Truly ridiculous

[Auburn1992]

Okay, I'm not one to normally 'make fun' of something per say, but this is really ridiculous.

Appparently peta thinks that hunting increases the population of deer!

Just thought this was too rich to keep from passing on.

See that's your problem. You think humans have to intervene all the time. You don't know how overpopulation of deer works. Hunting is what causes it, not solves it.

http://www.peta.org/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=14992&whichpage=2

 

[woof]

Hunting doesn't increase deer populations but bad management practices done arguably to appease hunters can. The buck to doe ratio in most areas is now about 8 to one with bucks of course breeding multiple does. In nature that ratio would be more like one to one. I'm an advocate of more doe hunting to control populations, not more hunting per se.

 

[WalkAbout]

They can keep arguing about it while I prep for Spring Gobbler.

bdub

 

[Double Naught Spy]

In part, hunting does cause deer overpopulation in at least 2 ways.

1) hunting of predators - by removing many or most of the natural predators that feed on the deer population, a major component that would keep the population in check is negated.

2) As noted above, poor mgmt. By altering the balance of the population to be hugely dominated by females, then a larger part of the population is actually birthing young than would be the case if the ratio was closer to 1:1.

 

[WardenWolf]

Indeed, although those predators cause problems for humans as well. Fact is, we broke the system. Sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of ignorance. But one way or another, we broke it. And hunting is the logical way of fixing it, by taking the place of top-level predators which we killed out of necessity or ignorance.

 

[H&Hhunter]

Actually this really good news. Hunting can increase deer populations as it obviously does the same for polar bear, elephant, tiger, Mongolian Argalai, giant sable, Hartmens zebra, black faced impala, black & white rhino you name it animal that does now or would benefit from hunters.

PETA just made our point.

 

[woof]

Hunting does not take the place of predation because predators seek out the old and the weak and the herd benefits from their culling. Hunters (generally) seek out the finest specimens, precisely those the herd needs to improve its quality as opposed to quantity. Maybe states with deer overpopulations need to reintroduce wolves, or better yet Mountain Lions.

 

[Art Eatman]

Naw, woof, in some areas there oughta be a no-limit, no-season-restriction hunting of does. Maybe even a bounty.

Remember that the whitetail doe's offspring are twins; a buck and a doe. They can breed at age 1.5 years. As long as the food supply is adequate, population growth is by geometric progression. Run the numbers for a doe's five-years of reproduction, including her offsprings' reproductions. No way that shooting trophy bucks affects anything but the number of trophy bucks.

An unhunted whitetail deer population will grow to the limits of the carrying capacity of the land. Since they share territory with livestock, there's no way that reintroduction of native predators can occur.

And in Texas, one of the major predators was the screw-worm fly. Killed a helluva lot more deer than any wolf or cougar. They'd lay eggs in the fawn's umbilical, or in any small wound on an older animal. Result? Dead deer.

Back in the Bad Old Days, I helped my grandfather doctor many and many a calf with screw-worm infestations. Peerless screw-worm killer and pine tar. Repeat often. I guess the worst time was when my step-father decided to dehorn a bunch of feeder calves. A dozen of them, at two horns each, to dig out the worms and put tar over the stub. Serious Yuck. That was in the 1940s. Nowadays, folks don't even know about such problems.

The flies were eradicated by irradiating male flies to sterility and dispersing them from airplanes all over the state. They'd breed, but no progeny. Eventually, we won.

Oh: They're happy to lay eggs in people, too. There was a case in San Antonio of a woman found to have them in her nose. Defies imagination, but true story. She died, though; discovered too late to save her.

Predators. Hmmm...

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Hunting does not take the place of predation because predators seek out the old and the weak and the herd benefits from their culling.

This is a myth. Predators do not take only the old and the weak. They take whatever they can get including the young and the healthy.

Hunters (generally) seek out the finest specimens, precisely those the herd needs to improve its quality as opposed to quantity.

How does killing off the finest specimens improve the herd?

