I don’t know about Oregon, but here in South Dakota we have game wardens to patrol and catch the morons that have exceeded the bag limits or hunt out of season or hunt the wrong animals. Our game wardens have the same powers of arrest as other law enforcement.
No, I did not say this. However, rural People have the opportunity to hunt. And in the US, there seems to be a culture where it’s a natural right to go out and shoot animals to eat, regardless of laws. That attitude is less in other countries, for several historic reasons.
And a non-insignificant amount of rural People in the US seem to see it as a Point of pride to not follow laws and regulations (esp. for enviromental reaons).
There’s a difference between “capable of reading the Regulation” and “giving a shit about rules from those stupid wash. bureaucrats”, as many People often express.
Again, the question was about the Motivation. Do People hunt for Sport, for Food, for trophies - or do they consider it a duty as part of the whole ecosystem?
People who hunt for trophy will target deer with big antlers over deer with small antlers. People who hunt for Food will target Young deer over older. People who hunt for culling will choose according to the Guidelines, e.g. leaving Young, female, pregnant deer alone, killing the old and weak or injured (which means that there isn’t much good to eat).
You know very very many rural People. Or is that a jump from “People you know” to “all hunters in the US who pay a hunting license”? (Which is not necessarily the same number as “all People who hunt in the US”).
How many wardens for a terrority? Do they often successfully catch wrongdoers? Almost never? (Because every hunter in South Dakota follows the rules? Because there are too few wardens and the rule-breakers slip through?)
Has the number of caught rule-breakers stayed constant, gone down or up?
Do they often find hints of rule-breaking without catching the Person, or do they find no evidence? (because everybody follows the rules or because People know how to hide their trail?)
How many of These wardens come from the rural community themselves and are related to half of the Population, and friends with the rest?
It’s like saying “Drivers are not allowed to Speed, so we have traffic cops to catch speeders”. Yes, that’s the Minimum, but doesn’t tell anything about how sucessful they are.
I thought that was only the method of “hunting Fox with Dogs on horseback” which is done by a small elite and viewed as a bit brutal by a large Group of Population?
Surely even in England, People don’t hunt deer from horseback?
I did not read this into the poster’s statement either.
I have rarely encountered anyone who follows this line of reasoning.
This is absolutely not true. There are, of course, in any group those who disobey the laws but to describe it as widespread is wrong. The highest percentage estimate I can find is from Georgia in 200-2001 where they estimated that around 4% of hunters had violated a regulation. Keep in mind that a “violation” may be something as trivial as having a shotgun capable of holding 4 rounds instead of 3.
Cite?
Deer permits are fairly low-cost for state residents, and there are cultures and traditions built around the legal seasons for deer hunting. Poaching a deer can result in the loss of all hunting and fishing rights, confiscation of all of your weapons, even confiscation of the vehicle you drove in to poach the deer, on top of thousands of dollars in fines.
Why go through all that when it costs $24 for a legal license to shoot 2 deer?
Yes.
This is controlled through the use of permits and conditional licenses. For example, in my state a while back there were Deer Management Units that had an “Earn A Buck” requirement. In order to get a permit to shoot an antlered deer, you had to shoot and register an anterless deer first. Even without this, the number of antlered and antlerless permits issued are changed each year for each management unit depending on the status of the current population.
Hunting numbers may be declining, but they are still substantial. In my state last year, 598,000 hunters harvested 202,000 deer in 10 days.
for historical reference -
(post shortened, underline added)
“If”? Probably?
From where do you get your information???
Trophy deer hunters target larger, or more unusual, racks over does, or small rack bucks.
The culling of a herd may require the removal of all deer to prevent the spread of a fatal, or dibilitating disease. Culling a herd to reduce their destructive numbers usually targets breeding-age does.
Uh, no.
Item 1) Have you never heard of tag limits and season harvest restrictions? Those are things. Those are proven things. They help manage healthy populations all over the world.
Item 2) Natural preditors are all fine and well, if you have sufficient buffer to prevent them from departing their designated sanctuary. The UK is not wildly blessed with such buffer zones - Preditors are NOT inclined to be tractable or polite. They WILL wander. Also, how long has it been the UK has held a viable population of preditors sufficient to take deer? And what else might they hunt? Sheep, maybe?
Human hunting is a long-established game animal management method, and one where the hunters pay the cost of administering the program - often proving excess income beyoind the needs of the program, all for the privilege of solving the state’s problem.
August West answered most of this but, since you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, I’m not going to entertain the notion of adding anything more.
Plenty for the task - how does one know? Simple - monitor the game population. It tells the answer without prevarication. If the numbers stay healthy (and they do), then clearly the system is functinoing as designed.
Immaterial - See meteric above.
So, you automatically presume bad faith and lack of professionalism? Tell me - do you act towards your local law enforcement with the same disrespect and disdain?
Bad analogy. See metric above - If the animal population stays in healthy bounds (and this is scientifically monitorable), then by definition, it’s working.
OP seems to have a Hollywood image of hunting. You cannot decide to just go hunt a deer and do so the next day.
The only way to decrease the deer population is through death or decreasing the breeding rates. The latter is difficult and often cost-prohibitive and not very effective. The former can be accomplished through hunting, where the benefits are people can get venison while the nation or subdivisions earn money through tag fees. Or the government can do their own culls, which costs them lots of money, and the deer are still dying.
