how could you love gardening etc.. a part of nature.. and talk about a beautiful animal like that?

It's BECAUSE I love gardening I talk about those four footed vermin like that. When I lived in the burbs I LOVED deer (because I didn't see them much). Now that I'm in the country and routinely SEE 50 PLUS HERDS of them ravaging almost EVERYTHING I plant, is why I don't like them. Let's see you spend hundreds of bucks on plants and get hardly anything at all to grow (yes, I do netting and they CHEW THE NEW GROWTH TO NOTHING.
Nothing personal, the deer just overbreed thanks to the Pa game comission wanting to make a lot of $$ on licenses. Acutally the deer overpopulation is very cruel because they starve when we have bad winters with a lot of snow cover. They need their numbers to plummet because they are WAY overpopulated.

Plus, add to the fact that I've hit 3 deer with my car (two times they ran out from no where, and I don't speed at night either, (and totaled my truck that I was still paying on), my husband hit 2 with HIS car (one was a huge dead on laying in the road on a curve) and if you claim it your insurance rates go up thru the roof.

Also, just try to raise some food for yourself that isn't soaked in pesticides like much grocery produce, while the deer just jump over the fence and decimate all your seedlings and plants. Sorry, but they are VERMIN and need to have their populations decreased dramatically.

Yeah, it's a rant, but gardening is almost impossible around where we live. You either must not have many deer where you live, or else don't grow your own food. Oh, and I TRIED fencing, they just jump right over. We even have a dog, but he isn't loose at night so they just ignore him and destroy EVERYTHING.

They also destroy a lot of native wildflowers and other plants as well.

I agree mersiepoo. The deer population is way out of control because we have destroyed their natural predators and created habitat that is much friendlier to them. Humans are now their only predator, and we are not doing our proper ecological job. Overpopulation of deer is no better for the environment than is overpopulation of people.

In 1900 there were about 500,000 white tailed deer in the US. Today there are in excess of 30,000,000. I'm surprised that no one has had a serious car accident has sued a state DNR over their deer populations.

Hi laceyvail, voice of reason.
There have been many serious and deadly car accidents because of deer around here. I am sure people have sued, but unless they have lots of money to spend on lawyers, they probably don't get anything from their vehicles being totalled by the deer. The terrible thing is, the Pa Game Co on their website claims that there aren't ENOUGH deer!!!! Can you say BULL ))))? We also have crazy people out here who think it's a sin to shoot doe. Gimmie a break! Human and deer population do need to be reined in. We've had 3 cars damaged by them (2 new ones), those deer whistles do nothing.

What is a deer whistle. I'm assuming it's like a police whistle? I've just never heard the term. We are getting ready to move into a home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mts. I thought a dog--I'd even consider two--would be a deterrent. But you all haven't mentioned anything about that here. As for deer on the roads, I see them splattered all over the highway. One Saturday I counted 7 on a twenty-mile drive of Rts 64 and 29 in VA. They had all happened quite recently by the looks of the carcasses. Fortunately there are large populations of those hugely ugly turkey and black vultures to do the cleanup.

Deer whistles are those things that they used to sell where you would mount them on your car in certain places and they were supposed to create a high pitch that would keep the deer away.
We even have a dog, but he isn't loose at night so they just ignore him and destroy everything. If you can keep your dog in your yard (we have a huge amount of land and can't fence it all in), you can let them loose at night and that may keep them away, if the dog doesn't fall asleep, ha ha!

Yeah, we see plenty of dead deer around here. The state has road crew people who pick them up, but most of the times they just decay into skin and bones.

Oh, and we also have trashy neighbors who get free rabits and let them loose, then the poor things come over here (to get away from the neighbors, I can't blame them), and eat my plants down to nothing.

Mersiepoo
You sound like you are still in the suburbs. Thats where most of the deer are. I've been in PA most of my life, lived in the Pittsburgh and Harrisburg areas, and spend most of my free weekends in the woods. The rural areas have low to moderate deer populations. The suburbs have huge populations and when new development disturbs their little patches of unhunted woodland, they invade established neiborhoods. In general, where it is hunted, the deer are shy and scarce. where it is too close to houses to safely shoot high powered rifles, but food and cover exists, there are tons.
I hike all over the state. I have never seen a dead deer that wasn't shot or hit by a car. An area would have to run out of trees and shrubs for them to starve.
The brain wasting disease would scare people from eating deer and reduce hunting, probably having the opposite of the desired effect.
We should have predators roaming our state including the suburbs, but people are way too affraid of them for that to happen anytime soon.
I'd rant more but I have to go. Good luck.

