Estimated U.S. deer population, 1450 to 2016 | Hacker News Reader

Estimated U.S. deer population, 1450 to 2016

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80 pointssurprisetalk125 comments

Here’s a random deer population anecdote. When I was a kid we never ever saw deer near our house. But when we went out to the countryside we would see them and it felt like a fun treat. It felt like seeing an unusual wild animal. Now the deer population in the suburb where I live has exploded and we see deer multiple times per week in our backyard. It’s an odd contrast.

My anecdote: I go hunting every year and rarely see anything, but almost without fail I get back to the suburbs and see one or more eligible bucks wandering around in people's yards. A superstitious person might think they're getting selected for that behavior somehow.

They eat my garden... but I can't shoot 'em because they're bound to end up bleeding out in some poor kid's sandbox.

Where we are, our county conducts yearly deer population control in the off-season in the local parks (usually weekends in January/Feb, right after the public hunting season)

Same here, and yet ticks everywhere, freezer empty...

Opossums eat ticks like mad and are immune to rabies. Maybe trap some and release around the garden?

> Opossums eat ticks like mad

They do not eat lots of ticks - but will eat them if they have to.

I'v heard chickens are quite effective though.

Chickens do absolutely love to eat bugs.

I know it's hunting season when the deer flood my neighborhood

There have been some cities (can't recall which and too lazy to look, but it was in Utah) that were allowing bow hunters to hunt in the city limits.

Now I live in the middle of nowhere and people can hunt on the land next to me. There are deer everywhere, but come hunting season they seem to know where the public and private land is!

I’ve a few hundred acres of forest next door to me, see deer every day. Until I have a valid tag.

I live in Lansing, NY, a few miles north of Ithaca, near Cayuga Lake. Hunting with guns is prohibited in the town. Bow hunting is allowed. We have lots of deer. There were two fawns zooming around on our lawn yesterday (with their mom watching.) I've seen as many as eight deer in the backyard at one time.

We have to be careful what we plant in the garden, and deer ticks are everywhere, but otherwise the wildlife is welcome.

They extended the bow hunting season this last year to try to keep the population down.

There’s a state park near us that permits hunting, but only in half of it. Won’t see a deer for miles on the drive in, until you hit the invisible line… and then they’re everywhere. They definitely know the rules.

I swear they know when hunting season starts and is over.

They simply disappear from our area during hunting season, only to return in huge numbers as soon as the sounds of gunshots stop being heard.

They definitely do. Gun shots are an obvious sign for them, but deer aren't stupid and they pick up on so many other signs of predators. The biggest one being people sneaking through the woods every day, and that those people are now in more camouflaged "skin", stopped smelling like modern deodorants and detergents and may switch to oil smells that are used on guns and bows, those humans freeze and hide in their presence like predator, and they come around every year in a seasonal pattern.

Just the people who sees deer come in their yards every day being fed or munching on garden plants and flowers and such would themselves immediately notice their extra skittish nature or outright absence when hunting season starts eve if they didn't know what date it was on.

That smell thing is probably huge. When yon get out into the wild, deodorant smells super strong. Humans have so many strong artificial smells on them (clothes, deodorant, hair stuff, sunscreen, bug spray not to mention all the other stuff around a campsite)… we must stand out for miles.

Take all that away on a seasonal basis and damn right something must be up. Animals aren’t stupid. They know you are there well before you know they are there.

Reminds me of this:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/12/22/1139781...

I mean, you're literally selecting for that behavior by hunting the ones in the hunting grounds and not the ones in the suburbs.

Every freaking day at my house they eat all my decorative plants and the food from my garden. If shooting them was legal I'd never have to buy meat at the grocery store again.

My dad (a genuine West Virginia hillbilly) likes to tell the story that one year through the summer and early fall, he would watch a large white tail out his kitchen window every morning while drinking his coffee. Easily a 10-12 point buck. Around mid fall, he started tracking it to find where it went during the day with plans harvest it at Thanksgiving.

