EnviroLink Forum

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... c=y&page=1

A little peek into some aspects of deer birth-control...

http://www.hcn.org/issues/347/17030

Really good article...

Interesting comments by Jay Kirkpatrick, eh?

“This is not about "healthy environment" to "benefit" the animals its to "benefit" the wildlife killing community and thus with the abundance of deer causing high deer vehicle accidents. …”

Putting aside the question whether hunting is done for the benefit of the animals-habitat or to the benefit of the killing community of hunters, the questions still remains:

What is better for the deer and habitat/environment and other animals that depend on the same habitat? More forage (nutrition) available per deer, healthier does and higher reproductive success with healthier fawns, or less nutritious forage, unhealthier does with fewer struggling fawns? The ability to stay alive longer with malnutrition and disease or be killed by human-induced acute death (with less suffering than torn and eaten alive) method?

Some people say more happy (more healthy and with more nutritious feed) deer is better, even if overall more will be killed, than fewer unhappy unhealthy deer struggling to survive and then dying in painful ways (nature's way of killing over time). Some people say because numerically more ‘happy’/healthy deer will be killed it’s a bad thing.

“Deer can thrive well the way nature intented not with mass killing …”

But, the nature of Nature has changed for deer since we arrived and increased our population numbers and our land-use activities. With a severe reduction in nonhuman animal predators and the explosive growth in “edge” areas bordering deer’s woodland habitat, many deer are now free from the constraints of nature, particularly the predator-prey relation which kept deer numbers in check and in relative good health and so their habitat in good health as well. Acute mortality factors have drastically disappeared. Largely only chronic death methods exist to keep deer in check. Sometimes nature does manage to kill off deer in time and remaining deer can reproduce with strong progeny and there’s time enough for habitat to restore itself to its healthful state. But, there are also examples where overbrowsing has taken place and whole layers of habitat obliterated, with a cascading effect on other animals and the deer populations not coming back to thrive. Kaibab plateau’s mule deer debacle, where hunting was banned and predators all but wiped out, is often used as a textbook example. In many land spaces where predators are few deer populations can get incredibly high, because nature can’t reduce the deer fast enough without predators or a really bad winter/drought, and wildlife management doesn’t want to take the risk of letting nature take its course any longer in case habitat can’t replenish itself or deer numbers get too dangerously low.

“and using CRE to produce more deer with "high quality" food (which is also not "natural" part of wildlife) just so you can "produce" more deer for killing.”

Why is high quality food not a natural part of wildlife? By high quality food I mean thriving and plentiful natural deer food, like browse (oak leaves and acorns, hawthorns, yaupon, wild cherry and plum and grape, dogwood, elm, honeysuckle, walnut, greenbriar, etc.), forbs (partridge pea, tickclovers, clover, wild onions, wild lettuce, snoutbean, etc.) and grasses (wintergrass, sedges, rushes, wild rye, rushes, etc). I’m referring to the trees, shrubs, vines and some grasses that are part of the deer’s home range habitat and what they need for nutrition and health. I’m not referring to cultivated corn and soya beans, nor even deer management purpose-planted food plots.

When food is plentiful and of quality one is, I think, more likely to have more deer, anyway.

“There is nothing "caring" about growing deer for sports killing leaving thousands wounded and crippled every year. In Wisconsin in 2008 hunters did not recover 68,000 wounded deer? How about the other hunting states how many did they leave behind??”

Even out of 453,000 deer killed 68,000 wounded and not recovered is too much. . I don’t know the numbers and I don’t know how much is from unethical hunting practice (i.e., careless aims and laziness in tracking a shot deer). My understanding is that every hunter has a moral obligation to track a wounded animal s/he has hit as far as s/he reasonably can. But, there are times when one has genuinely exhausted all reasonable possibilities. Unrecovered wounded deer has been a problem in my state, too. Since 1997 we’ve had the practice of leashed dog trackers, a group of people who hold a license to search for wounded big game with the aide of a leashed dog. Hunters are urged to call upon a tracker (and game warden needs to be called and landowner permission if needed) sooner than later when they can’t find a deer they’ve hit. I have not followed up to find out whether the use of leashed dogs has been significantly beneficial.

