage Deer In Suburbia." Undark, 2017, https://undark.org/article/birth-control-for-bambi/.
Howard J. Kilpatrick, et al. "Acceptance of Deer Management Strategies by Suburban Homeowners and Bowhunters." The Journal of Wildlife Management, no. 6, 2007, p. 2095.
EBSCOhost,ezproxy.cobleskill.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.4496310&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Howard J. Kilpatrick, et al. "Assessing Strategies to Improve Bowhunting as an Urban Deer Management Tool." Wildlife Society Bulletin (1973-2006), no. 4, 2004, p. 1177. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.cobleskill.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3784756&site=eds-live&scope=site.
"Hunting" In Defense Of Animals USA, 2017, https://www.idausa.org/campaign/wild-animals-and-habitats/hunting/.
"Hunting In America - The Economy - Protect The Harvest." Protect The Harvest, 2017, http://protecttheharvest.com/2014/11/14/hunting-america-economy/.
Jordan, Peter et al. "TRAP-AND-SHOOT AND SHARPSHOOTING METHODS FOR CONTROL OF URBAN DEER: THE CASE HISTORY OF NORTH OAKS, MINNESOTA " Wildlife.Org, 2017, http://wildlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/McAninch1995_UrbanDeer_300dpi_opt.pdf#page=103.
"Lyme Disease Early Symptoms." Webmd, 2017, https://www.webmd.com/rheumatoid-arthritis/arthritis-lyme-disease.
"Non-Lethal Deer Damage Management Techniques." Dnr.Maryland.Gov, 2017, http://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Pages/hunt_trap/ddmtnonlethal.aspx.
"Pittman–Robertson Federal Aid In Wildlife Restoration Act." En.Wikipedia.Org, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittman%E2%80%93Robertson_Federal_Aid_in_Wildlife_Restoration_Act.
Quinn, Amy. “Suburban Deer Management” Wildlife Damage Management Lecture. SUNY Cobleskill Fisheries and Wildlife Dept.
"Suburban Deer Management." Sierra Club, 2017.http://www.sierraclub.org/maryland/suburban-deer-management.
"White-Tailed Deer - Odocoileus Virginianus - Natureworks." Nhptv.Org, 2017, http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/whitetaileddeer.htm.
Eric Mathiesen Loomacres Airport Wildlife Biologist
White-tailed deer are a commonly known mammal that are very generic to almost the entire North American continent. There are an estimated 30 million white-tailed deer that live across the continent from southern Canada to southern Mexico. While an individual white-tailed deer may only have a home range of about a square mile. Deer are herbivores or plant eaters and their diet can be extremely dependent on where their home ranges are and what types of food sources that are there. However, their diet will dominantly consist of green grasses during the spring or summer months. Then in the fall, they eat corn, acorns, grasses, and other types of nuts. Lastly, during the winter, they mostly eat twigs and buds of woody plants. White-tailed deer are a large-bodied mammal that tend to have a tan or brown fur during the summer; then a greyish-brown coat during the winter months. These adaptations in their fur coats are for the protection of predators to blend into their natural setting. They are also known for having a large white patch under their head on their throat, around their eyes and nose, on their stomach, and the underside of their tail. Male white-tailed deer (bucks) have antlers and can weigh as little as one-hundred and fifty to three-hundred pounds. Bucks tend to travel in bachelor groups of three or four for the majority of the year except during the breeding season when they are solitary. Females (does) are antlerless and weigh ninety to two-hundred pounds. They tend to group up into family groups that consist of does and their fawns. (“White-Tailed Deer – Odocoileus Virginianus”/Natureworks/section 1,2,3).
