This may have been done here before, but…
Here in Cleveladn, they are planning on using sharpshooters to control the deer population.
Park officials asked the state yesterday for permission to kill 190 deer in 4 reservations.
They will do it at night and treat the meat and give it to hunger centers.
They are also asking the state to allow its expansion of chemical contraception (?).
They have been doing this for years.
Isn’t there a better solution?
Are you for or against thinning the herd, as it were?
I can’t think of a way to get rid of deer without killing them, no.
Well, I would think that culling the herd with sharpshooters rather than leeting the excess population starve to death is way more humane if done properly. I mean come on, sure they’re cute but they do not have any natural predators around anymore in the Cleveland area. Because of that the population continues to grow more and more very year. We have to find some way to even out the balance.
I know! Import some wolves!
Seriously, I’ve never really been to Cleveland (drove through it twice, that’s all), so I’m not familiar with your problem, but where I’m from, we had deer all over (well, I’m from a small farm community in New York, deer are a given). Anyway, in my area, hunters culled the herds fairly well, and yet there were still so many deer that nobody in my neighborhood could keep a tomato garden without putting up incredible fencing, and almost everyone I know has hit a deer with their car at least once. If the herds get too big, besides being a nuisance and a physical danger to humans, the deer also become less healthy, with too many deer competing for the same amount of food. You have to cull the herds somehow, and since you can’t exactly deport some of them, hiring sharpshooters to do what the hunters in my area do already seems to me to be the best way to go about it.
Hiring sharpshooters to cull the herd is the only way to relaibly thin out the deer population.
In my area we have most of the same problems racinchikki described. Beyond the property damage to homes, shrubs, gardens and vehicles it’s downright dangerous to hit a deer. There have been a few incidents in recent years where a deer-auto collision has killed the driver and/or front seat passenger.
Besides that it reduces the number of deer that will have to fight for food over the winter, which helps keep the animals from suffering.
Zap!
I don’t have a cite for this, but in a Northern Milwaukee suburb, they tried tranquilizing and relocating them to the country. A high percentage (over half, as I remember)died of the stress or ran out into the road and were killed by cars anyway.
It seems heartless to shoot them, but it’s cheaper and more effective. And, after years of hunting, we’re not running out of deer in Wisconsin.
Here on the North Shore of Chicago, this is a major issue. There are large numbers of deer and with nowhere to go and ever decreasing habitats, they are forced to find food and shelter in residential neighborhoods.
So you have these rich housewives complaining about their custom landscaping being eaten, then raising a fuss when the herds are culled! Lets see, we destroyed their native habitats, force them into smaller and smaller environments, provide them with abundant and esay to obtain food (in the form of landscaping and garbage), then complain when they try to survie? Boo Hoo.
As was noted above, attempted relocation has a high mortality rate and is prohibitively expensive for small communities.
Culling is the only answer if outright extermination is not on the agenda. Allowing them to suffer the effects of starvation, violent death from vehicle accidents, and dying of disease is NOT a humane solution.
I would rather have trained sharpshooters taking care of the excess deer than employ other solutions, which as noted are ineffective (contraception has not had a sterling rate of success, for one thing).*
One other point - we’ve made conditions ideal for deer not only by exterminating their predators, but by actually creating habitat for them. Suburbs are ideally suited for deer and the lush vegetation we plant provides nourishing meals.
*much as I would like to reintroduce wolves and such, we’d see too much caterwauling from parents when an occasional bratty offspring was taken.
In theory the Sharpshooter idea is a good one.
In practice, it’s not so hot.
They do this in nearby Gettysburg. What the sharpshooters are of course are a bunch of rednecks who love the idea of staying up late, drinking beer and shooting deer with spotlights or nightscopes. They do it for free.
The dangers of irresponsible hunting get multiplied dramatically when you start shooting at things after dark near a heavily populated area.
I know a couple of incidents where cars driving by got bullet holes in them. Houses have been hit, and deer have been only wounded and left to suffer because it’s tough to find them in the dark. Inevitably, they usually crawl onto a roadway or somebody’s backyard and thrash about.
