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Oh, deer!
White-tailed deer, human interactions get complicated as sprawl changes habitat
Friday, Nov. 13, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by REID SILVERMAN
Animal wardens Jerry Owens and John Miedzinski carry a deer injured by a car from the side of Cedar Lane Road in Leonardtown to a St. Mary's County Animal Control van. The state estimates that 25,000 deer are killed by motor vehicles each year in Maryland.
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As the air turns colder, the thoughts of the local white-tailed deer turn to love, and the thoughts of its main predator — human hunters — turn to venison.
The deer mating season is upon us, and so is the hunting season.
But this ancient dance is changing as the prey happily adapts to life in the exurban residential sprawl of Southern Maryland and its predators age and leave the sport behind.
Deer are finding abundant food sources in our backyards and gardens and are breeding prodigiously, and the sport of hunting them is getting easier with improved technology and an organization eager to take extra game and process it for the needy.
But the average age of Maryland hunters keeps climbing and the number of hunting licenses issued each year keeps falling.
The happy browser
The white-tailed deer, is a survivor.
Once hunted nearly to extinction in Maryland and Virginia (from where it gets its Latin name, Odocoileus virginianus), it now roams the woods and grasslands of the Western Hemisphere as far north as Canada and as far south as Peru.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources estimates that there are about 230,000 deer quietly roving about the state. The population "has been relatively stable," said Brian Eyler, deer project leader for DNR. "We haven't seen an exponential growth."
Eyler credits the population control to DNR's increased hunting limits for deer. "We're really the only effective population control anymore," Eyler said, noting that natural predator populations, such as coyotes, are no longer numerous enough to control the rapidly reproducing deer.
Deer can mate by the time they are a year-and-a-half old, sometimes sooner. Young does normally produce one fawn, but well-fed, older does can have two or three fawns each year. Deer living on hunting grounds live to an average of 3 years old, Eyler said, but deer in protected areas can live up to 15 years.
"Twins are very common; triplets are not uncommon," Eyler said. "It's amazing how fast they could double their population if we didn't have hunting."
Deer mate in a frantic, polygamous season with 90 percent of the does becoming fertile within one week, Eyler said. Fawns conceived in early November come to term by May or June.
Both the fall mating season and the spring birthing season are particularly hazardous for motorists, since the deer wander outside their usual square mile of territory to either find each other or feed and hide their young. Quoting a State Farm insurance statistic, Eyler said that about 25,000 deer are struck and killed by vehicles in the state each year.
"They're just doing a lot of moving. That's what it comes down to," Eyler said. He said no one has fully determined why deer seem to panic and move erratically when approached by vehicles. He speculated that it could be their natural flight response to predators. He urged motorists to "just slow down and be cautious" during the mating and birthing seasons.
And it is humans who are increasingly fueling this fawn bonanza each year. Contrary to popular belief, residential expansion is not destroying deer habitat. It is creating it, and the deer have been quick to exploit it. Eyler said the state seems to be seeing an increase in deer population in residential areas.
Deer might love corn and soybeans, but that's not all.
"Deer are browsers, and they have compound stomachs, so they can eat a lot of things," Eyler said. This includes shrubbery, tree seedlings, green twigs and even poison ivy, which Eyler noted is one of the animals' preferred foods.
"Not only do they have a lot more to eat, but, when you put the houses in, you make the area unavailable for hunting," Eyler said.
Eyler said that farmers kill 6,000 to 7,000 deer each year defending their crops. This is in addition to the 100,000 deer taken by hunters last year. A report issued by the Maryland Farm Bureau estimated that wildlife caused $7.6 million in damage to crops last year. Kurt Fuchs, spokesman for the bureau, said there has been an increase in crop damage caused by deer.
"Some years more than others, but it has been generally increasing," Fuchs said.
Eyler said some farmers have success repelling deer with noisy devices such as propane cannons, but he said dogs are generally the best deterrent.
Hunters bowing out
Particularly energetic hunters had the opportunity this year to pay a total of $66.50 for the license to kill up to 36 deer in the bow, shotgun and muzzle-loading rifle seasons.
Despite the opportunity for a large amount of game, Dan Baker, owner of Baker's Meat House in St. Leonard, said the younger generation has not been drawn to the sport.
"Twenty years ago, your average hunter was 22 to 24 years old," Baker said. "Now he's 42 to 44."
DNR statistics show that the state reached a peak of 200,000 hunting licenses issued in 1975. Today, that number has fallen to about 120,000. This year, approximately 15,000 licenses were issued in Southern Maryland, but not all of them are being used in the region.
At 27, Charlie Carter, manager of The Tackle Box sporting store in Lexington Park, represents the younger generation of hunters. He said he did his level best to thin the deer herd last year, taking 30 animals, both local white tails and the smaller sika deer on the Eastern Shore. "I hunt everything!" Carter said.
On the elder end of the spectrum is Tom Bennett, proprietor of Southern Maryland Firearms in Leonardtown. Bennett said he has left the cold stiffness and boredom of the hunter's tree stand to the younger folks.