White-tailed deer are very good at being a generalist with the different types of available habitats which is why their species has thrived. White-tailed deer are most commonly known to live in wooded areas that provide areas that have food, water, and shelter. Deer don’t have very many natural predators on the landscape anymore. Mountain Lions and Grey Wolves used to keep deer populations balanced but with the increasing human populations, their populations have declined while deer populations have increased. Fawns tend to be the most commonly the target of predation, and the most common predators are dogs, and humans. With the lowering number of natural predators, it allows deer populations in their environments to boom and exponentially grow. Hunters are used as a great tool to manage deer in rural, suburban, and urban areas, but if deer aren’t managed at all in a suburban or urban areas they can grow out of control very quickly (“White-Tailed Deer - Odocoileus Virginianus”/Natureworks/section 3,4).
As deer populations have continued to increase exponentially across the continent, so has the human populations across the globe. Deer populations aren’t encroaching on human populations as much as human populations are moving into deer habitats. This has become especially a problem that has been created in suburban areas. Suburban areas lack the natural predators causing the populations to continue to grow very rapidly. Deer in a suburban landscape can cause economic, ecological, and public safety risks. Economic risks such as car collisions that lead to significant damage and also poses a risk to the driver as deer are a large-bodied animal. There is also the risk that they are carrying Lyme disease, and deer tend to browse on homeowner’s ornamentals. In Maryland, deer-vehicle collisions summed up to a total of an estimated twenty-eight million dollars in damages and another four-point-eight million dollars in damages to residential and commercial landscaping (“Suburban Deer Management”/Sierra Club/ para 2). Lyme disease is both a public safety risk and an economic impact. Lyme Disease is a vector-borne illness that is carried by ticks and transmitted through a bite (“Lyme Disease”/para 2). Lyme disease poses an increasing threat to outdoor activities and can cost significant amounts of money to be treated with antibiotics after contracting the disease. But these ticks don’t just pose a danger to only humans but can be deadly to pets as well. High deer numbers living in a small ecosystem pose as many carriers of these ticks. But these large numbers of deer also pose as an ecological risk to our environment as high populations will over browse vegetation and reduce native plant biodiversities of trees, shrubs, and wildflowers potentially leading to invasive plant species moving into the environment (“Suburban Deer Management”/ para 2).
The number of white-tailed deer that can be supported yearly is extremely dependent on the number of individuals living there. “The whitetail deer carrying capacity of a property is based on the highest number of animals a property can support when natural foods are at their lowest. In most areas, carrying capacity is based on food availability during the winter. This is why we head out deer hunting in the fall, to harvest the equivalent of the year’s production and to ensure the welfare of the remaining deer herd.” (Buck Manager/ “Determining Carrying Capacity For Deer Management”/ para 6). Suburban deer management is important due to the fact that hunting is limited in allowing deer populations to continue to grow. This is putting the environment at risk as they over browse leading to potentially a die off in deer due starvation because of a lack of food during the winter months.
Suburban deer management consists of two different types of management strategies such as Lethal and Non-lethal. Lethal strategies consist of eradicating high numbers of individuals from the landscape to ensure the safety of the environment for the future. Non-lethal consists of using many different strategies that are more focused on not harming the animal but using other strategies to cause fewer damages to the environment. Both management strategies cause a lot of controversy from several different types of stakeholder groups. Types of management used in certain areas can be extremely dependent on stakeholder opinions. Lethal management strategies are the best types of management strategy because it is both more efficient and cost-effective at lowering deer populations and relieving the browsing pressures on the environment.
Lethal management strategies require the killing of animals which is where the pushback comes against the strategy. Lethal management consists of the use of hunting, and culling. Although lethal strategies require a lot of different hands-on work of wildlife managers and ecologists it proves to be very effective in lowering populations. Hunting is one of the biggest tools that wildlife managers use as they can manipulate population sizes. Hunting of white-tailed deer goes all the way back to when Native Americans first settled in North America. Hunting has grown to become a very popular recreational sport over the recent decades reaching a total of around 16 million hunters. However recently reached a point where the sport has begun to decline as people have lost interest and others aren’t able to with the lack of land to do so. In suburban areas, this especially is a problem as the ability for hunters to hunt these deer that are overpopulating these areas has become extremely difficult.
