I have a buddy who’s a forest ecologist, he loves nature and all of its creatures… except for deer. If you get the right amount of booze in him he will go on like an hour long rant about how it should be everyone’s civic duty to shoot deer in the face on site.
Apparently native Americans spent centuries reshaping all the forest in America to become giant deer factories to sustain the large population of pre colonial America. These deer factories are still making deer printers go brrr noises even after the great dying of the native population. And the European settlers who replaced them spent their extinction level effort on hunting everything else.
So now the deer population is so overpopulated that the greatest threat to their population is disease and starvation. All while they strip the forest floor of any plants at deer height. They’ve basically sterilized American Forrest of the shrub, saplings, and undergrowth that a Forrest needs to sustain native habitats and a healthy ecology.
We have also eradicated the wolf in many areas where they would keep the deer in check. My dog tries his best though, its on sight with deer. Hes actually gotten two of them.
Yeah, trying to explain to people who think hunting deer is unethical or bad for nature is always difficult. There is no such thing as unaltered nature in North America, the native populations were extremely good at creating forest that could pump out enough deer to feed millions of people and hundreds of thousands wolves at the same time.
Doing nothing is just wrecking the ecology that was shaped over hundreds if nothing thousands of years and creating systemic collapses that destroy what diversity we have left.
I have a buddy who’s a forest ecologist, he loves nature and all of its creatures… except for deer. If you get the right amount of booze in him he will go on like an hour long rant about how it should be everyone’s civic duty to shoot deer in the face on site.
Apparently native Americans spent centuries reshaping all the forest in America to become giant deer factories to sustain the large population of pre colonial America. These deer factories are still making deer printers go brrr noises even after the great dying of the native population. And the European settlers who replaced them spent their extinction level effort on hunting everything else.
So now the deer population is so overpopulated that the greatest threat to their population is disease and starvation. All while they strip the forest floor of any plants at deer height. They’ve basically sterilized American Forrest of the shrub, saplings, and undergrowth that a Forrest needs to sustain native habitats and a healthy ecology.
We have also eradicated the wolf in many areas where they would keep the deer in check. My dog tries his best though, its on sight with deer. Hes actually gotten two of them.
Yeah, trying to explain to people who think hunting deer is unethical or bad for nature is always difficult. There is no such thing as unaltered nature in North America, the native populations were extremely good at creating forest that could pump out enough deer to feed millions of people and hundreds of thousands wolves at the same time.
Doing nothing is just wrecking the ecology that was shaped over hundreds if nothing thousands of years and creating systemic collapses that destroy what diversity we have left.
My little weenie dogs even know the word deer and act like rabid psychos the moment it’s uttered ready to tear out of the house and chase them off