Ziggy

Observations on the earlier postings: Yes, deer are a part of nature - so are humans. The damage deer do is enormous as has been catalogued here. Let me add that dozens of species of native trees and shrubs are absent from or severely stunted in wide areas of Pennsylvania due to the voracious appetites of deer. They sweep through my suburban yard at night while we sleep to disfigure shrubbery and eat garden plantings. Efforts to check their numbers are feeble. Much land is posted and non gardeners play the animal cruelty card shamelessly, claiming a higher morality for themselves. Local archers petition to get into public parks to do good work when officials should be pleading or even paying them to control herds. Will no one save our plants and gardens from the "beautiful animal" crowd? Starvation, car bumpers and stray dogs are not the best solution, just the default solution.

Bill,
I feel your pain, but many of these deer stories and statistics are skewed. Deer are blamed for the loss of many acres of plants that were lost due to habitat destruction. The extensive logging and mining in PA wiped out far more than the deer population. When closed canopy species have no shade due to logging, they die off in mass. When 1000's of acres are altered for mining and the soil and groundwater patterns are altered, the land will not support the same plants.
Most land is posted in PA for the same reason that I'm scared to hunt...PA hunters are idiots. I was almost shot because someone thought I was a ruffed grouse. How do you mistake a 6'3" tall human for a small bird???? These people are trigger happy and far too often drunk. They shoot a lot of cows, horses, and dogs every year, and generally are more destructive than the deer. I'm not anti-hunting, and I'm not saying all hunters are like that...just far too many of them. If hunters did a better job of policing their own ranks, there would be more land open to hunting.
I attached a link to a USDA page on canada yew. It is one of the species that is usually mentioned as being "wiped out by deer" in PA, but it is more complex than that and the fact that PA was cleared and often refered to as resembling a berry patch about 100 years ago, probably has as much if not more to do with it.

Ziggy

Here is a link that might be useful: canada yew

Ziggy. I am living in the country right now. I'm from the suburbs and also lived in the city (and saw deer THERE too!). No, there is a LARGE population of deer in the country here as well. I regularly see 'herds' of them, sometimes 25 or more. In fact, just last week a stupid deer rammed into my truck AGAIN, my dh was driving it, he stopped COMPLETELY because the stupid animals were in the road and would not move, and the one moronic deer leapt right into the headlights, damaging my truck for the THIRD TIME IN A ROW, the first time they ran right into my truck out of nowhere (I was going up a hill), second time I tried to avoid 2 of them that ran down a hill and stood in the road (that totaled my truck and we fixed it after we got the money from insurance, which went up thanks to that accident), and now this. AND, this is just ONE out of our 3 vehicles that have been damaged by deer running into our cars and trucks. We don't drive like psychos either, especially at night. They AIM for the lights! They've also crunched my dh's car. And, this is all the while we are in the country. So, there is a LOT of deer in the country, destroying everything in their path like Bill said. They do destroy a lot of native habitat, I had seen a (rare here because of deer) jack in the pulpit growing near our one stream, and the next day it was gone. Munched by deer.

I do agree with you about most Pa hunters being morons, because we have them in our woods, they disregard the no trespassing signs all the time. BUT the PA game comission has stupid laws that make it unless you make 2/3 of your income from farming (who can, with deer around?), you can't shoot them, even if they are in your garden decimating your crops.

The deer population in PA is NOWHERE where it used to be. I live in the center of the state in a rural area and DH and I used to go out and look at deer in the evenings in the fields. It was nothing to count 200 deer within 20 miles of our house! Now you are lucky if you see 50! I for one thinks it's incredibly SAD! They were here before many of us were!

I really love how people are building homes on all these farm lands that deer once roamed happily and now they're complaining because the deer are on their properties! They don't know where to go!

My DH hunts, responsibly, not drunk and doesn't shoot at other humans and he will tell you one of the LARGEST problems is you can't hunt anywhere anymore. Everything is posted. Just like many other things people did for years..people are ruining it for the rest of the generations!

As for people hitting deer...it's often the people's fault. You do not travel along a highway at 60mph with fields on either side of you and not look for deer! You're asking for it!

Sweets, you should come to the South west corner of the state, you'll see more deer than you can shake a stick at. BTW, you can thank the lawyers and state laws for people posting their land no trespassing. If someone trespasses on your land and gets hurt they can sue you for damages. Not everyone has lots of money for homeowners insurance. OHIO on the other hand has a no fault law, so if you are trespassing and get hurt, too bad!

