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hitssquad
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Road & Track has recently published an article talking about the cancerous deer over-population problem, and how it may partly be caused by suburban sprawl. Might the problem be solved by exterminating the North American deer population? Here are some excerpts from the article:
http://www.roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=26&article_id=1867&page_number=3
http://www.roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=26&article_id=1867&page_number=3
...lots of other people like me no longer hunt. Or, increasingly, never did. When I was a kid, nearly everybody on farms and in the small Wisconsin towns hunted, and I think it's safe to say that somebody knew where virtually every legal deer in the county could be found when hunting season arrived. There wasn't much sentimentality about deer, and they represented a lot of nearly free food (and sport) at a time when most family incomes were small.
Suburban sprawl is said to be another factor. Deer thrive in suburban settings, where they're protected in small woodlots but have lots of flowers, vegetable gardens, orchards, etc., to feed on. In his great book, Wildlife in North America, naturalist Peter Matthiessen says there are more deer now in North America than there were at the time of Daniel Boone.
And then there are the simple economics of tourism and game management. Reduce the herd too much and there's less revenue from out-of-state hunters. Fewer licenses, less beer and pizza sold in bars, fewer motel rooms occupied. It's an industry.
But, lately, it seems like an unregulated industry. Deer, cars, motorcycles — and my van — are not a happy mix, and the numbers seem badly out of skew. Living in the country as we do, I've begun to see deer as one of the most likely threats to my own longevity, in about the same category as heart disease or cancer. They're certainly no less lethal...
...maybe we need more predators...
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