He saw that buck every morning for 8 months and tracked it for two or three weeks. For two weeks he never saw it once. The first day after hunting season, he was drinking coffee and watched the buck peacefully grazing in the yard.

I believe it.

> harvest it at Thanksgiving.

That’s s such a weird way to describe the killing of a wild animal, as if it was a pumpkin you were growing in your back yard. Not that I’m saying that there something inherently about hunting in general.

If you're going to kill something, call a spade a spade. Don't disrespect the life by pretending otherwise.

I think it's because harvest implies you're getting use out of the animal outside of killing it. Hunters like to make the distinction that they are also hunting for food as well as sport. Because, as a hunter, if you're hunting solely for some weird joy of killing things, you're a sociopath.

> Because, as a hunter, if you're hunting solely for some weird joy of killing things, you're a sociopath.

Or honest both to others and yourself.

Do you kill the carrots in your salad?

Is a deer a plant?

Maybe?

By the time I shit them out, they are definitely dead.

At least one would hope so...

Yea, my family is big into deer hunting, and they use the "harvest" euphemism, too, mostly when talking to non-hunters. It makes the deed sound more pleasant, but it really is not the correct word. You "harvest" crops that you have previously "planted" and "cultivated." In most states that I know of that allow deer hunting, it is illegal to breed the deer or feed them, so there's no concept of planting or cultivation that would support using "harvest."

A pumpkin is also alive.

IMO - killing animals for the purpose of eating them is wildly different than trophy hunting. I'm fine with calling hunting to eat "harvesting", I would not buy that nomenclature for trophy hunting.

Harvesting implies he killed and ate it. Whether you see that as a euphemism or more graphic probably depends on your dietary philosophy.

Why? It has nothing to do with my dietary “philosophy” harvest just seems like very silly word to use in this case for no straightforward reason.

It not like anybody would say that they “harvest” farm animals (I hope)?

Ah, gotcha. I think you're just not accustomed to this use of the word. It's in the dictionary and people use it that way. In this case, probably used for effect in the story, but it's legitimate.

Curious why you hope it's not used for farm animals?

Funny, a few years ago a friend of my dad's was drinking his morning coffee and saw a beautiful elk on his lawn just munching away happily. It was a couple days into the season, and he owned a large piece of rural land. So he filled his elk tag from his patio, in his bathrobe.

When I was first driving (nearly 20 years ago..woof), one of the roads the went to my parent’s house was absolutely treacherous with deer - way worse than any other road in the area. You had to be on guard and I had two incidents where deer ran into my fully stopped car.

Now? There are still plenty of deer there, but they no longer spook at all. I don’t slow down one bit, and they often just keep eating on the side of the road. I guess all of the spook-genes died out in that area as cars were a bigger danger than coyotes and hunters.

I love literally on the border of a state forest where there is deer hunting. I have driven around in that forest hundreds of times, and I never see deer up there. But down on the road I live on, near the houses, in people's yards, you will see deer everywhere.

But the state forest is also crawling with hunters driving around endlessly when the season opens. Like in the last couple years, I have run into traffic out in the woods. Not to mention there are tons of people out on loud ass dirt bikes with no mufflers on them, people shooting at gravel pits constantly, even blowing up tannerite and shit... It's no wonder the deer stay out of the woods. It's so peaceful down here in the rural neighborhood.

Same here. In the 1950s and 1960s, I never saw any deer near where I live. Now they are a nuisance animal.

They are the pigeons of the suburbs and forests.

I always thought of mourning doves as the pigeon of the suburbs, but I may be biased from seeing them at bird feeders

There are a lot of them.. I see a lot more than when I was young. They are magnificent but I do not like them when they are hanging out near the highways.

One jumped in front of my car while driving 60mph on the Merit parkway in CT.

