From an environmental and a deer population standpoint, this is the worst thing that anyone could do. I've had a lot of experience in my past hometown with extreme deer problems. We brought in a lot of experts to help educate us and come up with the best population control methodologies.
It turns out that deer will increase their population exponentially (start having twins and triplets) if the food source is good. All of the great shrubs and plants that we bring into formally rural areas increases their population. The increased numbers then start to wreak havoc on the complete understory of any wooded areas. This has a major impact on wildlife as it destroys the habitat and food source for all of the smaller animals and many birds. It also destroys all of the new growth trees that are needed to eventually replace the old growth trees that age out, get damaged or destroyed, cut down, etc. If the deer are left alone to multiply we will more rapidly deforest our countryside. The only sure fire way of controlling the population is hunting. Contraceptives, etc. do not work. We had to bring in hunters and arrange for private property owners to allow hunting on their property (there were a lot of large parcels of land). Our hunters all ate their kill so it wasn't only for sport (just like I still eat other forms of meat so I can't complain). One year our neighbor and his friends took down 40 deer in one season from the wooded area across the street from our house. Deer stay within about one mile of their territory so one square mile can't possible handle i.e. feed well over 40 deer!
The only problem with most hunters is that they want the trophy stags. They are not the ones having all of the babies. The only way to do real population control is to make sure that the majority of deer hunted are the does.
-2 1. sunlee commented 15 years ago on video Deer for breakfast anyone?
It turns out that deer will increase their population exponentially (start having twins and triplets) if the food source is good. All of the great shrubs and plants that we bring into formally rural areas increases their population. The increased numbers then start to wreak havoc on the complete understory of any wooded areas. This has a major impact on wildlife as it destroys the habitat and food source for all of the smaller animals and many birds. It also destroys all of the new growth trees that are needed to eventually replace the old growth trees that age out, get damaged or destroyed, cut down, etc. If the deer are left alone to multiply we will more rapidly deforest our countryside. The only sure fire way of controlling the population is hunting. Contraceptives, etc. do not work. We had to bring in hunters and arrange for private property owners to allow hunting on their property (there were a lot of large parcels of land). Our hunters all ate their kill so it wasn't only for sport (just like I still eat other forms of meat so I can't complain). One year our neighbor and his friends took down 40 deer in one season from the wooded area across the street from our house. Deer stay within about one mile of their territory so one square mile can't possible handle i.e. feed well over 40 deer!
The only problem with most hunters is that they want the trophy stags. They are not the ones having all of the babies. The only way to do real population control is to make sure that the majority of deer hunted are the does.