I agree with the wrongness of the destruction of farmland, but until the land was cleared of trees, there were even fewer deer around. Deer are not normally forest dwellers. They like open woods. We have mostly trees on our lot, but the deer are everywhere, spreading ticks everywhere they go. We live in the boondocks and have 60 acres and only one house on it. We haven't cleared anything for housing projects. And yet the deer are a menace here.

It's true you can't hunt just anywhere, but there are gamelands that you can go to. We have game lands right near us as well. Unless you want to buy your own property and hunt, you're stuck. And, pay property taxes and have to get a hunting license anyway. As for 'ruining' it for the next generation, I don't agree with that. The 'next generation' would rather play video games than go outside. Plus, people have trespassed on our place numerous times, many of them are RUDE PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO REGARD FOR ANYTHING or ANYONE, and why should we just let them do what they want on our place? They trespass, they are rude, they gut them and leave the guts there and are jerks on top of it all, why let them hunt for free?

As for hitting deer, they run right into your car LOTS of times, and NEITHER my DH or I speed at night. Deer are DESTRUCTIVE. They are so bad here that people must be shooting them from their cars because the game commission is making decoy deer and lying in wait for people to go and shoot them. They are a BIG problem. Just be lucky you haven't wrecked all your vehicles because of them.

I live in PA in the poconos. (NE pa) Ive been here all my life as well as my ancestors back to the 1700's. The deer herds here are out of control in my area. I know some places in PA there are a lot less deer.
According to Roger Spotts of the Kettle Creek Nature conservatory the deer are in this area are very confused. Because of bad hunting practices in the past of being allowed to shoot young buck, the does are in a panic to breed with anything they can. The result is we have twins born as late as august/September.(fawns are normally born early spring) They law has changed to only shooting buck with more then two points. I am not against hunting,we allow it on our property. The problem is also that the houses are so close together, most places are not huntable. So the deer breed and multiply unchecked with no natural prediators. Some developments are very over crowded because there is no hunting there.
Where my cousin lives, the deer have advanced to the point there were so many,they have eaten all available food, so they starved.
There are more deer in PA now then when William Penn was alive.

Wow. Sounds like PA has a serious deer problem. My sympathies - overpopulation of any species is unhealthy.

I live in the Cascade foothills. We have quite a few deer - well, we see about 7 or 8 regularly, all does - and they do cause damage in my garden, no matter how hard I work at making it "deer resistant." We haven't fenced anything yet, and so far I haven't lost a single plant to deer browsing. The plants just get well pruned. But we live in a quite wild area; they only eat in our yard in spring and fall, for the most part.

We try to keep a good part of our property wild, too, with lots of things for the local deer to eat. One must be careful though not to inadvertently increase the population or draw deer from other locales.

All day long today I was furious about a heuchera that was munched last night - they'd never touched it before.

And then, about 7pm, I was quietly reminded that we all have to share this planet, and that the deer don't really know that those are my plants. I looked out my window and one of the does was standing on the lawn, looking at the front door, with her just-born twins. I went out onto the porch to admire them, and chatted with mum for a bit while the little ones nursed.

Sigh... what's one heuchera?

agertz
hmmm I found a good natural deer spray, to bad we cant mention names. LOL

LOL! It's stupid, but when I first read the title of this post and that it involved an animal that lives in the back woods, I thought for sure that you had some kind of grudge against your dear old dad.

Or maybe it was because Pennsylvania should be abbreviated in caps, PA.

Brain Waisting Disease for your Pa !
That's pretty harsh.
Must have been a real mean S-O-B.
If we may ask - what exactly has he done ?

Ohio has a major deer problem too. In 1980, the total state population was about 100,000 deer. Now the total hunting harvest far exceeds that! A lot of communities in NE Ohio are hiring sharpshooters to cull the herds and donate the meat to homeless shelters. Unfortunately, every year some moron do-gooder who knows everything files a lawsuit to try to stop it. I think that every deer that gets hit by a car should be dumped in their front yards and they should pay all the repair bills! D*** do-gooders!!!

You will like this site - click on the link to see a map of deer density. I have found this site to be a very informative resource for deer solutions.

Here is a link that might be useful: Deer Departed

I agree with sweets98. I do not see as many deer as I used to. I think it is from our over population of the wooded areas. If we, as humans, would stop building these huge houses that we do not need as there are plenty of existing houses, the deer "problem" would not be as bad as people seem to think it is.

Most likely, mersiepoo, is that where you live there are houses being constructed and their natural habitat is being destroyed.

And actually, if that "deer wasting : disease did sepread here, imagine how if would effect the food chain, since small predators will feed off those infected remains, causing problems with them, etc...

I think once we stop destroying natural habitats, and plant more trees, the deer will return to a more natural setting.