On Deer Hunting Facts

I realized in all the brouhaha in the last 48 hours, I neglected to address (in more than a comment) the most common arguments that those who like to stalk and kill sentient beings use to rationalize how they spend their free time. Fortunately for peace-loving people and wildlife who wish to remain alive, the number of hunters (and fishermen) in the United States is dwindling. (If you'd like to join a discussion on AOL about this story, go here.) And the dwindling has upset President Bush so much that he has issued an executive order to promote hunting.

I briefly alluded to a factsheet by Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc. about deer kills. Here it is, in its entirety (note that all emphasis is mine):

Deer Kills: A Bad Idea -- for Animals, Ecosystems, and People

Human beings do not have total control over all other species despite our species' huge impacts. The dramatically increased presence of white-tailed deer throughout the East Coast and elsewhere in the last couple of decades is mainly due to the transformation of the landscape brought about by our species -- suburban sprawl in particular. Altering the landscape brings about countless changes, some of them conspicuous, some of them at a microscopic level, some to our liking, some not. To reverse unwanted changes, we must again change the landscape.

Deer kills are essentially the same as deer hunting administered for many decades by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and other state wildlife agencies. Broadly speaking, hunting and suburban deer kills operate the same way:

(1)    Destroy sections of forest, providing abundant new low-growing vegetation - deer food.

(2)    Kill enough deer so that the population is noticeably smaller immediately afterwards but few enough so that surviving deer produce an overall increase in the local population.

(3)    Same as (2) the following year and for years to come as long as other factors remain the same.

The increase in the deer population after a sizeable kill that does not amount to an extermination is a response to the new landscape with more food per animal than the old landscape with more deer. That is why some places in the Philadelphia area where deer "management" consists of killing deer have had deer kills every year far beyond a decade.

The part of the landscape known as "edge" - forest edges or clearings - is where sunlight provides the most low-growing vegetation. That is where deer obtain most of their food. Edge may consist of backyards, gardens, golf courses, roadways, or Game Commission clearcuts - wherever the forest that used to stretch from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River is interrupted. Edge is deer food regardless of human intentions.

As Dr. Thomas Eveland said in his presentation Why Killing Deer Makes Poor Park Management, in Philadelphia on June 15, 1998, "A quick surge in a deer population can occur if hunting is implemented where it hasn't been before. In any event, if hunting is started, it'll have to continue." As Dr. Allen T. Rutberg wrote in "The Science of Deer Management: An Animal Welfare Perspective," "The most visible weakness in the assertion that hunting is necessary to control deer populations is that it has largely failed to do so over the last two decades. … Just because deer are being killed doesn't mean that deer populations are being controlled."

How should problems associated with deer be solved, then? The main thing is to recognize each of the typical complaints - Lyme disease, the eating of vegetation, and car-deer collisions - as human-caused problems that must be solved through changes in human practices. Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc. (RPA) is glad to provide details of the approaches briefly outlined here. Many items in the below reading list give details. RPA believes one consideration in important choices like home purchasing and car driving should always be what animals are likely to be encountered and whether one is prepared to co-exist humanely with them.

The American Lyme Disease Foundation does not recommend killing deer to prevent Lyme disease, and in some locations where all deer were removed, incidence of the disease did not diminish. Useful short-term approaches include avoiding walking through brush when outdoors and to check for the very small ticks that spread Lyme disease after time outdoors.

Car-deer collisions depend on how much and how fast human beings drive. They peak during hunting and mating seasons. Special signs and patrolling can help. Roadside reflectors that cause deer not to enter roadways when cars are approaching between dusk and dawn are highly effective if installed and maintained properly. See http://www.strieter-lite.com or phone 309-794-9800.

Fencing can keep deer away from vegetation people wish to protect, over large or small areas. Vendors with expert staff include Benner's Gardens - 800-753-4660 / http://www.bennersgardens.com; Master Gardening - 301-694-1238 / http://www.mastergardening.com; and Wildlife Control Technology - 800-235-0262 / http://www.wildlife-control.com. It also helps to plant species deer do not prefer to eat.

