In Defense of Deer Hunting

New Jersey's white-tailed deer population, nearly wiped out a century ago, has reached record numbers, posing a threat to gardeners, farmers, and drivers. One ecologist believes hunting is the best way to manage the herd.

By Christopher Martine
Illustration by Tomio Nitto

From our office at the Forest Resource Education Center in Jackson Township, my co-workers and I spent much of August monitoring a pair of fawns who appeared one morning from a small woodland adjoining our grounds. We watched the white-mottled twins graze our lawn and nibble the twigs and leaves of our shrubbery before moving to another portion of the property. Eventually, their quest for new growth led them to the edge of nearby Route 527, a busy, two-lane road with a 50mph speed limit. It was only a matter of days before there was just one fawn left to watch; only a matter of weeks before we buried the second.
This type of occurrence is becoming all too familiar to people in New Jersey. The town employee who came to cart away the corpse of the first fawn claims that he picks up about 400 road-killed deer a year in Jackson alone. In a state chock-full of deer and drivers, the number of fatalities can only get higher.
Walt Disney made us fall in love with these graceful quadrupeds in the classic Bambi, but farmers, gardeners, and drivers across New Jersey are beginning to consider the prospects of a tougher kind of love. In the minds of many, there just isn't enough room in this state for the two of us.
What a difference a couple of centuries makes. Beginning in the mid-1700s, vast numbers of white-tailed deer were harvested for their hides and meat. As the human population increased, forests were cleared for both timber and farmlands, eventually turning New Jersey into the Garden State. The few deer that occasionally crossed the Delaware River from Pennsylvania represented the only survivors of a once-flourishing herd.
At the turn of the 20th century, virtually no deer roamed the fields and forests of New Jersey. Many people feared that the deer had become but a curiosity, existing only in captivity on private estates. In 1904 the state Board of Fish and Game Commissioners set out to restore a native deer population, gathering 100 deer from an estate in Warren County and releasing them in optimal areas of the state. This action, coupled with the first cancelled hunting season in state history, gave the white-tailed deer another foothold in New Jersey. Bambi has not looked back since.
These days, whether you live in Sussex County or Cape May, chances are you regularly encounter deer. In fact, New Jersey's deer population may be as high as ever. Not only has the deer recovered from virtual statewide extirpation, but it has again thrived in a state rife with fragmented habitat and suburban development. In many of our backyards, white-tailed deer have become as ubiquitous as the gray squirrels that routinely raid our bird feeders. Though few animals have the ability to prosper in the human habitat, the white-tailed deer manages almost as well as we do.
As formerly cleared forests and abandoned farmlands began to regrow, more habitats became optimal for deer. The species is well-adapted to forest-edge areas and forests with a significant understory of young trees, shrubs, and plants. Anyone with deer for neighbors is familiar with their voracious appetite for the buds and twigs of just about any plant they can reach. Old-growth forests cannot support a deer population, but the secondary forests that grew across the United States in the first half of this century offered the perfect opportunity for a population explosion. Additionally, most natural predators of the deer, such as the cougar and wolf, were eliminated along with the original deer populations. Where wildlife managers once faced the problem of too few deer, they now face the problem of too many. In no state is the problem more striking than New Jersey, the most densely human-pop- ulated member of the union.
The white-tailed deer is remarkably adaptable, needing only a small parcel of woodland to satisfy its appetite and desire for cover. The animal is so reproductively prolific, however, that deer are finding their best habitats overcrowded. In essence, they wind up eating themselves out of house and home. Habitats can become decimated quickly, leading to weakened herds and, in harsh winters, devastating kills caused by starvation or disease. Like the pioneers who headed West, many deer strike out on their own in search of new land and resources. Invariably, this leads them into our cities, towns, and backyards--and this is where the biggest conflicts are staged. Deer will eat more than 1,000 different plants, including some of the gardener's favorite fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals. On farms, a herd of deer can destroy a good crop in one night of foraging.
Residents and farmers constantly search for ways to keep deer damage to a minimum, while wildlife biologists struggle to find ways to control populations. The market is full of repellents, from hot-pepper sauce to fermented egg solids to mothballs. Farmers have found some success with scare devices and electric fencing. Scientists have developed deer birth controls to keep populations down. But the easiest way to restrict their numbers, and usually the most controversial, is through the annual hunt (this year's muzzle loader season begins December 1). In 1996 the state of New Jersey sold 107,000 deer-hunting permits, and those hunters bagged nearly 57,000 deer. Obviously, hunting thins out the deer population, leaving the remaining herd with more habitat and forage. Thus, the deer are less likely to search for these things at your home or farm. Meanwhile, New Jersey's economy benefits from the sale of hunting gear, and money brought in from licenses is put back into managing deer habitats and enforcing hunting laws.
Those who oppose hunting make a strong case against the hunt, and in the best of worlds their arguments may hold up. But in New Jersey and across the globe, we are up against the wall ecologically. Whether or not we like it, there is only so much space left and far too many of us (both human and animal) trying to inhabit that space. It has, in essence, become them or us--and it will take huge reforms in the way we think and live to change that dynamic. No longer can you exonerate the brutality of hunting and then throw another hambur- ger on the grill. You cannot justify shooting a doe full of birth control and then have eight children of your own. If you decry the raping of our old-growth forests, you must also question the lumber that builds your house or deck. The increasing deer population is only a small part of the big picture, but an immensely important lesson from which we can learn.
In one respect, the deer problem is a matter of economics. Farmers lose crops and homeowners lose expensive landscape vegetation. It is also a matter of safety as more and more deer-automobile collisions occur each year. Public health could also be at risk as increased deer populations can lead to higher numbers of deer ticks, the vectors of Lyme disease.
Of all the issues, the most subtle and important is what this means ecologically. New Jersey has already surpassed its capacity to support a healthy deer population, and many of our woodlands have been decimated as winter forage becomes increasingly hard to find. The species composition of our forests has been severely affected, the full degree to which we may not understand for another hundred years.
As the self-appointed keepers of our domain, we are faced with a very important decision: What do we do with all these deer? Unless we begin exporting people, we are left with no option but to support the safe, regulated hunting of white-tailed deer in New Jersey. It is the only viable choice we have.

Christopher Martine is an ecologist at the state Forest Resource Education Center in Jackson. He is a 1996 graduate of Cook College, Rutgers University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in conservation ecology.

Copyright © 1997, Micromedia Affiliates

Deer Hunting
Horseshoe Crabs
Intracoastal Waterway
Nature Conservancy Director Honored
Open Spaces
Ten Most Beautiful Places
Forsythe Wildlife Refuge
Great Falls
Green Sergeant's Bridge
Historic Greenwich
Island Beach State Park
Lockwood Gorge
Oswego River
Palisades
Princeton University
Tillman Ravine

Building a Butterfly Garden
Hudson River Returns
Natural State
Walk in the Woods
The Pinelands
Hiking the Pinelands
The Skylands
Hiking the Skylands
Meadowlands Habitat
10 Commandments
Workaholic is Freed
Environmental Groups
Join the Clubs
Rent a Canoe
Planning an Ecotour
Tick Time
State Refuges
Natural & Cultural Sites:
North Jersey
Central Jersey
South Jersey
Driving Tours:
Northern Nature
Pinelands Pleasures
Coastal Heritage
Ospreys on the Hackensack
Outdoor Mysteries
Passaic River Endangered
Watchung Reservation
Free Condors