 

[woof]

Art, I don't have the credentials to argue this. I only report what I've read by and discussed with those who do. How do "you" explain that in nature the m/f ratio in the herd is 1:1, but in overpopulated areas it is often 1:8? Something is responsible for that. "Something" (by definition) is reducing male population at a greater rate than female population.

00, Predators always take the low hanging fruit. Young, old weak, sick. And reread what I said about HUNTERS seeking and removing the same animals the herd needs to improve quality. This isn't an argument against hunting, it's against the rules on what you're allowed to hunt and where and when and what the real political reasons for those rules are.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

How do "you" explain that in nature the m/f ratio in the herd is 1:1, but in overpopulated areas it is often 1:8? Something is responsible for that. "Something" (by definition) is reducing male population at a greater rate than female population.

Perhaps that "something" isn't reducing the male population but is naturally increasing the female population..., the genetics of male cervid sperm produce female offspring in a 4:1 or higher ratio over males. It was mentioned that a single male will service several females (so the uneven ratio is not a genetic fault). Coupled with the increased food supply found in non-hunting areas causes twin and triple births by bearing-does..., resulting in 2 or 3 females being born in 3 out of every four pregnancies. So you'd get an result of 9 does to 3 bucks from every four bearing-does per year.

(Then you have the problem of rutting males exposing themselves to "natural' predators in my area known as Chevy bumpers, Buic bumpers, Ford bumpers, etc etc )

The female population and male population may be reduced at an equal rate but the greater production of females will cause the offset.

Even here in Maryland where the hunting limit (for the majority of counties) is 10:3 does to bucks, the population continues to be vastly female.

It is also wrong to paint the entire hunting-picture as hunters taking the best or better animals. I have never had the luxury of knowing which was the "old" vs. the "young" except for a very small deer (less than a year old), but I do deliberately leave the huge 8 point in my area alone as he is the "daddy" of the rest. Basically, where I am located, I take whatever comes by, except for the big one, but he's usually smart enough to stay where he doesn't get pressured, outside the legal hunting area but often close enough for me to see him and for him to "taunt" me

Predators always take the low hanging fruit. Young, old weak, sick.

That's a myth. It applies to species that move in herds where the young and females are clustered in the center with males defending on the outside. When the predators set the herd running, the weak, ill, and newly born are more likely to fall behind to be singled out by the chasing predator.

Deer do not herd nearly as well as non-cervids, so bear, wolf, and mountain lion would have to take what they find while being in ambush or by tracking, and much less chance of coming up with a weak, old, or young critter. Further the "weak" are not necessarily poor specimens. Bucks may become temporarily exhausted after a couple of sparring matches to determine dominance, and as such would be prime candidates for any predator including humans. Since many deer infested areas have no non-human predators, the predator argument in many areas is moot.
LD

 

[woof]

Dave, Your explanation is that doe overpopulation is a result of nature but yet in nature it doesn't exist. So "something" unnatural has to be causing it, some form of human intervention. If predators taking the low hanging fruit is a myth, do you have a citation from a wildlife biologist saying that? I have never heard that claim made while everything I have seen makes clear that predators take the young and weak and only attempt sound adults if in great need. Organisms that didn't evolve to take the easiest path didn't evolve at all.

I still contend that predation operates in gender balance from the bottom up while hunting (per the rules) operates in gender unbalanced fashion and from the top down in terms of individuals most fit.

 

[MCgunner]

What's wrong with having more deer? Keeps my freezer full.

 

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

Well, nothing up to a point. Until the population is so much that disease spreads rapidly or the population outgrows the food availability.

OR, if you're wanting to harvest big bucks. Then too many deer = too little deer and too undernourished deer = little horns & bodies.

 

[Art Eatman]

Most of what I know of Bambi genetics comes from Texas Parks & Wildlife articles about him. What their wildlife biologists say.

Predation plays a role in some areas. For instance, in mule deer country with cougars, like around here, it's definitely a factor: The bucks are solitary. Does and yearlings hang around in groups. The result is that a buck is easier prey for Kitty, since nobody's watching his six.

