We kill over 3-5 million deer each and every year in North America, with an unknown number of deer poached, close to 1,500,000 auto insurance claims filed, and the exact number of unrecovered, wounded deer estimated at a few million in addition.
Still, there are more deer in North America than at any time in known history-- whitetails were almost wiped out at the turn of the century, as you might know.
And STILL, there way too many deer than can be supported in some areas. I don't have the numbers of depredation kills, maybe someone else here does. There are no totals for estimated crop damage and forestry damage by deer country-wide, but in certain states there are: A 1997 study by the Pennsylvania State University pegged deer damage to agricultural crops at approximately $75 million. The NY Times pegged annual US nationwide damage at over $1 Billion.
With all these dead deer, all the kill and bury depredation, the massive herd kills in Wisconsin, the automobile insurance industry cries, the forestry industry complaints, the wanton waste from poaching, etc., etc.--------
Seems to me out of the 30 million deer in the US, there just might be enough to go around if we all work at it. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/help.gif" alt="" />
Back in 1950, Alabama had an estimated 3,000 deer. In 1960, bowhunters killed TWO deer in Alabama.
Kansas deer were considered extinct from 1904 until 1933-- NO deer season until 1965.
Today Alabama has an estimated 1.6 million ++++deer and an annual
archery harvest well over 40,000. There are some real brutes taken out of Kansas every year.
Just 80 or so years ago, when we had no concept of conservation, we had the US herd down to a couple of hundred thousand. Do I sound a bit less than impressed with our "rich history"? Maybe I am-- there were once 60 million Bison wandering the plains; but in our wisdom we got that down less than 1000 head by 1900. What blithering, drooling fools we were.
I'm glad deer are doing so well, who cares more about heathy game populations than a hunter? Since we now have better populations than at any time in our history, one can only hope we finally might be able to embrace the concept of sharing.
The great tradition was and is hunting, a tradition that died around the turn of the century because there was very little left to hunt. No such thing as a deer season in Kansas until 1965. Now that things are better, perhaps we can be as well?