“Plus remember the human lives lost from deer vehicle accidents. Its better not for the deer to be produced for hunting opporutunities and keep the number of deer low with IC deer birth control and to stop the food plots and lethal killing.”

Deer populations will grow anyway until they crash, either by mother nature or by human hunting. As they grow, deer-vehicle accidents will occur. My concern is that, given the current situation of human encroachment and our elimination or drastic reduction in nonhuman animal predators, if mother nature continues to control deer populations, there’s sure possibility that in some areas deer populations will crash so low where it can’t recover with habitat so destroyed that it can’t recover. So we need to ask ourselves do we want healthy habitat and deer in perpetuity, which means human intervention through hunting (a management tool that can cause deer overabundance, but its not the only factor in deer population increases – and hunting can also cause drastic decreases in deer, sometimes when a hunting program is really bad it can cause deer underpopulation to the point of putting future deer pop in jeapardy) or do we risk what mother nature throws at deer with the possibility of not having a deer population. Again, though possible for confined herds, existing IC fertility control methods are way too stressful on larger free-roaming deer, and too many logistical, monetary, and medical/safety problems including problems of effectiveness (too effective leading to too few deer that can reproduce and smaller gene pool. Or, under effective, where not enough deer receive the contraceptive, or where deer pass on resistance to IC to their offspring). IC birth control may be a non-lethal alternative, but not existing methods.

Again, hunting, depending on how it is used by game management dept, can produce both deer overpopulation or deer underpopulation.

“People like you make all the excuses that deer are going to die this "horrible death" unless sports wildlife killers are there to kill them "ethically" which we all know that is the biggest crock.”

Most hunter kills I assume (from reading hunting literature, and based on your Wisconsin link and other stats I've seen) are ethically done, in the sense of relatively instantaneous death. That is not to diminish your claim (the Wisconsin figure you gave) that there are unacceptable levels of unethical deaths committed by certain hunting practices.

“I have never heard so much drivel.”

So you don’t think human actions (minus hunting) have impacted the deer-predator-habitat dynamics? In the way I described (eliminating predators and land-use that free the deer to eat more and produce more and natural constraints are dominantly chronic mortality factors rather than acute sources)? Or maybe you do, but reckon we should leave it for mother nature to sort out. I’m not sure that mother nature can sort it adequately while we are such a dominant/dominating species and because we have removed such an important element of nature, that of predation.

“Plus man is no "natural predator" in the animals kingdom you are a bunch of widllife serial killing bafoons (read my back comments already repeated about the store bought "predators").

I never said man is a ““natural predator” in the animal kingdom.” I said we’ve left an ecological niche by, among other things, ousting nonhuman animal predators who were the main source of acute mortality of deer. As such, we have a responsibility to fill in that niche, by human predation – using hunting to simulate predator-prey relationship. Or, by reintroducing nonhuman animal predators, which is not likely since we reduced or eliminated them for human safety in the first place. I never said hunting was the perfect predation tool (i.e., working the same as nonhuman animal predation), only that it was the best we have.

There are many pages - I’ll keep reading, but if possible please can you copy/paste where you talked about “predators” to help me out.

“Plus I can see my questions I have given has never been answered yet, instead just bunch of pointless babbling.”

What questions were those, sorry, can you copy/paste them … I won't say I can answer them, but I'd be interested to read them and ponder ...

I second what reeves wrote about the deer population no longer being "naturally" controlled and kept healthy through predators picking off old and diseased or weak animals and therefore increasing in numbers, in part also through our creating feeding opportunites through human activities, from gardens to agricultural practices.

What may another consequence of increasing deer populations (and not often considered) is highlighted in a 2005 article in Science (vol 307, 920-922, 2005) by McGraw and Furedi, "Deer browsing and population viability of a forest understory plant"

Abstract:
American ginseng is the premier medicinal plant harvested from the wild in the United States. In this study, seven populations of ginseng plants were censused every 3 weeks during the growing season over 5 years to monitor deer browse and harvest and to project population growth and viability. The minimum viable population size was [~]800 plants, a value greater than that of all populations currently being monitored. When simulated deer browsing rates were reduced 50% or more, population viability rose sharply. Without more effective deer population control, ginseng and many other valuable understory herbs are likely to become extinct in the coming century.

So we don't do anything about those lovely doe-eyed does and lose plant diversity....