Large-scale, long-term solutions to which we all can contribute will be the most effective, the most humane, and the best for people and ecosystems. Developing a genuine ecological perspective rather that of the last few centuries based on convenience, domination, manipulation, exploitation, and short-term private gain will help bring about the changes that are needed for human beings to live in peace with white-tailed deer and other wildlife as well as with each other.

Solutions must include restoring forest to the extent possible, including where no deer currently exist. Changes that will help: minimizing needless farming such as intensive feed-crop production for animals not needed for the human diet; curtailing and reversing suburban sprawl, which contributes to economic problems, air and water pollution, the breakdown of families and communities, and significant urban problems from loss of the tax base; and ending construction of new roads. The New Urbanism is on the right track.

In terms of individual American homes, trees are the only plantings that appreciate in value. Learning to emphasize native tree species rather than water-, fuel-, and time-wasting non-native grass lawns can help restore forest where houses and other structures already exist. Eventually, whether houses remain or not, trees will form forest canopies that will slow or prevent the growth of huge deer-food supplies. As Virginia Scott Jenkins writes in her book The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession, "A new landscape is a cultural creation, and it remains to be seen whether the environmental movement in this country can enlist as potent a group of supporters and teachers for the twenty-first century as the lawn industry, the Garden Club of America, the U.S. Golf Association, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture did during the twentieth century."

Thomas Berry explains in his essay on education "The American College in the Ecological Age," that "the emerging ecological phase" of human existence must, in building on the "scientific-technological phase" that has made our society much of what it is today, correct the destruction brought about by that last phase, in which "[o]ur concern for the natural world is one of utility or as an object to satisfy intellectual curiosity or aesthetic feeling."

No matter how quickly deer may die when shot - and wounding is common notwithstanding claims to the contrary - it is never humane to kill an animal short of his or her natural lifespan except to end irremediable suffering. Almost all human enterprise as we know it today developed without responsible policies for animals. Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization, works to show influential people and institutions how to establish responsible policies for animals that are also responsible policies for people and ecosystems.

Recommended Reading

William S. Alverson, Walter Kuhlman, and Donald M. Waller, Wild Forests: Conservation Biology and Public Policy. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994.

Animal Protection Institute, Humane Ways To Live with Deer. Brochure provided by the Animal Protection Institute. http://www.api4animals.org or 800-348-7387.

Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988.

Michelle S. Byers, "Sprawl Boosts Risk of Lyme Disease." New Jersey Conservation Foundation, April 16, 2003, Volume XXXV, Number 14.

David Cantor, "Killing Deer No Solution to, and Deer Not the Cause of, Pennsylvania 'Deer Problem.'" Proceedings of the Conference on the Impact of Deer on the Biodiversity and Economy of the State of Pennsylvania, September 24-26, 1999. Available from Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc., free of charge: RPA4all@aol.com or 215-886-RPA1 (-7721). Also at http://pa.audubon.org/dcp.htm.

David J. Cantor, "Land Use, Not Deer, Is Villain." USA Today, January 2, 2001 (letter). Available from Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc., free of charge: RPA4all@aol.com or 215-886-RPA1 (-7721).

David J. Cantor, "White-Tailed Deer: The Phantom Menace." The Animals' Agenda, September/October, 1999. Available from Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc., free of charge: RPA4all@aol.com or 215-886-RPA1 (-7721).

Alicia Chang, "Study: Risk of Lyme Disease Increases as Forests Shrink." Associated Press, February 23, 2003.

Dr. Thomas Eveland, Living with Deer. Booklet provided by The Fund for Animals. www.fund.org or 301-585-2591.

John Hadidian, Guy R. Hodge and John W. Grandy, eds., Wild Neighbors: The Humane Approach to Living with Wildlife. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum, 1997.

Virginia Scott Jenkins, The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994.

James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

James Howard Kunstler, Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich, New World New Mind. New York: Doubleday, 1989.

Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1988.

Allen T. Rutberg, Ph.D., "The Science of Deer Management: An Animal Welfare Perspective," in William J. McShea, H. Brian Underwood, and John H. Rappole, eds., The Science of Overabundance: Deer Ecology and Population Management. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.