Wolves have been extirpated from Britain for a long time. Reintroducing them without proper research is just as irresponsible as introducing a non-native species.
Agreed - there is not really any place left for wolves to be reintroduced in England - even the national parks have significant usage/activity for livestock and recreation - and much of the other ‘green’ space is farmland.
And also agreed - ‘deer hunting’ in this context would be carefully-controlled and regulated culling. You can’t just go out into the woods with a gun or a bow and start shooting stuff in England - and permitting additional hunting isn’t going to change that.
I’ll concede one thing the the OP, though. The UK has a population density 7.5x the US, and if you take England alone it’s about 10x. That’s an average of course; New Jersey is similar to England. Most places have laws against shooting X yards near a dwelling, even for bows. So it hunting may not be the **only **solution to the deer problem, but should be used in conjunction with other methods.
Where in the hell are you coming up with this nonsense?
I have a number of hunters in my family and I know plenty of hunters. NONE of them are like that. How many hunters have you met from the US? :dubious:
Here in Pennsylvania, we’re over run by the goddamned things. They’re causing major car accidents, ruining peoples’ properties, and spreading disease. Deers carry tics, which causes Lyme disease (my grandfather had it). Deers can also get rabies, and bucks can be very aggressive. And an overpopulation will ensure that the deer will starve, as there will be less food for them. What’s better, a slow death by starvation, or a quick one with an arrow or a bullet?
I absolutely loathe deer – they’re a pain in the ass. Just because they’re “cute” doesn’t make them sweet little babies. “Bambi” wasn’t a documentary.
The meat from the cullm, at least in my area is going to be donated to food banks. You have an objection to needy families being fed?
to add to what Tranquilis and others have said, and I say this from the point of view of a former Hunter’s Education instructor. In the US, well, in Idaho anyway, hunters do a lot of self-policing. Some of the things taught in hunter’s ed in the area I live in is that yes, hunting and wildlife management programs are largely paid for by fees collected from hunters. That hunters are considered important to Fish and Game in Idaho as a source of information on herds and conditions throughout the state. And not least by any measure, most poachers are not discovered by Fish and Game, but are reported by other hunters.
And yet dogs are vastly less deadly than deer. Deer are the most dangerous large animal to humans in the U.S. and I assume they are getting that way in Britain as well.
Car and Deer Collisions Cause 200 Deaths, Cost $4 Billion a Year. That doesn’t include the transmission of Lyme disease which is rampant in New England and can disable for life. People aren’t hitting deer with their vehicles for fun. They literally jump out in front of vehicles out of nowhere because they are dumb but extremely skittish beasts.
You may think that is because people are intruding on their territory but that isn’t true at all. People created their territory. Deer thrive at the fringes of human civilization just like rats, squirrels, cockroaches and mice. The difference is that squirrels don’t generally kill people.
Hunting works fine to control deer populations. There just needs to be a whole lot more of it in some areas like much of the Northeastern U.S. and probably England but there aren’t enough hunters to cover many infested areas. I never liked deer hunting myself because it combines three of the things I hate the most - waking up early, sitting still for a long time and freezing your ass off but I really appreciate the people that do it because it is a valuable public service that also contributes economically to other conservation efforts.
Introducing enough wolves to make a difference is an elementary school solution to the problem. Why stop with wolves? England had Eurasian brown bears and even lions and hyenas in the distant past. Drop off loads of those too while you are at it. That would be way cooler.
Game Wardens in general are well known for being among the hardest-ass law enforcement officers there are. They don’t need to be everywhere at once because you don’t want to take the risk that one is watching you. They also have rights that other law enforcement does not like the ability to cross private property lines, basically stalk potential poachers and seize property on the spot.
The word on the street in my native Louisiana (“The Sportsman’s Paradise”) is that you would probably be better off killing your hunting mate than poaching a deer. You can get in mega-serious trouble for it. I have known people that went to literal prison for that and even illegal freshwater fishing. It is taken extremely seriously.
I got caught casually trout fishing on a whim in New Hampshire without a license once (I didn’t catch anything) and it was not a pleasant experience. The Game Warden told me he could take all my gear and even my vehicle if he wanted to but he would be nice this one time and just give me a $60 fine as long as I promised to never cross him again.
In short, you have no idea what you are talking about. Many states have a very strong hunting culture but there is an equal and strict respect for hunting laws if, for no other reason, the punishments can be draconian if you violate any hunting or firearms laws.
They currently are having a problem with too many deer in my home town on eastern Long Island. Not only are they a danger to drivers, but it’s Lyme Disease central, so there’s added reason. Plus they damage wine grapes, the main cash crop in the area.
Problem is no one has been able to find a good solution. Hunters were an option, but the area is densely populated so the risk of a stray bullet hitting someone is a big one. They did try a deer cull, but it worked out to cost about $1100 per deer.
There was some talk about neutering them, but that would cost as much or more and they could just die when you try to tranquilize them.
At this point, they’re still trying to find a realistic solution, though they do have an expanded hunting season.
I read this and knew immediately who posted it. You could come here out west, where deer hunting involves waking up early, climbing mountains, and sweating your ass off while your extremities freeze.