I was the manager of a grain elevator in the mid 70s, in Mississippi. The farmers there begged me to come and hunt their bean fields, and I did. They also spot lighted deer and gut shot them with 22 rim fires. I sure don’t condone that, but it happened.
I guess if those deer are costing you $10,000 or multiples of that, you have decisions to make.
When I was at Ft. Bragg, I was told of similar things happening in Northern North Carolina, in the peanut fields there. Depredation permits were easy to get, and required the landowner to leave the deer carcasses in the field. I never made it up there to see for myself, but I have no reason to disbelieve the feller who told me about it.
