There is a world somewhere between reality and fiction. Although ignored by many, it is very real and so are those living in it. This forum is about the natural world. Here, wild animals will be heard and respected. The forum offers a glimpse into an unknown world as well as a room with a view on the present and the future. Anyone able to speak on behalf of those living in the emerald forest and the deep blue sea is invited to join.
"I agree with Potato's critique about the analogy concerning white tailed deer. One of the reasons why there is such a big imbalance of prey-predator populations in North America has a lot to do with the human-caused extirpation of wolves and mountain lions in many areas where white tailed deer can be plentiful.
The argument that many hunters use to justify the culling of deer has no bearing on reality as nature has systems set in place to regulate said populations naturally. Ironically, those same arguments for culling ungulates are also used by the same hunters to justify the slaughter of cougars across North America, claiming that they are reducing the population of deer and elk, as though that wasn't their role in the ecosystem in the first place.
North America was certainly much more balance in terms of mammalian populations prior to the arrival of European settlers. Any disparity in the numbers of herbivores and carnivores across the continent is the fault of human intervention and nothing else. This same concept can be applied with Kruger and other nature reserves in Africa. As painful as it might seem, it's better sometimes to let nature take its course and balance itself out."
Having actively hunted whitetail for at least 43 years, and having spent a tremendous amount of time speaking with wildlife biologists in regards to proper whitetail herd management, a couple of things I see in your comments that I should address. First one being the implication that the human destruction of predators, namely wolves and cougars is the cause of out of control deer populations. Thankfully we have some areas that we can specifically look at. The first specific area being a small area in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, called Cade's Cove. Cade's Cove is a 7 mile loop in the National Park, and it is an area known for the ability to see so much of the wildlife contained in East Tennessee. It is an area often used for wildlife studies because the populations are so dense due to the lack of human hunting pressure. My wife and I often take friends and family through there, when they are here for a visit, and on those visits sights of whitetail, black bear, and countless other species are a regular part of these trips. Having spoken to several of the Rangers in the park on numerous occasions due to my interests on the subject, they explained to me that legal hunting was stopped inside of Cade's Cove in the late 1950s to early 1960s. As a result of this, the natural fear of man is nearly entirely absent in all of these animals, thus you are able to get incredible photographs and videos that you'd likely be unable to get many other places that are still entirely wild, and it provides you an opportunity to get extremely close to these animals, often dangerously so.
As these Rangers have explained to me, on several occasions beginning in the early 1980s and continuing into the early 2000s, deer had to be removed from the herd because the bear were simply unable to cull enough on their own. During these times the health of the herd has dropped significantly, due in large part to the lack of available natural resources. These culling events came in the form of targeted hunts performed by the government, as well as relocation programs where deer were moved to other public lands. Talks of such events, as explained to me, typically begin when large numbers of underweight animals are observed, and they begin finding higher than normal numbers of sick and dying animals from disease and starvation. These Rangers have explained to me directly that the bear, coyote, and bobcat populations are simply unable to maintain a health deer herd by themselves.
Having myself, spent tremendous amounts of time hunting deer in Florida, where I grew up, as well as many years spent hunting on a privately owned 3500 contiguous acres piece of property in south east South Carolina, and other states like Wisconsin and Tennessee to name a few. During this time, I witnessed event such as a doe stomping a spike buck to death, as well as fawns which were taken by coyotes and bobcats. Seeing a mound of dirt with a fawn's legs sticking out of it (bobcat storage of the day's meal), is something that will forever be interesting. This was when I learned that doe can be equally aggressive, and often more so, to bucks when trying to maintain claim on an area. The land owner hired a biologist to tell us every year how many of each type of deer (doe and bucks) should be taken off of the property (this number changed from year to year), based on annual food resources which is obviously affected by naturally occurring weather patterns and other natural phenomena, and I also spent quite a bit of time in the company of and exchanging emails and phone calls with, a biologist who worked for the Mossy Oak property in Georgia, one of, if not the, largest privately owned deer reserves in the US. My purpose was to learn the methods of implementing a proper QDMA program on our property, with our goal being the healthiest deer herd would could maintain. All of the areas I have been involved with, namely FL, GA, and SC, and to a lesser extend Tennessee. currently lack the natural predatory threat to maintain a healthy deer herd. Obviously I cannot speak to the existence of such threats literal centuries ago, when the European settlers arrived, but for all my years on this Earth the numbers of cougars and bears in Florida have been incredibly low, certainly not enough to allow the maintenance of a healthy state wide deer herd. In fact I have never seen a cougar in the wilds of Florida, and only seen two black bears, and I cannot tell you how much time I have spent in those woods and swamps. As well, the numbers of such predators such as black bear, has not been adequate enough for these purposes in states I also have experience in such as Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia, during my lifetime, and cougars have not existed in these locations in centuries, if they ever did at all.
So, as I was told directly by Rangers of the Smoky Mountains National Park, and as I have experienced throughout my life, without man's involvement, including state and federal governments, a healthy deer herd would be much more difficult to maintain. As for the "excuses" used by hunters, either for the culling of deer or predators, I believe your comments are disingenuous at best, as nothing of the sort has ever been claimed by myself or anyone I have associated with, and it certainly contradicts my life's experiences. Your comments about nature's ability to maintain proper herd densities were perhaps pertinent to the discussion centuries ago, but given the landscape we currently find ourselves in, perhaps to a much lesser extent today. For all of the biologists I have interacted with over many years, not one single time have I ever heard claims like the ones you are making, not once.
Some of the points you mentioned here went making the lines of my critique regarding human involvement in the predator-prey dynamics I mentioned of North America.
For example, Tennessee has been completed voided of cougars for over a century now, and cougars and wolves are the main predators of deer. Bear are certainly capable of hunting them but they aren't obligated carnivores and killing animals comes off to them as more of a opportunistic feat rather than regular occurrence they ought to do to survive. This is why bears are not efficient when it comes to reducing the number of ungulates of an area, and a similar example of this can be seen in Yellowstone. Prior to the reintroduction of wolves the number of black and grizzly bears in the park remained considerable, but that didn't stop elk from multiplying and over populating the area. They had very little active predatory pressure.
In the case where a keystone carnivore like cougars of wolves have been extirpated it makes sense to need hunters to help cull the numbers of the herbivores these carnivores would hunt to keep them from overpopulating, but this is exactly why I think that the human involvement in the ecology of much of North America has severely damaged plenty of ecosystems that historically where in perfect balance. And unfortunately, many of the interests that play a role in the imbalance forementioned want to keep it that way as traditions and a string industry of hunting remains strong in much of North America.
If hunters use claims of predators reducing the number of ungulates of an area to kill them, then that shows you that in practical terms they care very little about the health and balances of the ecosistem, and rather want to continue a practice that may be more cultural to them and that supports a large industry in many states.
I could go and on about this subject, but my overall point can be summarized in that the "need" to hunt animals like deer in North America has an anthropogenic background and has little to do with the ability of the environment to regulate itself when all the keystone species required to keep the environment healthy are present.
Deers (Cervidae family) Info, Pictures and Videos