With respect to another argument earlier (why don't those anti-hunters ever look at the scientific literature before opening their rather big mouths? ): An article by Kong et al (J. Neurosci. 25, 7495-7499, 2005) looked at CWD transmission risk "Chronic wasting disease of elk: Transmissibility to humans examined by transgenic mouse models"
Abstract:
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), a prion disease affecting free-ranging and captive cervids (deer and elk), is widespread in the United States and parts of Canada. The large cervid population, the popularity of venison consumption, and the apparent spread of the CWD epidemic are likely resulting in increased human exposure to CWD in the United States. Whether CWD is transmissible to humans, as has been shown for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (the prion disease of cattle), is unknown. We generated transgenic mice expressing the elk or human prion protein (PrP) in a PrP-null background. After intracerebral inoculation with elk CWD prion, two lines of "humanized" transgenic mice that are susceptible to human prions failed to develop the hallmarks of prion diseases after >657 and >756 d, respectively, whereas the "cervidized" transgenic mice became infected after 118-142 d. These data indicate that there is a substantial species barrier for transmission of elk CWD to humans.

Given that consumption of venison is also not nearly as widespread as that of beef in the UK (and even there, the frequency of infections has turned out to be low) the risk seems small, indeed.

CarolineTC, you also said: "This is not about "healthy environment" to "benefit" the animals" its to "benefit" the wildlife killing community and thus with the abundance of the deer."" I'm wondering if this may be a contradiction: Hunters can't get an abundance of deer that will also be edible (nondiseased) deer meat without having healthy animals, which are healthy because of a healthy environment or iow a healthy animal-habitat ratio. When deer are left to their nature's own to alter their reproductive cycles, these deer are usually diseased and malnourished or stressed in other ways, so not quality deer (and hence, embryos are reabsorbed or aborted or does produce fewer fawns). Hunting policies have to balance between quality-deer numbers and optimal habitat for there to be enough quality deer for next hunting season. So, benefit to animals/environment and benefit to hunters in terms of an abundance of deer and quality deer meat go hand in hand.

"Can someone still provide me the answer as to why "deer management" website always uses the words pertaining to "adding" deer if its about "reduction" because so far an answer that should be very simple was never given."

I'll answer based on what I have understood about wildlife management and its use of hunting: Deer management is about both adding deer and reduction. It depends what one is being added and reduced. The act of hunting itself results in a reduction of existing deer numbers at the time. Depending on what deer are being targeted, per deer management policy, one can reduce or add bucks, or one can reduce or add does, or add/reduce the number of born fawns of one or other gender or both. Both together, reducing and adding, they constitute keeping the numbers overall in check.

"Come now if its about "reduction" we should not be seeing words such as "produce" , "provide", "fawn recruits", "fawn crops", "restoration " (of deer that is), "kill varmints that are a threat to the "recruits", "provide for millions of hunters every year" etc etc etc. I have posted the same question at least 3 times already and everyone been dancing around it. Here I will give it to you again …"

Terms such as "produce" , "provide", "fawn recruits", "fawn crops" and deer "restoration " may show that there has been a reduction or addition of certain deer as a result of either previous deer management plans, and/or a heavy winter or drought, and/or other factors. The terms also can entail reducing and/or adding certain deer for the next or existing hunting strategy. Again, hunting as a management tool is about the continuation of sustainable deer populations that can survive within the limitations of their habitat. This requires reducing numbers, reducing/maintaining/adding/restoring some deer age/gender and reducing/maintaining/adding other deer of particular age/gender.

""Some people disagree with shooting antlerless deer; they reason that protecting them -- thus maintaining a maximum breeding base -- will assure large numbers of antlered bucks because terrific numbers of deer will be born each year and button bucks wouldn't be harvested. "PA. Game Commission "

There's a limit to which resisting shooting female deer can assure a maximum breeding base and larger numbers of antlered bucks due to increased numbers of deer born each year. Deer management programs that don't incorporate commensurate antlerless harvests will promote too much growth within the herd. Long-term resistance to shooting antlerless deer and so long-term application of hunting just antlered bucks and not harvesting other bucks could lead to increased number of deer and decreased amount of forage, which leads to underdeveloped antlers in males and eventually low reproductive rates among females, which all overtime will leads to weaker deer and mass die-offs, and in the end no quality specimen deer to hunt = end of hunting. Would hunters jeopardize their sport, and would game managers advocate less than maintaining wildlife populations at levels consistent with the quality of the overall ecosystems?

