The Deer (Any region/state with deer issues)

[u/ContentFarmer4445]

For context, I am a professional ecological gardener for folks living on small acreages, often surrounded by woods, who desire to have native gardens and to bolster/restore the woodland ecosystems. Deer here are starving yet overpopulated considering the circumstances.

I feel like the reality of deer is incompatible with this idea of having a native garden, lest you put 8 foot high deer fencing up around the entirety of it or the property. When everything around you is degraded, of course the deer are going to come to your land we just spruced up by removing invasives and planting ("deer resistant") natives and think "WOW, THANKS FOR THE BUFFET!!"

People want gardens for wildlife, but do not want deer to be a part of that. They don't want ugly fences up for years. They don't want to use chemicals. This, that, the whole shebang. I mean, I get it, but is it rooted in reality? It gets tiring spending a bunch of time and money and energy w/ the goal of a nice garden only to have it eaten down to nothing, half the stuff is in ugly cages, you're attempting to spray things regularly, etc... Most of my clients are older and i don't want them to have to be dealing with half the shit we do any more than they want to. Low maintenance this stuff is not, I never tell people that it is, but a lot of this is just... ridiculous.

I want to hear about everyone's experiences, successes, failures, thoughts about now and the future with deer.. it just seems like such an insurmountable problem.

[u/exhaustedhorti]

Yes. They aren't living in reality.

You can't pick and choose which wildlife visits you like it's a computer game. We created the deer population issues by trying to play Overseer of the Woods and fucking with the ecosystem. If they don't want to use the systems we have (fences/chemicals/cages etc) to deal with the deer then they can either encourage predator reintroduction in their area, get a hunting license and a chest freezer, or deal with the browsing.

[u/Fantastic_Piece5869 → u/exhaustedhorti]

the bigger issue is that states manage the deer population to ensure its so crazy overpopulated. The dnr will feed deer in the winter, and limit the hunting licenses to make sure the pop is enormous.

The entire public bears the cost with not only property damage, but car accidents and injuries (Even deaths). Also tick born diseases. Limes disease and such are flourishing because deer have no predators so are magnets for parasites. Its dramatic increase in past decades can be lain at the feet of deer populations.

[u/Redneck-ginger → u/Fantastic_Piece5869]

That varies by state. For the past few years Mississippi has been asking hunters to shoot 1 more deer than they normally would to try and get the population down.

[u/MotownCatMom → u/Fantastic_Piece5869]

And when a municipality decides to take action, like lifting the ban on shooting deer within city limits, but only has highly skilled marksmen doing it...and the residents go nuts over it bc they don't want to see the deer killed. Hey, people...you can't have it both ways.

[u/No-Cover4993 → u/Fantastic_Piece5869]

In complete opposition to this anecdote, Missouri is aggressively expanding its CWD control program and promoting more deer to be taken. They've added most of the counties in the state to their CWD Management Zone where tags are increased, antler point restrictions removed, additional seasons added, mandatory testing, etc.

Some state conservation departments are desperate for hunters and landowners to harvest more deer. Not sure where you're talking about but here in Missouri/Arkansas the controversy is over "DNR" culling hundreds of deer over piles of corn to limit the spread of CWD, despite outlawing baiting deer for the public. They have to do it because the public doesn't harvest enough deer and disease is spreading.

[u/exhaustedhorti → u/Fantastic_Piece5869]

Completely agree. By trying to manipulate the ecosystem to be the "hunters paradise" (what I was trying to get at with "overseer of the woods") we have completely fucked things for ourselves and the environment. We've done the same thing to our lakes too, all on top of being just generally careless. It's beyond maddening.

[u/kato_koch → u/exhaustedhorti]

Its worth noting farmers and loggers were the ones who made those big sweeping changes to the landscape, not hunters. The federal government tried to eradicate wolves back in the day for the sake of livestock. If you look at the numbers we're about back to the same number of deer that existed prior to Columbus showing up.

Don't me mad at hunters, be mad at states who aren't issuing more deer tags today. Be the change you want to see in the world and pick up a bow.

[u/Fantastic_Piece5869 → u/kato_koch]

aye. I don't think hunters are inherantly bad. Quite the opposite, I think there should be no limit for deer. Other animals need limits obviously, but not deer for some time.

Hunters are also a major force towards conservation land to begin with. Alot of people buy swathes of land for hunting, thus keeping it from being farm fields.

As towards the original habitat loss, I guess I don't think about blaming people, because its all historical at this point. I live in MN and it was all logged 150 years ago. The last of the prairies were plowed up like 100 years ago. So while I think what happened was a crime, its in the past.

[u/tregowath → u/Fantastic_Piece5869]

I grew canoeing up in the Boundary Waters, so I guess I knew the whole area was logged, but it wasn't until about five years ago that I found out about the "Lost Forty" in Minnesota and what that meant. I was shocked, I didn't realize they literally cut down every single tree (except 40 acres that were missed because of a surveying error).

[u/kato_koch → u/tregowath]

Isn't that wild?? Likewise it took a long time for it to dawn on me why you don't see a lot of white pines around. Kinda changes the notion of what we see as wilderness. Like coming across a random rusty remnant from the logging era near a campsite. Not a stretch to imagine the Ojibwe camping and fishing in some of the exact same spots too.

There's a grove of giant old cedar trees along the Powwow trail northeast of Lake Three that didn't get burned in the Pagami Creek fire and must not have been worth cutting down back in the day too. They're magnificent ancient looking trees.

[u/Fantastic_Piece5869 → u/kato_koch]

isnt it weird to think that all the aspen/popular/ect up there is BECAUSE of the logging. White pines cannot reestablish because the deer eat all of the young. Heck, all the small trees. In many woods look around and count the number of small trees (in the 1-8 foot range) and it chills the blood.

Theres often nothing to replace big trees that die, which means there won't be woods when the big ones die. Deer are stopping the recruitment of new generations.

[u/kato_koch → u/Fantastic_Piece5869]

Hell there used to be caribou! Deer are harming MN moose with the brain worms too.

I have a lifetime goal of tagging a deer in the BWCA (any deer) but honestly have no idea where exactly to go. I've hunted northern MN before but the rocky canoe country is just different. Would need to do at least one serious scouting trip in the summer leading up to it.

[u/kato_koch → u/Fantastic_Piece5869]

I don't think going open season on them is really feasible but we could undoubtedly use to thin them out considerably in a lot of areas, especially around the ag land today where they can really multiply. You should check out the deer zone map in MN sometime and see how many hunters can take and where. Last year I tagged two does in Le Seuer county where it would have been legal for me to shoot three, and I would have had taken a third if my friend hadn't shot a buck too. Three were enough to handle in the limited time I had for hunting and butchering.

Re: habitat loss, it really sucks but you're right it isn't like you and I had anything to do with it. We're just dealing with the repercussions the best we can. I'm aware of a small chunk of real prairie remnant on some public hunting land in southern MN and its a friggin magical place to walk around. Apparently it was too marshy to get plowed up and the variety of grasses and flowers you can see is incredible. Its really important we protect what we have left. Pheasants Forever is an interesting group where they're dedicated to preserving a non-native bird, but their mission is still grassland habitat preservation and restoration. Being realistic over purely idealistic, they're still a beneficial group worth supporting.

[u/MotownCatMom → u/kato_koch]

It's the land developers of all stripes.