For more, see factsheet #5: Human Causes of "Too Many Deer:" What Decision-Makers and Residents Should Know about Organized Deer Kills.

Comments

[Terry Cumming]

Mary - some more reasons I am embarrassed to live in Canada's Yukon Territory (non-sled dog related):

Yukon NDP Press release: ‘No feed for animals, but lots of money for outside consultant’
http://www.ndpcaucusyukon.ca/news/pdfs/2005-03-08%20NDP%20Release.pdf

Yukon NDP Press release: ‘Public deserves an explanation for stealthy reindeer slaughter’ – “Cows who had given birth just hours before were running around desperately bawling for their calves. At least one calf was believed to have been trampled in the confusion.”
http://www.ndpcaucusyukon.ca/news/pdfs/2005-05-21%20NDP%20Release.pdf

Whitehorse Star: ‘Slaughtered reindeer deserved dignity: NDP’
http://www.whitehorsestar.com/auth.php?r=38183

Whitehorse Star: ‘Reindeer slaughter called ‘most distressing’
http://www.whitehorsestar.com/auth.php?r=38164

Whitehorse Star: ‘Fight over reindeer still flourishing’ – “Fifty-two were shot and four calves bludgeoned to death”
http://www.whitehorsestar.com/auth.php?r=40411

2007/2008 Yukon Budget Highlights: “A Pristine Environment - $105,000 apprenticeship training for big game guiding and horse wrangling”
http://www.gov.yk.ca/news/2007/07-072.html

Kluane First Nation makes blood money off Kluane National Park sheep hunt lottery
http://www.rroutfitters.ca/html/kfn.html

National Post: ‘U.S. banker bags ram at $90K a horn’
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=06196843-22e3-4ea9-a034-df95e1fa581d&k=88368

CBC North: ‘Lottery-winning hunter braves storms to bag sheep’
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2006/08/23/north-sheep-kluane.html

The Yukon is a ‘tourist trap’ in more ways than one!
http://www.gov.yk.ca/news/2006/06-045.html

Mary - thank you for sharing with us the treasures of 'your beautiful (animal person) mind'

[Mary Martin]

Terry,

I JUST got through all of the articles and I was supposed to go out this evening to dinner and I'm so upset that I can't even muster enough enthusiasm to put on a happy face. Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever make a dent in all of the violence and speciesism and lust for power.

One thing's for sure, we have GOT to stop breeding animals.

Thank you too for sharing.

[Terry Cumming]

Mary - you hit the nail right on the head with the need to stop breeding animals, which is where so much animal suffering stems from. Here are a couple more related links:

Ruby Range Outfitters Yukon - Mountain caribou hunt video and sheep hunt photos:
http://www.rroutfitters.ca/html/results.html

Northern Splendor Reindeer Farm website:
http://www.yukonweb.com/business/reindeer.htmld/

[Terry Cumming]

I should have noted in the previous post that the Northern Splendor Reindeer Farm is no longer operating since the reindeer herd was massacred in May, 2005 - no animals are kept, the website and the information on it is very out of date.

[Mike Grieco]

**IN MEMORY of the NORTHERN SPLENDOR REINDEER**
Kohl,lucy,Herlynn,Lanena,Kaymintigo,Tekamah,Marron,
Shanette,Tielzora,Deya,Klarjaza,Knika,Kruger,Toyak,
Muffin,Key-Ricket,Morton,Dolen,Dundee,Calista,Kohdana,
Elmo,Flint,Kirvin,Reylynn,Largo,Kaymint,Merienet,Terrell,
Norgrid,Kedra,Arcadia,Keganie,Misty,Rissa,Ruskin,
Glory,Kelet,Leasha,Cheska,Laurantha,Lazzora,Laurisa,
Tarkio,Kreasha,Latesha,That's Kizzy,Miracle,Myla-Bell,
Paynor,Olney,Rosita,Aspen,Fly-En-Cricket,Janine,Valentine,
Lewis,Dicey Call,Teeka
** Rest in Peace...**
The Massacre of May 21,2005!!