""Thus, late fall up to early winter is very important for deer herd managers to impact and influence fawn production, so make sure the plant communities on your property is properly managed deer habitat. " Deer Hunting and Management TREATMENT"

One needs to know why this is being done to influence fawn production. Is fawn production so low? Imo, this could take place in areas where there aren't enough hunters to make hunting a viable management tool and where deer populations are so reduced or unhealthy in terms of quality deer that mother nature is unable to restore numbers and health. Again, one doesn't want too many fawns produced as it can end hunting altogether.

""Historically in all states, including West Virginia, hunting regulation have been restrictive during the period of deer restoration with mainly short buck-only season to protect does and encourage deer population growth." Fundamentals of Deer Management W. VA."

Sounds logical. Restricting deer hunting in order for the deer population to come back. A number of factors may have contributed to the reduction of deer (winter mortality, urban sprawl, posted land, not enough hunters, deer management policies) that now requires deer restoration, or increasing deer by restricting antlerless hunts. Also, see above on limits of antlerless shoots.

"Here is more that I have collected and even the "carrying capacity" chart I found on QDM website talks about "low recruitment" when its "above carrying capacity". Wow, why would they even consider "recruitment" at all if its about deer herd "reduction" because of Deer Vehicle Accident injuries and death and deer overpopulation , "starvation" etc.? "

Again, different factors besides or including hunting policies can result in "above carrying capacity" (a couple of mild winters, not enough hunters, deer management programs). Hunting, as with predation, is always ongoing. Deer populations are dynamic, not static. See comment at the beginning of post in re adding and reducing deer.

"So many left wounded and crippled and all you do is make excuses and lies and your comment are a broken record the same old, same old of "ethically kill" that I hear from other wildlife serial killers."

I never said that wounding and crippling deer and not recovering them (ending their misery) were "ethical" or "ethical kill[s]."

"Here is a story of a boy who hit wounded deer over the head with a tree limb to "end the suffering"

http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article ... with-stick"

Is this standard hunting practice? I rather doubt it. So, I'm not sure what your point is.

" Yup lots of "ethical" hunters out all right. There is something terribly wrong with humans who enjoy killing and call it "sports" so the words "ethic" will never fit into what these sports wildlife killers do."

One can enjoy hunting and make an ethical kill at the same time. Killing animals, respecting animals and enjoying the process of procuring one's own food are not mutually exclusive. This may be difficult to behold for some people who have relinquished their responsibility to others to procure their animal food, choosing to either give up the meat they once indulged in, or eating meat slaughtered on their behalf out of sight, out of mind.

""Quality meat" lol it's nothing about that unless you are going to eat the antler. All I read about is how to create large antlered deer."

From what I've heard in the way of wanton waste laws and Hunters Feeding the Hungry programs and all that hunters put their hunted meat in their freezers, it's very much about quality meat as well as the large antlers.

" plus who helped spread CWD? … … "

The rest about CWD and other diseases spread from supplement feeding and baiting (which, I admit, I have not studied up on) still doesn't negate that its about quality meat. I doubt CWD was intentional on the part of management planning and hunting in order to contaminate meat.

Questions to any who care to answer:

A)Are all areas where Caroline's 'sport' hunting takes place experiencing high-deer populations. Please note the word "ALL".

B) if there are areas with such hunting and WITHOUT a over-population of deer; can we then say such hunting is, in fact, working?

My point:
Has Caroline proven hunting increases deer-populations? I'm not convinced she has yet. But that's just me. Anyone else?

Note to Caroline: No comments about Jay Kirkpatrick's views on hunting? That's cool....The article's there for all to read....

2nd note, to any interested;
The largest deer herd I've found to had birth control practiced upon it is 'more then 200'.
Yep, that's all.
There may be bigger herds so treated, but I couldn't find any info therein. Perhaps other's inclined to find such can help us...

http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/outd ... dents2.htm

Interesting article.

http://mainehuntingtoday.com/bbb/2009/0 ... t-problem/

A peek at how Maine's doing....