The sport of hunting still has an impact on the economy as it annually creates a revenue of 11.8 million dollars (“Hunting in America”/Protect The Harvest/ para 4). Revenues are generated from the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937, or also known as the Pittman-Robertson Act. It is an eleven percent tax that is added on to all hunting related items such as firearms, ammunition, clothes, and other hunting equipment (“Pittman–Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act”/ para 1,3). The eleven percent tax is then put back into the environment and the wildlife. It also pays the salaries of the people who may work in the wildlife management fields. This is why wildlife managers typically turn to hunting as the first management strategy that can lethally manipulate the deer populations. But in suburban areas it tends to be much more difficult than increasing the amount hunters can take from a population. Suburban populations can be doubled in a year and hunters struggle to get access to land. Firearms are limited in suburban and urban settings because of the public safety risks that they portray in a highly populated area. In Kilpatrick et al.’s “Assessing Strategies to Improve Bowhunting as an Urban Deer Management Tool” released a nine-page survey to the hunters of a residential area. They found that encouraging people to harvest the antlerless deer they had passed on, and the possible use of a small crossbow season would help to stabilize the climbing deer populations.
Kilpatrick’s study was to determine ways in which hunters can be better educated in these suburban areas of the problem with the climbing populations and the best management strategies. They are giving education back to the hunters so they can bring that into the woods when they go hunting and have a conservationist mentality. By that, Kilpatrick wants hunters to shoot as many of the does that they see rather than letting them walk and adding to the climbing populations. Also, the use of a crossbow season enables a wider range of people to take the woods such as younger children and the elderly who can’t use compound bows effectively. Crossbows allow them to hunt deer and have an opportunity to potentially kill a deer. In another study by Kilpatrick et al. of the “Acceptance of Deer Management Strategies by Suburban Homeowners and Bowhunters” he addressed the willingness of homeowners to pay for deer management and how long they would wait before they would address deer overabundance conflicts. Kilpatrick et al. found that “Most homeowners supported using lethal strategies to reduce and manage deer populations. Most homeowners were unaware of the cost (94%) or effectiveness (92%) of birth control agents to manage free-ranging deer populations. Of lethal strategies, bowhunting was preferred. Establishment of a special crossbow season outside the existing archery season received the greatest support by bowhunters and was also acceptable to homeowners” (Kilpatrick et al./ “Acceptance of Deer Management”/p. 2095). Kilpatrick et al.’s findings also showed that most homeowners were supportive of hunting as a lethal management strategy but don’t allow hunting on their property. Hunting as a lethal management strategy is one the highest in support but finding places to hunt for hunters in a suburban or urban area can be extremely difficult. However, hunting is a tool that wildlife managers continue to turn to as it is the oldest management of deer that we have used. Hunting is found to be very popular among various different stakeholder’s groups in urban areas. But the biggest problem with using hunting as a management strategy in the suburban area is it’s extremely difficult to get access to hunt the deer and without the use of a rifle success rates of kills go down.