I was ok, the deer really bounced off my car, Though my car kept going but after pulling at a rest stop a short way away and watching my coolant pour out of the radiator and down the drain I knew it was was totaled. The speed it happened was stunning, it was tragic and sad. It happened 25 years ago and when driving I still sometimes get stressed when in rural areas at night.

A cracked radiator is a pretty easy fix. Like forty bucks in parts and thirty minutes.

Depends on the car, your tools, and your working space.

a cracked radiator is pretty easy to fix after a front end fender bender on a car from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.

Less easy to fix is the fascia/front end on a 2021 Make/Model because they're designed to be "totaled" in a 60 mph collision. (the shock absorption that destroys the vehicle front end keeps the occupant safer in the cabin.)

tradeoffs :)

No one drives only "60" on the Merritt Parkway.

To be fair the speed on that road varies greatly (0 to 70) depending on the time of day. It was raining so I was puttering along.

Every time I drive the Merritt, I feel like I'm in the Monaco Grand Prix!

(well, other than when there's heavy traffic)

If anyone wants to go deer hunting with different scenery, come to south-eastern Australia.

They’re an imported pest and in plague proportions, so, please, come kill them by the dozen and do our environment a favour.

Also, New Zealand. https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/things-to-do/hu...

Do you need a tag and permit to hunt them?

Firearms license yes, though transferable from overseas. Permit yes, but just apply online in a few mins. No tags required.

Edit: Oops that was for NZ, not Aus.

I don't recall exactly what I needed when I did a hunt in Australia in 2013, but it wasn't particularly difficult to get the paperwork done. I do think there was a firearms permit and a tag involved.

Please, please come to my region of New Zealand and murder as many deer as you want. They are devastating out native flora (and my gardens). Absolute pest, I rue the day they were introduced here.

I saw a few on the south island. My farmer host told us about how they were imported long ago for sport hunting, of course, without any concerns for the consequence.

If they're such a big problem why isn't the government doing anything?,

Broadly speaking, they are, but Department of Conservation isn't well funded and has bigger pest issues than deer.

https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/predator-fr...

The government does a lot of work to control deer but it's expensive and difficult work. They are an incredibly successful species in our environment due to our mild winters and a lot of native flora are excellent food stock for them. They have no natural predators here, and not really any introduced predators.

You can read more about what New Zealand's Department of Conservation is doing to control deer here: https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/animal-pest...

Maybe an opportunity for a drone company...

If you're anywhere near Dunedin, drop me a line ;)

and rabbits and foxes

Please come to Hawaii, to the tropical paradise of Maui, and hunt deer, please!! They're an uncontrolled plague here with no predators at all.

So, what you're saying is we need to breed and introduce giant deer-eating cane toads.

Guam as well.

Ok if I were genuinely interested in doing this, where would I find more information?

Not a hunter myself, so I’m not sure, but there appear to be companies offering deer hunting tours in my neck of the woods. Google “deer hunting Victoria Australia” should turn up some links.

The forests of north-eastern Victoria are a beautiful part of the world and the deer are a serious environmental menace.

Be aware that our gun laws are quite strict so you’ll have to check that you’ll be allowed to bring your preferred gun with you, and what permits you need.

They are a plague in hunter heavy new hampshire. Please don't poach our poachers :)

And with them, deer ticks have taken all the magic out of being outdoors. At least where I live in the north east, if you go for any kind of hike, not even going into the brush, you'll end up with a bunch of ticks on you.

And yet for years we get to hear about how scientists could simply population control or even eradicate ticks by releasing genetically modified ones. And they never will. It'll just be a little carrot dangled in front of the masses. Into perpetuity.

it's being done with mosquitos, why not w ticks?

Gonna need a citation on that one. I'm quite familiar with mosquito eradication efforts, but not ticks.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220215113405.h...

Yeah f that. Just use Balsam pine needle essential oil on the land you want to control the ticks on [1]; it's very effective at killing ticks and quite safe (though it can impact other insects so best to spray in winter)

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/dalhousie-study-t...