A round capable of killing a deer is deadly at more than a mile, and rifle safety issues like knowing your backstop become more difficult in the dark.
I don’t know if it’s like this anywhere else. Culling is necessary, but I think the way they do it is foolish and dangerous.
In Montana the deer are “thinned” by upping the number of hunting permits issued and the number of deer you can take per permit. Lately it’s been pretty much “as many permits as we can issue, for as many deer as you can get.” If that still doesn’t reduce the population sufficiently, the deer may be poisoned or shot by Fish Wildlife And Parks employees – not by contract employees (ie, unlicensed hunters).
Regardless of permit or season, the only people authorized to shoot deer within city or township limits are FW&P or law enforcement. Residents are also not supposed to poison deer, due to the chance of poisoning other animals as well, though I imagine many of the more fed-up do their best to off the deer by surreptitious means, since they are everywhere and can be a real nuisance.
I think that people need to realize that cute ‘n’ fuzzy doesn’t translate to “great.” Sometimes attractive animals can be as much of a problem (if not more of one) than rats or bugs. The two chief examples of that IMO are deer and Canada geese. I really think we could cut their populations in half and still have plenty of each.
There’s something people aren’t considering here.
In almost EVERY respect, a modern American suburb is a MUCH better place for deer to live than it was 500 years ago!
Here in Austin TX, the deer (not so affectionately called “rats with hooves” by a lot of people) are omnipresent! I have to drive VERY slowly at night to avoid hitting them. Why are there so many of them? Well, why WOULDN’T there be? Fact is, in Austin (or Westchester NY, or Cleveland, or any of a hundred American cities), if we humans WANTED to cause a deer population explosion, we couldn’t have done a better job.
Five hundred years ago, Central Texas had lots of big, mean predators. It also had extremely hot weather, and long periods of drought. That meant a high mortality rate for deer aroiund here. Lots of them were eaten by cougars or wolves, and lots of them starved or had to migrate in search of food and water.
Today, we’ve driven out all the cougars, so there are no more large predators in Central Texas. And we homeowners considerately plant lawns and flower gardens, which we kindly water all year long.
Get the idea? We’ve gotten rid of all the deer’s enemies, and we’ve laid out a smorgasbord for them! We’ve done everything for the deer except roll out a red carpet and ring the dinner bell!
So, while I understand the desire to hire hunters to thin the herd, there’s no reason to think the population won’t continue to thrive and expand, as long as conditions are this ideal.
You do of course have an impartial cite indicating that drunken shooting is taking place?
I know you do because you wouldn’t be indulging in perpetuating negative stereotypes about the hunting community.
Drunken hunters:
I know for a fact that a lot of the guys who “culled the herd” around my parents’ house are drunken rednecks. I used to see them walking out to the woods carrying their rifles and coolers, sipping a cold one as they strode. I’d find piles of cans under their treestands in the woods. Yes, there is lots of drunken hunting.
However, not all the hunters are drunken. The ones who are deserve to shoot themselves right in the goddamn foot, as far as I’m concerned, because they’re being a danger to themselves and others. But not all the hunters are drunken. A lot of them aren’t. You just notice the ones holding beer cans more, because the beer can sticks out in your mind, while the others blend in.
astorian, you’re right, but whether we unwittingly created Deer Paradise or not, there are too damn many of them for their own good. If we kill some of them, it’s a temporary measure, and then they’ll continue to breed until there’s just as many of them as there are now. If we don’t kill some of them, they’ll continue to breed until there’s TWICE as many as their are now. If we can’t permanently decrease their numbers, we still can’t sit here and let them INCREASE just because ‘we brought it upon ourselves by growing pretty lanws’ or whatnot.
Erm, without disparaging the hunting community, I think it’s safe to say that most people living in or growing up in rural communities are well-aware of the old and venerable relationship between drinking and hunting.
In fact, I assert that in order to willingly get up before the freezing dawn and slog up a mountainside only to haul a heavy, smelly carcass back down, you’d pretty much have to be drunk. 