Culling or also known as sharpshooting is another form of lethal management that can be used in urban areas and be highly successful in lowering the deer populations very quickly. Sharpshooting requires the hiring of a sniper or a highly trained shooter to come into an area with a high powered rifle. These rifles are always equipped with a silencer to not scare both the deer and the people. Sharpshooting can be done at night or during the day and typically is done from an elevated blind sitting over a large field with a baited area. In hopes of a quick and ethical kill, sharpshooters typically are limited to less than a fifty yard shot from elevated blinds so that bullets go into the ground after exiting the deer. Shot placement to ensure it’s a quick ethical shot are in the neck and head to ensure an almost immediate death. This is because most hunters would shoot for the lungs of the deer. This would cause the deer to run off and risk a wounded deer to run through a residential area and potentially cause the general public to fight back against the culling program (Jordan et al./"TRAP-AND-SHOOT AND SHARPSHOOTING METHODS”/p. 100). Deer killed by all sharpshooting programs (culling) are donated to the local meat pantries to help feed the hungry (Drummund/“LETHAL AND NON-LETHAL DEER MANAGEMENT”/p. 106). Culling programs can vary greatly as some states have hired snipers that are paid to come in and remove hundreds of deer from the landscape. While in Doerr, et al.’s “Comparison of 4 Methods to Reduce White-Tailed Deer Abundance in an Urban Community” she had three different types of sharpshooting program’s going on at the same time. They used the Bloomington Police, Hennepin Park, and Conservation Law Enforcement Sharpshooting Program. The three programs were each culling deer out of different areas and the deer killed were all recorded to see what the total deer removed from areas were. From the years 1991 to 1993 in these three sharpshooting methods, there was a total of nine-hundred and eighty-one deer killed (Doerr et al. “Comparison of 4 Methods to Reduce White-Tailed Deer”/p. 1110 table 2). This shows that culling methods can lethally eradicate deer from the landscape in high numbers in a short period of time effectively.
Culling is a very effective method of eradicating high amounts of deer from a landscape to relieve the browsing pressures that high deer populations can have on an environment. It is highly rejected from the general public as it has been proven to be very expensive and it doesn’t always work. For example, when the culling of eastern Long Island occurred and they paid large amounts of money to have sharpshooters kill deer, less than ten deer were killed. This resulted in an embarrassment for the sharpshooting method as social media took the story and ran with it making it a national story. This was one of the many reasons that lead to a general public dislike of the management method. They looked to use other methods even though in the right setting it’s highly effective at lower deer populations; however, in an area such as eastern long island with high house densities, sharpshooters were unable to get ethical safe shots for the deer and the houses surrounding. Culling in the right setting and with the right strategy can significantly lower a deer population efficiently and cost-effectively.
Other than lethal means, there are other ways in which to manage deer populations other than lethally and that being through the various different non-lethal management strategies. More often than not the general public especially in urban or suburban areas would look to manage deer non-lethally first because it typically makes them feel better as the animal isn’t harmed. The general public in this regard isn’t always as concerned of the cost-effectiveness or that non-lethal tends to require more time and field work for a biologist. But there is a large amount of the population even in the urban and suburban areas that do understand that deer populations have become a problem and need to be managed. Non-lethal management can be such a broad topic as there are so many different types of strategies and some are birth control, repellants/deterrents, and exclusion ("Non-Lethal Deer Damage Management Techniques."/Para. 6). When lethal means of managing deer populations are extremely limited the use of several of these non-lethal measures at once can prove to fix the problem temporarily.
Birth control is commonly used as a way of taking the number of receptive does out of the breeding populations without having to kill them. Wildlife biologists will find deer and dart them to be able to study the individual doe and then inject it with porcine zona pellucida or PZP. The vaccine causes the deer to be infertile for a short time of twelve months (Goldfarb et al./"Using Birth Control”/para. 5). Other means of causing infertility in deer have been used by capturing does and then having veterinarians perform a procedure of snipping the fallopian tubes to prevent the egg from reaching the uterus and potentially finding a sperm cell and fertilizing. But birth control as much as many people like a push for the movement requires a lot of hands-on work and is partially inhumane for the deer. Birth control has proven to be ineffective as well since does are still able to be bred as the success rate isn’t that high. The vaccine works and the procedure of snipping the fallopian tubes just puts stress on the deer and can cause potential injuries. Birth control as a management strategy has proven to be extremely ineffective as does can still get pregnant and continue to add to the growing population.
