We have too many deer here in my opinion. I think there have been - TopicsExpress

We have too many deer here in my opinion. I think there have been two or three times too many for the health of our environment for nearly twenty years. Deer numbers here are managed by the Dept. of Game and Inland Fisheries. This government agency is proud that it is self funded from sale of hunting and fishing licenses and other fees. What this means is that they have every incentive to allow the herd to be too large so that they sell plenty of these licenses and collect lots of fees. In a way, they are funded by the public who have to put up with the negative effecst of the overpopulation of deer. Perhaps the worst of these has been the scourge of Lyme disease, which we did not have before we had this overpopulation. I have this myself, and can tell you it is a steep price to pay. Perhaps the next most onerous burden on the public is the rate of collisions with deer on roads and highways. Virginia has the highest rate of such collisions in the country, with over 52,000 of them in a recent year. Then there is the cost to farmers and gardeners who have to erect 7 1/2 ft fences around anything they do not want to see eaten down to the ground and turned to deer poop. The overpopulation is not at all good for the deer either, and in hard years they suffer hunger and starvation. There is the awful possibility that chronic wasting disease could spread to our local herds, an illness that is much like mad cow disease, and renders the venison inedible in many peoples opinion. There are other problems that can come from a lot of folks coming to hunt and running around the countryside with guns. I had a good friend and close neighbor gunned down in his own field in the late 89 the late 80s. He left a widow and a couple of kids because some octogenarian hunter from a distant state thought he was a turkey and took a shot from the road. The guy went out and shot a deer the next day. These are the costs of the self funding of the Dept. o f Game and Inland Fisheries, and their management of the herd for the pleasure and benefit of deer hunters rather than good of the forest and society as a whole.