Deer on the Rampage

by CLARK C. VAN FLEET

ALTHOUGH venison was the mainstay of our pioneers, deer were far less plentiful a century or more ago than they are today. The great virgin forests that clothed the northern states and much of the West were not natural deer country since there was little underbrush on which the animals could browse. Where they did exist, their numbers were held in check by predators — panthers, wolves, coyotes, and eagles — and the hunter. With protection the balance has altered: deer are now to be found in forty-six of the forty-eight states; and in numbers and in nuisance they have become an increasing problem.

With the progress of civilization, more and more fringe land came under cultivation; the forest gave way to the axe; the varmints were hunted mercilessly by the livestock producer. Thus the deer spread into the cutover and burned-over brushlands, where they found ample feed and excellent cover. As their enemies were decimated the herds grew astonishingly, until they now offer real competition to domestic sheep and cattle for the available forage on many ranges.

Today deer, protected and multiplying, are committing serious depredations on farmlands and gardens. Mountain vineyards arc denuded of their tender foliage; fruit trees are cleaned of leaves and fruit as high as the deer can reach, and young orchards are wiped out if they are not protected by strong wire. Alfalfa and other crops are heavily browsed.

Up to the end of the nineteenth century, venison was far more common fare along the borders of our civilization than beef or the flesh of any other domestic animal. Most camps and settlements depended on the hunter to supply meat for the table. All explorers, mountain men, and wagon trains relied on the country to furnish food for their campfires. Except in the remoter sections, deer became scarce, and in some areas rare. By the beginning of the twentieth century nearly every affected state in the Union had passed game laws as well as prohibitions of the sale of game.

Now the deer are back in unsuspected force. In the Rocky Mountain states and along the Pacific. Coast they are close to exhausting the carrying capacity of much of their range. In some sections the deaths from actual starvation and associated causes are four to five times the annual take by hunters.

Look for a moment at California, the second largest state in the Union. Approximately 56 million acres of its area can be classified as good deer range. The state has high diversification in climate and a luxuriance in plant growth. Its present deer population varies from well over a million to a million and a half, depending on the season and the plenitude of available forage.

California is inhabited by various races of the mule deer and the Columbian blacktail. After a two-year survey under the direction of A. Starker Leopold and William M. Longhurst of the University of California, top men in this field, a comprehensive report was published in 1952. Its purpose was to determine the number of deer in the stale, their impact on the carrying capacity of the available range, and their competition with domestic stock, sheep and cattle, occupying the same area. The observers divided the stale into 112 management units, organized field forces in conjunction with the State Game Commission, and sampled each unit with care. Here is a simplified breakdown of the results: —

In other words, well over half of the available range is being consistently grazed to depletion; less than one twentieth is in reasonably flourishing condition; and on the balance, deer and stock combined are squeezing right against the feed possibilities of their environment.

A buck and a doe under optimum conditions will produce a herd of forty-two animals, exclusive of themselves, in a matter of a mere five years. Under these circumstances the doe-fawn ratio is 100:180, and the ratio of buck births to that of does is 5:4.

The best example I have seen of undeterred fecundity is on the Queen Charlotte Islands, west of the Province of British Columbia. At the time the authorities made a small plant of deer on the islands, the only animal larger than a pack rat was the black bear. My first visit to the islands was about fifteen years later. Graham Island, the largest of the chain, was literally overrun with deer. You would see them at almost any time of day in the meadows; and every nook, gully, glade, or patch of brush seemed to shelter one or more. A half-hour walk in the early morning would disclose fifty or more within a radius of a mile from the resort where we were staying. Moresby and the other islands of the chain were in much the same plight.

Today the islanders and authorities are in despair. Deer season is open the year round on both sexes with no limit. They invite, beg, plead with you to go hunting. If there is a cure, the inhabitants of the Queen Charlotte chain haven’t found it yet. They are few and the deer are many — many times too many.

The situation in California is not as desperate as this, although the Mount Tamalpias Refuge in Marin County just across the bay from San Francisco is heavily overcrowded, to the serious detriment of the gardens. As I have said, the survey indicated a base population in California of 1.1 to 1.5 million deer. Since the range is overstocked, the state’s herds are relatively stationary. The annual crop of new additions is estimated to be between 275,000 and 375,000. Of the total new additions, predators probably destroy 100,000. The actual kills reported by hunters were 57,000 in 1053; add to that about 18,000 for unreported take and for cripples who finally die, and you have a cpiota of 75,000 killed by hunters. What then becomes of the balance of between 100,000 and 200,000? It is reasonably certain that they die of either starv ation or disease, or a combination of both. In an unusually cold, wet winter and spring or a heavy fall of snow the mortality can rise to from 40 to 60 per cent of the total herd. A prolonged drought can result in something like the same decimation. The survivors are weak and puny from their experience, and their get is invariably sickly and often stunted in growth.

Sportsmen must face up to this issue. Do we, for the sake of pure sentiment, wish to see our deer herds consistently on the downgrade, subject to periodic intervals of semistarvation, victims of infectious diseases, feeding the buzzards and carrion-eating animals, all because of overcrowding and the lack of sufficient forage?

Let us compare the hunter-success in western states where the protection of buck is not so stringent (Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Washington) with Oregon and California where the buck laws are relatively strict. The average huntersuccess in the first five is 53 per cent, ranging from a high of 75 per cent in Utah and Colorado to a low of 34 per cent in Washington. In Oregon the annual deer harvest hovers around 29 per cent, while in California it was 16 per cent in 1953. In states where bucks and does may be shot, the deer population approximates the theoretical maximum for the carrying capacity of their respective ranges, whereas in California the maximum is overreached annually by nearly 200,000 head. And the situation in California is paralleled in most states where sentiment conflicts with reality.

Deer are actually a weed species under conditions of modern range management and usage. Nearly every state in the Union with an area that will accommodate deer has suffered enough bitter experience to bring this fact home. The appalling losses in Arizona’s Kaibab National Forest in the winters of 1924 to 1929 are directly traceable to overpopulation and overprotection. The mule deer herds on the Kaibab Plateau jumped from 4000 in 1906 to 100,000 in 1924, only to fall disastrously in five years to the present 10,000 level, where they are likely to stay for a long time. For what reason? The basic forage plants have been so depleted that even this tithe of the former numbers is struggling for existence. All over the nation, areas where the harvesting of bucks is the only solution to the deer problem are threatened with similar depletion.

Today half the states are faced with the question of how to convince the hunter that deer are becoming their own worst enemies and are eating themselves out of range and forage. It is a campaign against prejudice, custom, and blind sentiment.

The urban hunter who makes an annual trip to Ins favorite grounds has little understanding of why his game seems smaller each year, with fewer and fewer good bucks. He blames this on scarcity rather than plenty, overhunting rather than too little, and bad management, which it is. But he never places the blame where it belongs, on himself.

It is high time for the sportsmen of the nation to get together with their respective game commissions to find a sound solution. No improvement in range management will do it, because unregulated deer populations will destroy more range than any public agency can afford to create. No lengthening of seasons will do it, since the buck kill has little relation to the spring crop of fawns. No increase in permissible kill will afford relief if legality is confined to bucks only. There seems to be but one answer. Does are deer.