*Such an 'atrocity' could only take place on a beautiful day in May by a "disease" called man.The reindeer were chased around in a enclosure and shot to death and four calves were bludgeoned to death.This took over 20 hours by this group of men.WHAT CENTURY ARE WE IN? Also Canada's main police force,the R.C.M.P was on high alert to STOP any 'Animal Rights' activist from getting involved in helping the Reindeer (it is crime to help another creature)...there is more to this sad story,but i too would like to smile. Enough for now.

The dept this group of "wildlife experts" represent,went on record on the radio justifying a "wild" deer hunt based on road kill. Ya really,no joke.
And of course they had other excuses, called "wildlife management".
"Let the public decide what kind of logic is at work here.I am sure the word pretzel will surface".-Kevin Sinclair
*Well, even on the cloudiest/darkest days,we must remember that the sun will appear again to *SHINE-ON* :) :) :)

[Terry Cumming]

Found this page tonight about Yukon bighorn sheep hunts. You have to scroll down a bit to read the postings and get an inkling of the mindset of these intrepid hunters. I should also mention that Kluane First Nation representatives attend the FNAWS (Foundation for North American Wild Sheep) conventions bearing photos of the menu of potential victims for the lucky sheep hunt auction winner for the Kluane National Park hunt - a sad statement that native people would sink so low to sell their souls for $170,000 U.S., and to 'sell out' sentient beings.

Bowsite.com thread:
http://forums.bowsite.com/TF/bgforums/thread.cfm?threadid=340106&messages=79&forum=12

FNAWS website:
http://www.fnaws.org/index.html

[KFN Member]

Your statement "a sad statement that native people would sink so low to sell their souls for $170,000 U.S., and to 'sell out' sentient beings"

You should get all the facts first prior to making these types of statements. For your information all the funds that are generated through this hunt goes to KFN Sheep Conservation and Preservation fund and so that we can do further studies for the government.

You have no idea want happen to our ancestors with the establishment of the Kluane Game Sanctuary by the government. Our people got kicked out of their own home lands to stop living off the land and to live off hamburger meat and ultimately starvation so prior to making these kinds of statements on your website you need to get your facts straight! The only fact that should be stated is First Nation people do not need education from outsiders like you on how to respect the land and animals!

[Barbara & Verne Smith]

Thank you for caring. I have presented to the Lower Makefield Township board all the scientific research to oppose the deer kill they propose in our residential township and they still want to pursue it. One must ask why are they willing to ignore all the scientific data, the liability issues, the fact that there is NO scientific proof there is an overabundance of deer here? I have presented over and over again at the township meetings and we submitted a resource binder of all the non-lethal options available. In addition I found them $20,000.00 in grant money to use non-lethal options and they still won't consider it. We have refuted and critique the "expert" report they retained, Bryon Shissler for $14,000.00 of taxpayers money and they still want to pursue this slaughter. We have proposed a Deer Management Task Force to study the issues and make suggestions that will be more effective, long-term and humane. Why are they stuck in this killing paradigm? Why does the group mentality of the board trump ALL the facts and logic of what is right? You do not have to go very far to understand why violence pervades our domain--it is in our own backyard! It reminds me of the children's story , "The Emperor's New Clothes." Why is everyone staring at the problem with hunting and not saying, "This is wrong?" What more can we do?

[Beaelliott]

It is wrong. And sadly, the most deplorable genre of hunting has got to be "canned hunts", yet in Maine "Canned hunting wins on economic points".

"While some lawmakers questioned the "humane-ness" of allowing people to shoot stocked deer, elk, bison and wild boar in enclosed areas, committee members also acknowledged hunting preserves provide jobs and spin-off revenue for farmers who breed and raise the animals, buy hay and the like.

House Chairwoman Rep. Wendy Pieh, D-Bremen, said the free market, not the Legislature, can decide whether shooting animals in hunting preserves is sport and whether it's tasteful."

It was voted on 13-0
http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/view/columns/6125425.html

Literally blood money.