Ticks tend to be concentrated in specific areas even within the same region. I'd be hiking the Long Trail or the Appalachian Trail in Vermont, and could go for miles or days without finding a single tick. Then walking through a different section and pulling five of them off within an hour.

As a side point, if you have a tick issue at your own property, look at keeping some Guniea Fowl. They are great for keeping tick numbers down.

But good grief those animals make sound annoying sounds.

Another alpha tick predator are possums.

I hear that comment a bunch but it doesn't bother wife or me. Occasional dust up when they get loud but that's fairly infrequent. I must have gotten some easy going ones.

I've been in NH/VT/MA a fair bit and I've still yet to find one on me. Either I've been getting them and not noticing or just hiking/biking in the wrong (right) places?

Hiked mt washington last week, no ticks. Makes sense, very few deer/game.

Walked across a small grass abatement between my office and another office building, two ticks.

It's kinda random but definitely more than I ever recalled growing up.

One thing you can do in tick prone areas, if you are wearing the clothes for it, is to avoid walking on the "easy" deer trails and instead crashing straight through big bushes and brush to get through and otherwise giving a real wide birth from the edges of wood and brush lines. Ticks climb up plants right to the tips of branches and leaves to overlook cleared openings and trails to find prey. But there will be very few ticks in the middle of dense brush and bushes and they aren't sitting there ready to pounce.

If you see a wall of inconvenient brush but a clear animal trail that breaks through at one point or where they skirt around the edge to get to a break, it is natural to want to follow it yourself. But that opening is right where ticks hang out to best find prey. And the same goes for the overall trails where there is clear ground beneath overhanging branches

Obviously don't do this in public faced nature recreation areas that people come to enjoy the views and wreck it all up. But on private lands or deep in the woods where 20 other people aren't going to try to follow your path, just full send it and go through a less convenient spot.

Spray your pants with permethrin (and DEET too).

I'd like to remind all those talking about deer as pests, it is humankind that is responsible for destroying ecosystems and getting them out of balance. On the one hand, we encroach on natural habitats, remove predators, pollute water and vegetation. On the other, we live a wasteful life style and throw half of our food in the garbage. It's kinda obvious why these creatures tend to crowd our cities and suburbs (along with boars, foxes, bears and other fauna).

What’s the alternative to considering them pests? Rewilding the suburbs? I don’t like over development or the destruction of wild habits to make room for strip malls either, but didn’t that ship sail decades ago? Suburban sprawl is a reality, and in all likelihood, it’s only going to continue to expand. The deer have been displaced. Allowing them to freely wander in neighborhoods, subsisting off garbage and ornamental bushes, isn’t a good solution for them or humans.

> Rewilding the suburbs?

Sounds good. I've planted some American Chestnut to help the process along. Hazelnuts will go in soon; lots of things eat the fallen nuts ("mast").

The big problem is dealing with all the invasive plants. Garlic mustard is a spawn of the devil.

I love when people rip up their sod and let their yards go wild (my own landscaping is grass free). It's a step in the right direction. But there are still roads, traffic, sewage lines, electric poles, fertilizer runoff, mass insecticide spraying, and the like. It's still the suburbs and can never be rewilded to a meaningful degree with so many people living there -- at least not in densely populated states like mine (NJ).

All those are considerations, but the end result will still be much wilder than any agricultural land.

american? did you get the hybrid that can withstand the blight?

Yes, it's a seventh generation backcross with the Chinese Chestnut (so, almost entirely American, but as they backcrossed they kept selecting for blight tolerance). There were three bareroot plants left over from a local planting project.

Another group is working on a genetically engineered blight tolerant chestnut, which added an enzyme (from wheat, I think) to destroy the toxic oxalate created by the blight pathogen. It would be interesting to get some of those and have them interbreed with the ones I have.

