Standard Mischief

I’ve got it. Unfortunately, it only works on deer.

(clickable photo)

Oddly enough, I was driving below the speed limit with my high beams on looking for the little buggers. The one responsible here, in an apparent suicide attempt, jumped out of the woods on the right mere feet before my bumper. I never even had time to apply the brakes. After the venison collision, bambi skid and spun itself - breakdance style - across the roadway to the opposite shoulder, where it got up and skidaddled off into the woods. Although it ran away, I’m sure it bedded down nearby and died a slow and painful death. And some people think hunting is cruel.

In case anyone is counting, that’s deer number 6 and collision event number 3 for me.

The collision was this past Monday night (technically Tuesday morning), But  I still have this staring at me from a tab in Firefox on Saturday, so let me see I can finish this post up. I’ve got a few things I want to say but somehow they are not forming coherent paragraphs. Maybe I’ll try a bulleted list:

• Deer population levels are at epidemic levels. The state knows it has a deer population problem but does little to try to alleviate them. They could lower hunting license fees for out-of-state hunters, extend the season, or open up more land to hunting but the state does none of those things.
• Maryland bans the use of modern rifles for the harvesting of deer in the very counties that have the worse overpopulation problem. The firearm hunting season is a mere 17 days per year.
• The places with the very worst overpopulation problem have almost no legal areas open to public hunting.
• Development is good for deer population (or in our case, overpopulation), When developers cut down trees and plant lawns, leaving tree buffer zones along the lowlands and creeks, they actually create more deer habitat. Deer are edge feeders. That means that they live in the forest and feed in pastures.
• Most doe give birth to two offspring every year. That means that the population nearly doubles every spring.
• A stressed whitetail population is far more susceptible to sickness and parasites such as Chronic Wasting Disease, or Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease.

In addition, perhaps someone could explain to me how the state can own the population of whitetail deer, create rules and regulations regarding the hunting of those deer (enforcible even on private property), and then not take responsibility for the crop damage or auto collisions the state owned herd cause even when it could be shown that the state is grossly mismanaging the public herd? Maybe we need to send in the tobacco lawyers?

Also, I’d like to extend a very special message to the eco-wack anti-hunt meat-is-murder love-your-mother nutjobs. You know, the type of person who would seriously argue for the proposal of “seeding” the ocean with iron to boost phytoplankton growth in an effort to combat global warming, Or would claim to understand the need for forest fires in the lifecycle of redwood trees, or the type of person who is more than willing to volunteer to put up bluebird nesting boxes in national parks in an effort to improve the habitat of these types of birds, but never less is vehemently opposed to responsible wildlife management principles that not only save the lives of people in the type of auto collisions that I keep having, but also feed the homeless and hungry and result in a healthier whitetail population. In addition, hunting teaches responsible firearm ownership and is the only management tool that actually adds money to the state coffers rather than ending up as red budget ink.

I know that you don’t like seeing the cute little bambi thingys killed, but it’s time to set your emotional knee-jerk reactions aside and be a responsible steward of the earth, like you claim to want to be.