Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind (42 page)

Several generations of deer hunters, as well as nonhunters who simply enjoyed seeing deer everywhere, had watched deer numbers soar under buck-only seasons, and it had become a deep-seated article of faith that killing female deer would destroy a deer population. Now they were being told that this belief was wrong, that deer couldn’t be allowed to increase forever, and that for the good of the habitat and the future of the deer, the population increase had to be halted.

The majority of them didn’t buy it. In state after state, the debate became extraordinarily rancorous. Wildlife biologists were derided as “college boys who don’t know anything that didn’t come out of a textbook”—and were often called a great deal worse. There were angry mass meetings that had many of the trappings of a lynch-mob mentality, and indeed, at least one prominent deer biologist was hanged in effigy!

Nonetheless, by fits and starts, one state after another initiated antlerless deer seasons to keep deer in balance with their habitat. Despite the predictions of disaster from opponents, this system of management soon proved itself. Deer were larger and healthier, while deer populations remained at a relatively high, yet stable, level. In time, the screaming opposition to deer management first died to a dull roar, then to an undercurrent of muttering, and finally changed to support by all but a diehard cadre of hunters and deer watchers.

At the risk of seeming chauvinistic, I’d again like to cite Vermont as something of a microcosm of the deer wars. Progress came late to Vermont, and it was the very last state to adopt regular antlerless deer seasons. By the 1960s, the critical winter food supply was terribly overbrowsed. According to every measure of deer health—weight, antler development, and reproductive rate— Vermont’s deer were in abysmal and steadily deteriorating physical condition.

Despite the resounding success of other states’ deer management programs, there was fierce opposition to any antlerless deer hunting from sportsmen and dedicated deer watchers, who could drive around on a summer evening and count a hundred or more deer grazing in fields.

The legislature, over strong protests, finally allowed the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department to hold a few sporadic and severely limited antlerless deer seasons, but these were too little and too late. At an estimated 250,000— nearly twice what the land could sustain on a permanent basis—the state’s deer herd was a disaster in the making, and supporters of the status quo were living in a fool’s paradise.

The crash, which wildlife biologists had predicted for a number of years, finally arrived in spectacular fashion. During the severe winters of 1969 and 1970, an estimated 100,000 deer died, most of them slowly and painfully from the effects of malnutrition. No matter—the crash was blamed on the limited antlerless deer seasons which had been held, and the legislature hastily returned the state to bucks-only seasons.

This was precisely the wrong approach, and after nearly another decade, the deer population actually declined still further. Finally, in response to harsh criticism, legislators tumbled over one another in their eagerness to toss this political hot potato to the Fish and Wildlife Department.

What followed was a bitter pill, but one that had to be swallowed. The department initiated a series of seasons designed to cut the deer population well
below
the normal carrying capacity of the winter range and hold it there, thus allowing winter food supplies to regenerate.

Predictably, this policy created a great deal of anger and criticism, but the department held firm. Then, once winter food supplies were again in good shape, the deer herd was allowed to increase slowly until it was at or near what the winter range could sustain. Now, as in other states, scientific deer management—including antlerless deer hunting—enjoys widespread support in Vermont.

Wolves and cougars were originally the predators that kept deer numbers in balance with their habitat. When those two predators were for all practical purposes eliminated, humans became the only remaining significant control over whitetail numbers. As already indicated, modern wildlife managers, by the use of controlled antlerless deer seasons, have largely been able to keep deer numbers at or just below the carrying capacity of their habitat.

There are a few exceptions, though. The major ones are suburbs, the fringes and less densely settled parts of urban areas, and places that are isolated either physically or by some special category of ownership. These latter include such things as islands and special reserves of one sort or another.

At this point the “Bambi Syndrome,” dreaded by biologists and anyone else who believes in wildlife management based on science rather than emotion, comes into play. A brief digression is warranted to explain this phenomenon. The original
Bambi
was a book written in German by Felix Salten. Although anthropomorphic, it is a rather dark, philosophical allegory that in many ways accurately portrays the many hazards facing European roe deer in the wild.

Evidently intended as a book for adults,
Bambi
became popular with children, especially after its translation into English in 1928. Then Walt Disney, taking considerable liberties with the original tale, made
Bambi
into an immensely popular feature-length cartoon of monumentally anthropomorphic proportions. In his hands, wild creatures precisely fitted the description that I used to see on bumper stickers: “Animals are just little people in fur coats.” The results of this are all too evident to this day, for in a recent Internet visit to the movie version of
Bambi,
I found an attached review by a sixteen-year-old boy who said that the movie teaches us how destructive hunting is.

To return to the problem of restricted areas, be they suburbs, islands, or special reserves, the subject of whitetail overpopulation and the control thereof is often highly contentious because of the Bambi Syndrome. Many inhabitants of these areas simply can’t bear the thought of a deer being killed by humans—thereby ignoring the unpleasant facts of death by malnutrition, parasites, disease, and other forms of mortality that especially afflict overpopulated deer.

In such areas, the issue of deer control often pits neighbor against neighbor in rancorous disputes and strains the bonds of friendship to the breaking point. As gardens are ruined, expensive shrubbery consumed, and landscaping devastated by a hungry horde of deer, angry homeowners often liken them to outsized rats! The steady rise of expensive collisions between deer and automobiles further exacerbates the situation, and as Lyme disease (transmitted to humans by deer ticks) increases, excess numbers of whitetails become a health concern as well.

Eventually in such situations, pressure increases dramatically for control of the deer by those who are fed up with the problem. At that point other residents rush to defend the deer, and what has at heart been a biological problem now becomes a very sticky sociological one, with angry people on both sides of the issue.