The dip is from a combination of unregulated/market hunting, development, and disease. For what its worth, those three things can and have contributed – in various ways – to the deer population's rebound.

If you have the means I highly recommend learning to hunt deer. Venison is delicious (I make a legendary consommé) and understanding where your food comes from is something everyone can benefit from.

As someone from the Midwest, I avoid venison because of CWD. I don't trust hunters to properly get their stuff tested, and I believe we don't fully understand the impact of it and what happens when you eat meat with it.

If my wife had death-ray vision, every deer in a five mile radius would be dead. They eat her roses.

You guys move to Prince Edward Island, where the deer problem takes care of itself (1).

(1) https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/deer-swims-from-n-b-to-p-e-i-is-...

What is the context here?

If the chart is correct, why did deer disappear almost entirely around 1900, what led to the almost complete rebound by 1950, and why the recent downtick?

Massive population expansion in the US coupled with a lack of any real regulation modulating the harvest of deer; both deer hide and venison were mainstream commodity products in the 1900s and are specialty products today.

Their populations are now managed pretty carefully, but, just as importantly, their natural predators weren't really husbanded back into their ranges, so, in many places, their only real predator now is car bumpers.

According to the chart, white-tail deer populations started to crash between 1700 and 1750, and then all deer populations fell further starting around 1850 and hitting bottom near 1900.

But really, only white-tail deer populations have recovered since then, with the “other” group crashing again to all-time lows.

Odd

In Canada, the leading cause of death for deer is actually hunger/hardness of the winter.

source: My hunting license class 5 years ago

The downtick could be chronic wasting disease.

Deep population dynamics seem to be pretty well studied, and what I'm reading is that this is mostly attributed to land use issues?

The number of permits issued is probably the single largest factor. States manage the herd size up to encourage hunting (which brings in hunting tourism, and to some extent, license revenues).

Start issuing more permits and you get less deer.

Or how about why data stops at 2016? What’s currently the status of the deers in 2023? Climate change is clearly having an impact on our whole ecosystem.

I’ve seen a shift in deer management in my state over the past decade or so. Archery season has been extended, the number of anterless tags increased, and this year, any resident that wants one can have one - no more lottery.

I am no expert, but I assumed it to be in response to their population. I only ever harvest one as that is plenty of venison for me, but the population could certainly sustain more.

They were hunted the brink of extinction just like bison.

Population tanked around 1900 due to no regulations and massive human population moving west and everyone shooting deer on the way.

Conservation movements (mostly by sportsmen AKA hunters) led to regulations (each state now has a wildlife or game department to set hunting seasons) and a shift away from harvesting anything to mostly just harvesting bucks during short seasons.

Recent downward trend is due to several things:

1. Loss of habitat due to humans. Mule deer are known to migrate hundreds of miles, and there are a lot of highways to cross. Winter habitat is being paved over for human progress. (Cool video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIAyb-1uwTg)

2. Chronic wasting disease is an issue in wild mule deer populations with no cure (similar to mad cow disease)

3. Harsh winters can take a toll and really slow any chance of mule deer population growth. Certain places in Wyoming this year had 100% fawn mortality (every deer less than a year old died due to the harsh winter, see: https://www.wyomingnews.com/rocketminer/news/state/what-s-in...).

4. The internet has enabled a lot of out-of-state hunting, by making it easier to find places to hunt (Google Earth, OnX, etc.), learn how to hunt better, and understand the regulations, so there are more hunters on the landscape with better technology. States manage for this and limit the number of hunters and shorten seasons.

5. Predator re-introduction/recovery as well as many states that have banned certain types of predator hunting. This can be a touchy subject among hunters. A lot of people are okay with deer and elk being hunted but not wolves, cougars or bears.