"I've been there and done that," Bennett said.
Locked and loaded
So there are plenty of deer to go around, and, despite rumors to the contrary, there is also plenty of ammunition. After the Democrats swept to power in last year's federal election, gun enthusiasts rushed to the store to purchase ammunition in case the party made a push to outlaw it. They didn't.
Fortunately for hunters, shotgun shells were not in high demand during that rush.
"We've got plenty of ammo," Carter said. "Earlier we had a shortage, but now we're doing pretty well."
Carter said that the price of shotgun shells has risen a bit with inflation, but said it is "pretty much the same."
Bennett agreed, saying, "Ammo is coming back in slowly." He said he has plenty of shotgun shells stocked. "It's starting to catch up now."
Doug Walt, manager of Fred's Sports and Furniture in Waldorf, said "Shotgun shells are probably the least affected. That's good for us, because that's mostly what we shoot around here." Walt noted that 30/30 rifle ammo is still not available, but it can only be used in some areas of Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore.
In Southern Maryland, hunters are limited to smooth-barreled shotguns loaded with brass slugs or muzzle-loading rifles. The shotgun slugs have become more accurate and deadly in recent years due to the addition of a pointed polymer tip.
And muzzle-loading rifles, known for their dirty black powder and stubborn lead slugs that had to be forcefully rammed into the rifle barrel, have been made more convenient. Muzzle-loaders can now be loaded with clean-burning powder pellets and bullets seated in plastic sleeves, known as sabots, for more convenient loading. "It's very easy now," Bennett said.
Take what you kill
Some people wish that killing deer would be made harder.
Walking through the woods of the state's 2,600-acre nature preserve in Nanjemoy in recent years has soured Steven Brennan's taste for both hunting and the region's gun culture. The Waldorf animal enthusiast spends much of his time in the woods of western Charles County, watching and photographing birds.
"I'm pretty anti-hunting," Brennan said. His experiences as a nature watcher and an animal rescue volunteer have inspired him to reduce his meat intake and write strident indictments of the hunting culture in local media outlets.
Aside from the fact that the deer and bird hunting seasons make it dangerous for him to hike through the woods from September until May, Brennan said he has seen things that boil his blood.
There were the five deer carcasses he found in a ditch in Nanjemoy last year, he said, stripped of various trophy parts and choice cuts of meat and left to rot. Then there were the illegal deer stands and unclaimed deer bodies he found on his own property.
"DNR is not going out to really enforce the law," Brennan said.
But the nasty scenes Brennan witnessed also anger most hunters, said Mike McWilliams, owner of Wild Game Processor in California. "It only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch," McWilliams said, noting that DNR can't be everywhere all at once. "We're trying to police those guys out of here. Ninety-nine percent of [hunters] are good guys. They're conservationists. They want to keep hunting."
Southern Maryland hunters largely play by the rules, registering their kills and having them cleaned for food, according to local game butchers.
McWilliams said he cleaned 700 dear last year. Baker said he has been butchering four to five deer a night, but that will change with shotgun season.
"I take off for two weeks [from his regular job] during the firearm season," Baker said. He said he processed about 500 dear last year.
Karen Beattie, who runs Chuck's Butcher Shop in Bryans Road with her fiance, Chuck Kline, said, "Once September hits, we are pretty much here at the shop seven days a week until the first of the year."
Beattie estimated the shop cleaned 1,300 deer last year, but she takes all the bloody work in stride. "I've been around it for so long, I'm used to it," she said. "They are beautiful animals, but they can be so destructive."
Donate what you take
So, hunters are allowed to kill up to 36 deer each year, but can one hunter's family eat all of those deer?
"They don't," said Steven White of La Plata. "That's why there is Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry. You can take 36 deer, but a lot of people don't do it. Why take the animal if you can't consume it?"
White, the Southern Maryland coordinator for FHFH, said the group uses grants from the state and local farmers to pay local butchers to clean the extra deer hunters kill, then feeds the meat to homeless and disadvantaged people. White said last year the Southern Maryland chapter donated 590 deer locally and 2,400 statewide. He hopes to donate 550 to 600 deer this year.
Baker said he has participated in the FHFH program for eight years. He estimated that he processed 65 deer at a reduced rate for the group last year. He said all hunters need to do to donate to FHFH is kill the animal, field dress it (remove the innards), register it with DNR and drop it off at a participating butcher shop.
"When the program first started, we didn't [charge] anything for the deer we cut up," Beattie said. "It just seemed like the right thing to do."
McWilliams enthusiastically endorsed the program, saying, "It's a win-win situation. A lot of farmers need deer killed. [Hunters] can only eat so many a year, but they love to hunt. [The deer population] is a renewable resource."
McWilliams said he processed 80 deer for the program last year, helping it donate 3,000 pounds of venison to St. Paul's United Methodist Church soup kitchen in Leonardtown.
McWilliams said he likes the fact that the program has a direct local impact, noting, "You're feeding your people."