Other than letting starvation and disease decimate the deer, there are really only three methods of dealing with whitetail overpopulation in limited areas: carefully regulated public hunting; hiring professional marksmen; and trapping live deer and transporting them elsewhere (a number of attempts at trapping or tranquilizing deer and sterilizing them with various hormones have proved both impractical and unsuccessful—besides costing about one thousand dollars per animal).

Killing deer as a population-control measure is almost sure to raise a ruckus in suburb, island, park, or reserve. As a result, people living in or near these locales, often well off financially, frequently choose the “trap and transfer” method. Ironically, this technique is apt to prove far more traumatic and cruel to the deer than shooting a portion of the population.

Many studies have been carried out to determine just what happens to deer that have been trapped and transported to new quarters, far from their original range. The results have been dismal, to say the least. First, about 20 percent of these deer initially perish just from trauma, although they may not die for several days after their release, thereby giving the impression that the operation was a great success.

Beyond that, these deer are now strangers in totally unfamiliar surroundings which already contain as many whitetails as the land can support. Car collisions, disease, and predation—human and otherwise—take a rapid toll. In the end, 40 percent to more than 80 percent of the transported deer are dead within a year.

Added to all this is the expense, which is high. It costs roughly four hundred dollars to trap and transport each deer, or forty thousand dollars to remove one hundred deer from an area. Moreover, this expenditure has to be repeated every year or two because of the whitetail’s high reproductive rate.

Some communities have chosen to hire professional sharpshooters, who typically work at night from raised platforms adjacent to baited areas. Two of these are the 1,200-acre University of Wisconsin Arboretum and 1,200-acre Long Island in New Hampshire’s Lake Winnepesaukee. Expenses for this option vary somewhat according to a variety of circumstances, but seventy-five to one hundred dollars per animal seems to be typical.

Finally, other places have taken the option of using public hunting as a means of control. Often the hunters are carefully selected and must pass a marksmanship test. For safety reasons, only relatively short-range weapons are used—shotguns, muzzleloading rifles, and bows. One of the prime attractions of this option is the fact that it’s essentially accomplished with little or no public expense (hunters’ license fees usually more than cover any operational expenses incurred by the state wildlife agency).

Examples of this approach encompass a variety of situations. The two-thousand-acre Mary Flagler Cary Arboretum in New York State has used controlled public hunting for nearly thirty years to keep deer in check. The land surrounding the big Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts—the water supply for Boston—has more recently utilized limited public hunting to reduce the number of deer, which were destroying any forest regeneration. On a larger scale, Connecticut has had considerable success with a special season in what it calls the Urban Corridor zone.

In the end, it all boils down to one thing: the deer are going to die anyway, so it’s only a question of what method to use. Even those who advocate doing absolutely nothing and leaving the deer strictly alone in these sheltered enclaves of overpopulation are only choosing a different form of death. Left to their own devices, these increasingly overpopulated deer suffer from malnutrition and its associates—disease, parasites, and, if nothing else claims them first, ultimate starvation.

Returning to the whitetail’s mating habits, a doe is usually bred by the area’s dominant buck, though sometimes by a lesser buck who has the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time and, in a deer’s version of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s reputed philosophy, “got there firstest with the mostest.”

A gestation period of about two hundred days ensues. Because most does are bred during their first estrus, this means that the majority of fawns in northern latitudes are born in May or early June, but there are always some that aren’t bred until their second or even third estrus, so that some fawns arrive as late as July and August. These late-born fawns are so small by the time cold weather and snow arrive that their chances of surviving the rigors of winter are very slim.

Whitetail fawns are among the loveliest and most endearing of all creatures. Weighing only six or seven pounds at birth, the tiny creatures come equipped with a reddish-brown coat and lines of white spots; the overall effect makes excellent camouflage for a fawn resting quietly on a sun-dappled carpet of dead leaves.

Perhaps it was inevitable that such appealing little animals would generate their own particular misconceptions, and there are at least three major fallacies surrounding fawns. The first is that fawns are virtually scentless as a defense against predators. According to John Ozoga, a consultant and former research biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, even newborn fawns have a definite scent, and research biologists have used dogs on occasion to locate fawns by scent.

It’s true, however, that very young fawns have a scent that’s much less pronounced than that of adult deer. In addition, very young fawns lie down and stay where their mother puts them, so that they don’t leave a scent trail. Together, these two traits act as a defensive mechanism and clearly make it considerably more difficult for predators to locate a fawn; still, the fact remains that a fawn isn’t completely scentless.

A second fallacy is that a fawn found by itself is either orphaned or abandoned by the mother. This erroneous idea has led to all kinds of problems relating to people taking “orphaned” fawns home to raise, in clear violation of the laws of most states. The fact is that a doe habitually stashes her very young offspring and wanders off to feed, returning two or three times a day to nurse them. Sometimes she’s close by, but at other times she may be at a substantial distance. She always knows precisely where both she and her young are, and there is not the slightest chance that she will lose track of them.

Fawns are actually orphaned sometimes, of course. Only the does care for the fawns; as with most mammals, the buck assumes no family responsibilities whatsoever after breeding the doe, so the fawn is effectively orphaned if something happens to its mother. For instance, a doe may be killed by an automobile or by predators, or may die from other causes, thereby leaving an orphaned fawn.

A recent personal experience is illustrative. One day in May two years ago, I heard a peculiar and unfamiliar sound through an open window. Roughly halfway between a mew and a soft bleat, it continued for an hour or two, but finally subsided. It resumed the following morning while I was working in the garden just below our home, and kept on and on. The sound, sometimes almost inaudible and at other times fairly loud, seemed less than a hundred yards away and appeared to emanate from a spot just inside the woods.