You know folks this amazes me. Stuff that wouldn’t pass for any other group is apparently acceptable for hunters?
“I know for a fact that a lot of the guys who live in the ghettos around my parents’ house are drugged up niggers. I used to see them walking out to see their homies carrying their peices, sucking on a crack-pipe as they strode. I’d find piles of syringes around their stoops.”
‘Erm, without disparaging the homosexual community, I think it’s safe to say that most people living in or growing up in urban communities are well-aware of the old and venerable relationship between disease, promiscuity and homosexuals.’
No, really people isn’t this supposed to be about fighting ignorance, not perpetuating stereotypes? Yes some hunters drink, some homosexuals have several venereal diseases, some negroes smoke crack, some women are thick as shit. That doesn’t justify coments like “What the youth are of course is a bunch of homos who love the idea of staying up late, screwing everything in sight and barebacking.” or “What the community are of course are a bunch of coons who love the idea of staying up late, smoking crack and hanging with their homes.” I really can’t see these comments adding anything to the debate and there’s no way of proving how prevelant these sterotypes are. Unless I can prove that every homosexual is an amoral sex-feind, or every negro is a crack addict or every sharpshooter is a drunkard then I really can’t justify these comments.
Just my $.02
GASPODE, most hunters I know drink. (And I know a lot of hunters.) Some (few) hunters I know drink a lot. This is “in my experience” so if you’re looking for a citation to Drinking And Hunting: A Sociological And Statistical Examination, With Pie Charts Attached, you’re out of luck.
To compare my statement to a statement referring to blacks as “niggers” or one alleging that most gay people have VD is a clear insult to me, when no insult to you (or to hunting) was even intended. But then you are surely smart enough to see that “drinking,” a legal and socially acceptable activity, is in no way analogous to smoking crack or catching VD.
If you think that drinking is not prevalent in hunters, you are of course free to say so. I would have no quarrel with any statement that your experience is not the same as mine. But I seriously doubt you could find anyone who grew up in a hunting culture who would say that most hunters do not drink – not necessarily during hunting, but perhaps before and very likely after. Is this true of every hunter? Obviously not. But it’s true for most of them, IME.
If I inadvertently insulted you, then I apologize, but I do stand by my statement, which I quite honestly do not feel was either insulting or inaccurate.
No you haven’t insulted me, I haven’t hunted for years and the culcha here is very very different. It was just an observation about how different standards are acceptable for differnet groups.
A few points of clarification though:
Using a firearm under the influence is not socially acceptable and AFAIK is illegal in many places. Being homosexual and having AIDS is socially acceptable and illegal. Being female and thick as shit is neither socially unacceptable nor illegal.
Many hunters drink before or after hunting is a far cry from drinking beer while shooting. Lets not confuse the issue.
Basically my point is that hunting while drunk may be more or less common than unprotected homosexual sex and may be more or les socially acceptable, but both are stereotypes based on ‘my expereince with the community’ (ie hearsay) and neither could be could be construed as positive.
But let’s end the hijack. I may start another thread.
Regardless of the state of sobriety of hunters, generally, the hunters who participate in the Cleveland Metroparks culling are rather carefully supervised. They are always referred to as “sharpshooters” (probably for PR purposes), but everything that I have read about the group recruited indicates that they are not simply good ol’ boys who volunteer to “go after” the deer.
For one thing, none of the park areas is as much as even one mile wide (although they are usually several miles long) and they are usually bounded on both sides by housing developments. (The parks generally follow one of the rivers of the region, all of which have carved out narrow valleys.) Had some “drunken redneck” been allowed to participate, there would surely have been at least one serious incident in one of the three preceding years of the cull.
Gaspode:
::shrug::
No. But I’m comfortable with saying that several of these guys were in the habit of meeting at a bar and having a few before they’d go out. Take it for what it’s worth.
I’m a hunter and the cull is a good idea. The way they do it isn’t. The “sharpshooting” really becomes an extra county sponsored sporting deer season for a select few that aren’t especially qualified other than that they’re well connected to the parks dept.
They’re neither trained, nor particularly responsible.
Deer – the other red meat.