Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:06:33 -0500
From: Simon Lobdell
Subject: Re: Deer in Chatham.
I am sure a wildlife biologist could clear this up better than me but here is my understanding of deer life cycles.
1) Deer operate on a harum structure whereby a single dominant alpha male will control a group of females and not necessarily allow each of them to get pregnant each year
2) current hunting practice leads to elimination of the healthiest males and break down of these herd units
3) “young bucks” chase down every female in the area every season and they fawn
4) the fawns and females spend a large part of their energy each year on runnning away from the young bucks and those never are healthy and overbrowse to make up for their excessive and out of control young bucks
5) The fawns are stunted in growth and the females continue to be malnourished until the next season and becasue there are still no healthy older bucks, the cycle repeats and you have a population explosion of weak small deer.
I have hunted in the north in heavily hunted areas where seeing a twelve point buck is the more normal and all the does are over 100 lbs after their second season This area is being over run by these scrawny little things becasue of all the imbalance associated with develoment as well as the screwy hunting structure. The ideal hunting structure is
1) take as many does as you can
2) limited season on bucks and hunt the lone bucks only… not the dominant big healthy ones.
The current structure is just reverse evolution towards pest deer.
And as for small woodland creatures leading to tics I say take as much squab as you care to eat. The rabbits and possums aren’t going anywhere.
Simon L