Memorial Day weekend two more were hit by cars around this half section. That makes 11 now since the beginning of the year. Add the four I killed last fall and that's fifteen, a lotta damn deer for half a section of land. I still haven't seen the two big does with their four fawns. Those deer will be ten deer this fall and eighteen next year If I do nothing and the cars don't get 'em. To the best of my knowledge, there are at least an additional 3 big adult does likely to twin this spring and a couple of yearlings likely to produce single fawns. Add to them an equal number of bucks and it's obvious that this half section is still grossly overpopulated.
Doing nothing is not really an option. Killing bucks is not an option, even if I could bait them onto a single acre with a massive corn pile, use a silencer, use an accurate CF rifle and hired some help to process them I couldn't kill all the bucks and stop the reproduction. Even stopping the reproduction completely cold would still leave an overpopulation. I am the only person hunting then in this half section. I think it's very probable I am the only person hunting them within a half mile in any direction of the boundaries.
If I want a garden and flower beds my only option is killing all the big does I can and some of the yearling does too. I can really only reliably kill and process four deer. This is a neighborhood of five or so acre sites, so gun hunting is almost out of the question, every home within 500 feet must give permission for you to shoot. I am lucky to have a wife who'll sit with me while I whack Bambi and a neighbor who is tired of building secure exclosures every time he wants to plant anything who'll do the same.
Down in the metro deer zone where unlimited antlerless tags are available, most of the LGUs are PAYING people to kill and haul away deer. The only figure I have heard is $300/ deer. Seems like a lot of money/deer to me, but I have never tried to verify the number.
Even with something like 500,000 deer hunters in this state, not killing does is just not an option to control deer numbers. It takes severe winters, wolves, disease, cars and hunters all working together. Oddly, MNDNR is being forced to produce a comprehensive plan to manage deer mainly by aperioditic low population levels in specific areas by hunters. When a high success percentage is 40% and 20% is a lot more common, managing deer for them is likely to be neither successful nor reliable at any level because adverse reports of population do not move hunters to where the deer are readily available. They just don't hunt for a year or two or three.
Last edited by MILES58; 05/31/16.
