Quote:
Originally Posted by wdfifteen
The deer population is way too big. Deer are good to eat. What a wonderful coincidence. Deer season started here Monday. We call it black Monday. I don't think anyone has got killed on the first day this year, but it's a common occurrence. The frenzy to get out there and get one in the short period allowed leads to recklessness. I do think fewer people are killed hunting deer than are killed in car wrecks caused by deer though. Wildlife management needs to triple the length of the season and have a lottery that would allow half the hunters in the field on odd days and the other half on even days to thin out the daily hunter population. It would probably result in more hunters, as I know for a fact the very real possibility of getting shot keeps some hunters home. We need to shrink the deer population somehow, and under the current system it just gets bigger.
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A large part of the problem in many states is, in fact, how modern game management utilizes the hunter. Like you say, far too many out all at the same time hunting far too short of a season, often in far too small of a game management unit. This feeding frenzy thing is very real. When hunters are faced with a one week season in an impossibly small unit, there is all kinds of potential for things to go awry in many ways.
Washington is a fine example of a crushingly over-managed hunting season. Almost 100 pages of game regulations, several hundred game management units, and all kinds of "special" hunts earned through points or won by lottery. Seasons that don't even include two consecutive weekends in many units. Antler restrictions ranging from three point (western count) or better to antlerless to spike only, depending on unit and season. It is an exceedingly tangled web they have woven, and one that leads to a certain aura of immediacy once the hunter figures out what he can hunt where, for a few days anyway.
Hunter numbers are down dramatically in this state. Most blame our overly complicated hunting regulations. And yet we have billboard size "scorecards" along some of our most infamous deer collision corridors, keeping the year long tally. And our game department is at a loss as to how to encourage more hunters to take the field. Their "answer" has been even more "special" programs, setting more "special" seasons, and heaping complication upon complication. By golly, they are just going to pencil whip those herds into submission... Meanwhile, average hunters take a look at their regulations and stay away in droves - either unable to make heads or tails of all of it, or afraid they will unknowingly violate some obscure rule and wind up being fined all out of proportion to the alleged misdeed.
And the poor motorists just keep mowing them down.