I've been deer hunting for 30 years. My experience is with mule deer and black-tailed deer on the west coast and Rockies. Not much whitetail experience, but I do know that whitetail deer in the east and south don't have as many predators and do well in agricultural landscapes. They can have two or three fawns each year so their population can grow quickly. Mule deer inhabit harsher landscapes (mountainous terrain mostly).

Regarding (1), for blacktails I'd add meadow encroachment. Parts of their range have sees a sizeable portion of the meadows where they browse taken over by conifers and shrubs. These were kept in-check by fires pre-1500.

Thank you so much for all this info!

I always wonder how estimations could be made as early as 1450, especially when the land wasn’t fully surveyed for a couple hundred more years. You always have to take these estimations with a grain of salt

I thought that the population in the earlier centuries was not as large as at present due to hunting by the original bow hunters and because much of the area was mature forest. Mature forest canopy shades the ground to the extent that undergrowth is sparse and deer have little to feed on. Their best habitat in mature forest is marsh edges, riverbanks, blow-downs, fire scars, etc, which cause breaks in the canopy.

Aah!! That's why they are always standing in the ditches hanging out near the road. The roadways are breaks in the trees and I noticed they love the shrubberies along the roads.

I wonder what's causing the downward trend with white-tail deer specifically since 2000. New approaches to wildlife management? Renewed interest in hunting?

Perhaps reintroduction of wolves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_reintroduction

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1673056191621021696

Good coverage on the decline and ruse of deer and other North American populations in The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers by David Lack (1956). Deers almost wiped out by we humans. But wild oscillations of mule deer when protected. Hunting was prohibited in 1906 when there were about 4000 left on the Kaibab plateau. Numbers reached 100,000 by 1924 but then plunged to 10,000 by 1939 due to starvation from overgrazing.

Ditto for white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania—down to 1000 by 1905, then protected and population was up to 1 million by 1927. Then down to 500,000 by 1938.

The other day I was driving to my brother’s place on the north side of Chicago and there’s an abandoned railroad overpass over the road at one point and I glanced up and saw an 8-point buck walking along it. If I weren’t driving I would have gotten a picture of it. It was a kind of surreal juxtaposition.

Random tangent but does your state pick up deer carcasses from vehicle collisions? In Canada they do but I heard recently that in some places in the US they are just left on the side of the road for carrion eaters?

Im told by a friend that it is common for people to pick them up and eat them as well, if it's fresh enough. Midwest US

Used to barely see caucuses on the side of the roads in Michigan but some law must have changed as they just leave them all as you mentioned. Probably saves a decent amount for the state.

Wisconsin used to until the budget was cut. Now you get to see decomposition timelapses and leather carcasses everywhere.

They are suppose to in my state, but in reality they don't unless someone specifically calls about it. It seems to not have the proper funding to do it, and that lack of funding results in the corpses rotting for way too long which makes the job far worse for the people who do it and thus there are less willing candidates who also demand better pay and put their effort towards the easy fresh calls.

A lot of people could pick up fresh killed animals without a problem, but not as many people can handle dealing with a half rotted and bloated deer, which makes the lack of funding far less effective than it would otherwise be with proper full funding.

Leaving them out sounds ecologically friendly.

In other news, black vultures are now being seen in NY state.

Deer don't care about nation-state boundaries, this is one of the more ridiculous metrics I've seen. Deer in the NE American/Canadian boundary zone are not comparable to deer in the Sierra Nevada and foothills. You need to look at thinks like watersheds, habitats, etc.

As far as why the East Coast has a deer problem, they killed off all the predators, unlike on the West Coast. Reintroduce wolves and mountain lions, that's the solution.

Even coyotes help control deer populations.

East coast coyotes are larger than in the west, I've heard. A smattering of gray wolf genes, plus selection pressure with no actual wolves around.

I'm in California, the coyotes where I live are small-- but they still manage to kill fawns (and, rarely, adult deer-- e.g. catching them while they're giving birth or are injured). Larger coyotes would presumably have some real success against the adults.

Against injured/sick ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_coyote

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