doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Hunting competition for Lloyd & Steve

Stan I feel your deer pain. For those who lease my land to hunt, they are given a quota of deer they must kill. The farmer who rents it for farming and I both got tired of the hunters waiting for the "big" buck and passing on multiple lesser bucks and taking no does at all. The smallest farm has a 20 deer quota and the largest farm has a 60 deer quota. Show me the tags for deer checked in and a photo. Most hunters have learned to thin out the does early and donate them to the food bank. But I do not care how many they take more will just move in. You still need to try.

About 20 years ago we had a deer drive that killed 53 deer in one morning on the larger farm and there were many, many more deer left that we never moved from one last section of woods. The deer eat everything they can reach in the Winter. What they can do to a row of beans would make you think the planter was stopped up, only it was not. They are so bad that the outside rows of beans and corn will be almost completely harvested by them long before the farmer gets a chance. The number of crop depredation permits that these farms have, which allow you to shoot deer anytime, is a number I will not share. People think you get joy from using them but honestly you just get sick of it. The heard would be much healthier if you just reduced their number by 50% and allowed them to build back slowly. Right now they are at or in most years over the carrying capacity of the land.

We have had hot spots of deer die off, near me, where every deer in a mile or more radius died almost all at once. Talking 50-75 deer, of all ages and conditions, all just die. And the next year the numbers were exactly the same. If the wolves would just eat deer and leave the other livestock alone I'd be happy for their help. But things never seem to work out that easy. And about the second calf I lost might get me in the mood to act poorly. Again nothing works perfectly.

I apologize if I sounded excessively cruel, or inhumane. I never enjoy seeing suffering. But, make no mistake, I do NOT equate the "suffering" of animals with human suffering, as do so many of the animal rights activists who place the importance of a cat or dog's life right up there with that of a person's. To me, "suffering" implies that the entity has the realization that it IS suffering. Animals cannot reason to the extent that they can do this, humans can. Animals can feel pain, and we hate to see them linger in severe pain for any length of time. But, they cannot have a realization that they may die from whatever is causing the pain, as humans can.

If any animal on God's earth can approximate the love and empathy of humans, it is a dog. I believe with all my heart He endowed many of them with a special ability to bond with people.

Count me in on that - I spent a whole week hunting in northern Maine last November. While I saw some sign, I saw no deer. I'd be happy to help Georgia's problem. Likewise with KY Jon's.

I guess it's going on 30 years ago now - I was working for a lawyer who had his office on his farm, in a nicely converted garage. This was in Central Jersey. There would be 50 or 60 deer in the pasture around dusk. Driving out in the evening in the fall there'd be a couple buck fights going on at the same time with the does watching. Headlights sweeping and cars passing didn't bother them a bit.

The one year the neighboring farmer got a depredation permit and killed something like 100 deer. Buried them - there was no "hunters for the hungry" or food bank to take them. Knocked the herd back, but 2 or 3 years later the numbers were almost back to where they'd been.

Like I said: I'd be happy working to supply the food bank and maybe take a little venison home with me.

if you are fortunate enough to have an excess of deer, then increase the competing predators in order to reduce the herd...

once the herd numbers are at the desired level...then guess its time to cull the predators...

is that not the practice in Europe, over the past several hundred years?

Well sort of Ed, Introduce wolves. The only viable option to kill deer. They will indeed kill the mess out of them. Along with the much slower and more naive calves/cows that come along. Very few Moose left in the north of MN too. They are relatively slow and not that sharp, ornery though! Do a search on Moose calf depredation in MN. The DNR there would just LOVE to regulate the wolf population. So much so that Sen. Amy Klobechar (DEM) brought this to then Pres. Trump. Who Immediately delisted the Wolf. That did not last long, you do the research it's easy.

Chief

P.S. Stanton I live fairly close, I'd take a couple deers!

Wolves were reintroduced into the Pyrenees in France (and now extending across into Spain). There are now 540 (estimated) in 80 packs. 12,000 sheep have been lost - the French government pays compensation. Interesting article here in English by a UK gentlemen since Parliament was considering reintroducing wolves to Great Britain.

https://www.pyreneanway.com/2020/06/the-return-of-the-wolf-to-france-what-shepherds-say/?lang=en
https://mondediplo.com/2023/06/14wolves

Wolves in Germany:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/13/wolves-germany-revival-attacks/

And across Europe:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/04/wolf-pack-howls-from-steppe-to-madrid

re moose...

lots of erm in northern new England...no predators cept fur us an ticks...

an autos...

they sometimes just stand in the middle of the road at night...

imagine what happens when a 4000 pound auto hits a 1000 pound moose at 65 mph...

it ain't pretty and is quite deadly to all involved...

Once the crops are planted we will be getting depredation permits and shooting them at night. We have to list no more than three shooters on each permit. The shooters have to work alone .... they can have no one with them to assist by driving, holding a light, etc. We, by necessity, have to use friends who live close enough to be available several nights a week, in order to be efficient.

No fun gutting and processing deer at night in the summer heat, but you're welcome to all of the dead ones you want. It's just not an easy thing to arrange. But, thanks for all the offers to help.


Are you brain dead?

Competition for the resource here isn't getting any lighter. With the price of real food (i.e, protein) seemingly spiraling ever higher, every semi-competent individual in the region that owns a rifle seems to be wrangling for a tag and a place to use it. Moreover, Colorado had a bad winter-kill in 2022/2023, combine that with these newly-introduced wolves and the recovery of the now badly-decimated deer & elk herds is even further threatened. One of the ranchers we know west of Craig photographed wolf tracks in the snow very near his home and it made the local paper, so they are becoming a factor already. Public land hunting here hasn't been all that viable for some time now (compared to what it once was) and this nearly "perfect-storm" of foolish wildlife management, weather challenges, and crowded conditions has me and the folks I go with considering sitting things out this coming year. When you think about all of the now-expensive moving parts, it's unlikely to be worth going this year or even the next few. As creatures of habit, we still might, but our expectations will be tightly controlled.

Competition and the price of protein...Believe it or not, there is a waiting list for unclaimed roadkill in my neighborhood. The fire department will call you when one is available. I don't participate. Not hard to give away deer here. But mulies are way better eating than whitetails, IMO, maybe that has something to do with it.

The neighbor games they law. A tag is an easy draw here but there's hardly anywhere to hunt because it's so population dense and all private. He's got about a few thousand square feet of land (out of +/- 6 acres) where he can technically legally shoot without being too close to an occupied building. It's kind of funny and maybe unethical but, he's in his 90"s so whatever.