Repellants and deterrents can be easily paired together to help in aiding keeping deer away from the area of interest that deer shouldn’t be. Residents of the suburban areas can easily search through google and find deer-resistant plants and that’s one easy way to keep deer out of the garden. For the plants that aren’t deer resistant, the use of several different types of resistant sprays on plants. Also predator’s urines such as coyote or fox’s in your yard will keep deer away as they will avoid areas that predators are known to be. The problem with repellants and deterrents is that most of them can be weakened or diluted from a rain event and they would have to be refreshed regularly. The use of exclusion tactics paired with repellent and deterrents can be more effective. Exclusion is effective at keeping deer away to limit the deer and human conflicts. These tactics can be easily deployed around the homes in the suburbs. As winter approaches and the deer are running out of food availability in the woods, they turn to woody plants that people are growing in their gardens. Putting up fencing in late fall is an easy way of keeping the deer away from the plants being grown in the garden. These methods can be effective ways of keeping deer away from homes for usually a short period of time but deer adjust to these repellents and these methods do nothing to control the exponentially climbing deer population.
Another option in areas of high tick densities that is a non-lethal management is the use of a 4-poster tickicide device. The device is a baited station with corn and the deer have to stick their head into a pipe to get the corn. When they do so they rub their necks against a roller that applies Permethrine Tickicide to the deer’s neck. This device covers an area of up to 40 acres that can lower tick populations of up to ninety-percent. These devices are significantly expensive at four to eight-thousand dollars per device. They also attract unintended users such as raccoons raising the risk of disease-transmitting (Quinn/“Suburban Deer Management Lecture”/Slide 24,25,26). Tickicide devices are extremely effective on lowering tick populations and doesn’t harm the deer but they are very expensive and attract unwanted users.
Common counter-arguments to the suburban deer management movement are the “do nothing” people or the animal rights activists. These groups of people look at the sport as the murder of innocent animals rather than the conservation of the environment to preserve it for the future. “Hunters cause injuries, pain and suffering to animals who are not adapted to defend themselves from bullets, traps and other cruel killing devices. Hunting destroy animal families and habitats, and leaves terrified and dependent baby animals behind to starve to death.” ("Hunting" /In Defense of Animals/para. 2). Arguments are emotionally driven as they are extremely against the killing of any animal as they are “defenseless”. Typically, are not supporters of the state agencies decisions as most of their decisions push for hunting as it lowers populations and state agencies make money from the sport. “Because state wildlife agencies use hunting, trapping and fishing licenses as a source of income, today’s wildlife management actively promotes the killing of wild animals” ("Hunting"/In Defense of Animals/para. 3). Commonly referred to as crippling, murder, orphaning, and harassment of wildlife, they believe that management by hunting is unnecessary and inhumane. These groups are extremely against the use of sharpshooters as this can be looked at as a form of mass murdering of defenseless animals. As far as non-lethal management, they support most of the tactics but consider the sterilization of deer to be inhumane and added stress to the deer. For these reasons, most of the pushback against deer management comes from those who are a part of the animal welfare groups who believe that the better method would be to do nothing.
Therefore, suburban deer management can be extremely difficult based on that fact that there are many different limitations such as high house densities and a constant general public push back against the different management strategies. Lethal management strategies are the best types of management strategy however, because it is both more efficient and cost-effective at lowering deer populations and relieving the browsing pressures on the environment. Other management strategies can be used and it’s better to use multiple different types of management strategies at the same time to enhance the results but lethal management is necessary in order to lower the exponentially growing populations in suburban areas.
Works Cited:
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Doerr, Michelle L., et al. “Comparison of 4 Methods to Reduce White-Tailed Deer Abundance in an Urban Community.” Wildlife Society Bulletin (1973-2006), vol. 29, no. 4, 2001, pp. 1105–1113. JSTOR www.jstor.org/stable/3784133.
Drummund, Frank. “LETHAL AND NON-LETHAL DEER MANAGEMENT AT RYERSON CONSERVATION AREA, NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS”. The Wildlife Society. 1995. pp. 105-109.
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Howard J. Kilpatrick, et al. "Acceptance of Deer Management Strategies by Suburban Homeowners and Bowhunters." The Journal of Wildlife Management, no. 6, 2007, p. 2095.
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Eric Mathiesen Loomacres Airport Wildlife Biologist