Hunting
will not lower Deer Numbers, Read Why:
East
Goshen has 300 deer and they think killing 36 deer a year for 10 years will
reduce the number? An honest deer biologist would chuckle, then giggle and
then laugh out loud. Let's look at numbers. If there are 300 deer and half of
them are female, there are 150 females. Probably there are many more females
because the natural 50/50 male to female ratio in a natural herd has been
disturbed in Pennsylvania by hunters killing so many males for their antlers.
The true ratio may be 5 females to every male--or even more. But let's
pretend there is a more natural ratio. However unlikely, even if all the deer
killed were females, 114 females would remain. Only 36 of the females
remaining., less than one third, would need to bear an additional fawn and by
spring the number of deer would be back to 300.
The Luddite
supervisors of East Goshen who apparently don’t know--and don’t
want to know--anything about the biological sciences, should study the
phenomenon of compensatory reproduction. Tom Hardisky of the
Pennsylvania Game Commission explained compensatory reproduction by
saying, “What that means essentially is, when we increase trapping
pressure on the resource within excellent habitat, beavers respond
biologically by increasing their reproduction rate. “ Compensatory
reproduction occurs in deer, beaver, foxes, coyotes, etc.
A hunt will not only not reduce deer numbers,
it will increase them.
By: Priscilla Ferrater-Mora