But the high ratio of does to bucks occurs in areas which see little hunting, so I don't have a clue about why the disparity. Lots of non-hunters or anti-hunters own large tracts in central Texas, or those sorts of people do the ranchette thing. Many deer but no hunting--and that results in "greyhounds with horns". In many areas the trees have no leaves or twigs below what a deer can reach. The fabled "browse line" from exceeding the carrying capacity of the land. You can drive down a highway and "read the land" for that sort of thing.

Lotsa "I dunno", for me. For instance, I've read that from radio-collar studies, the whitetail is said to stay within 1.5 miles (+/-) of his home turf and only leave if hard-pressed. Okay, what sort of local population do you have when you see over 120 deer in an oat patch in the fall?

When I first moved back to the old family place in 1967, there were way too many deer on the place. Hadn't been any hunting, ever. Startling, since when I was a kid in the 1940s, a deer was a rare thing. Anyhow, I went on a culling campaign, shooting does and scraggle-horn bucks and mature spikes. After about three or four years, the average body weight was up by some 30%, and I was seeing decent-looking racks.

About a dozen of us leased a 7,000-acre ranch for about ten years, and I'd be hard put to say there was much change in deer numbers or the buck/doe ratio during that time. We'd generally shoot a fat 6- or 8-pointer for meat, early on, and spend the rest of the season looking for Ol' Biggie. Maybe actually killed three or four trophy-type bucks, plus filling on out with eating-meat. We were mostly walking hunters, and we covered that ranch like a blanket.

So, lots of "maybe" and "I dunno" and all that, for me. What I do know is that in most places, the worst thing you can do to a deer herd is not hunt.

 

[mbt2001]

All I have to say to that is:

uhhhhhhhh

 

[Atticum]

I read on Tennessee's WMA site that bag limits are set to control the population

Hunting of bucks increases the population

Hunting of does decreases it.

I'll look for the article when I get home from work.

 

[qajaq59]

Frankly, who in the world would even care what PETA thinks? I've met trees that had higher IQs then their members.

 

[kjohn]

Frankly, who in the world would even care what PETA thinks? I've met trees that had higher IQs then their members.

You've got that right!!!!

 

[interlock]

deer management can increase deer numbers. when managing roe deer if you shoot just bucks (particularly young animals) the doe to buck ratio increases so the does have a smaller territory under the buck and also will produce twins not singles. this can work really quite quickly. so just hunting bucks will increase deer numbers

 

[Art Eatman]

Bits and pieces: I moved back to Austintatious in mid-1963. Drouth year; half the long-term average rainfall with only 16" that year. In the spring of 1964, TP&WD stated that northwest of Austin in Llano, Mason and Brady counties, hunters had killed some 15,000 deer. The winter kill from thirst and starvation was 17,000.

Back then, Texas didn't have doe hunting, and the population rebounded very swiftly.

SFAIK, the consensus among wildlife biologists is that a buck:doe ratio of around 1:6 or so is just fine. I don't really know. Some game ranches apparently try for fewer does. Some ranches have far more.

I know that does must be killed or the herd will outstrip the carrying capacity of the land. This leads to more and runtier deer, and frequent large-scale die-offs when Maw Nature gets nasty.

Sure, bucks-only hunting will lead to higher populations, but few areas nowadays have such rules. That varies on a state-by-state basis, as folks here have commented.

As near as I can tell from reading, those ranches with a management system to control the total herd numbers via killing does have the healthiest herds. That's what I did with my own culling program in the late 1960s. As far as trophy heads, it seems that shooting some 4- and 6-point bucks and a few of the Muy Grandes while leaving the 8s and 10s works best. But you'd have to ask a wildlife biologist with experience in a fully-managed ranch about exact details. I can give reasonably rough guesstimates, but I'm no expert.

The PETA comment can be correct only if does are not hunted.

I note that an article in "Field & Stream", decades back, cited the Pennsylvania wildlife folks as claiming that the interaction of deer and hood ornaments resulted in some 40,000 dead deer that year. The number was equal to the hunter kill, that same year.