The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says thanks to ideal hunting weather during opening weekend of the firearms season, hunters harvested a total of 207,000 deer during the 2010 season. That's the 13th largest harvest on record.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources may have found the state's first wild deer infected with chronic wasting disease.
The deer was among 524 tested for the disease in the Pine Island area. DNR officials say preliminary screening by the University of Minnesota strongly indicates a positive case, but the agency is waiting for confirmation from the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.
Booming deer populations on some Gulf Islands are driving away songbirds and leaving the area susceptible to invasion by foreign species, says a recent study.
Come springtime, Carole Clement will break out the coyote urine.
She will begin her annual ritual of using it to soak cotton strips that she places atop sticks erected around her gardens.
"It's kind of a universally known deer repellent," the Mentor resident said.
She lives near Veterans Park, where a recent deer count indicated a large overpopulation.
Clement, an active member of several conservation groups, addressed City Council last year about the deer threat to vegetation.
"In 50 years it's going to be ‘Veterans Meadow' because they've eaten all the seedlings and the young saplings," she said.
Hunters statewide harvested 1,689 deer at 16 state parks, up from the 1,334 deer taken in parks in 2009, according the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.
A legislative audit says the Division of Natural Resources needs to develop a better way to control damage done by West Virginia's deer population.
The Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania and the Game Commission may finally be headed toward a resolution of their long-running feud over deer management.
A source close to the case revealed that the discovery phase of the lawsuit the group filed in 2007 in Commonwealth Court against the agency has finally been completed.
And both sides - the Unified Sportsmen represented by attorney Charles Haws, of Barley Snyder LLC in Reading, and the commission, represented by the state Office of the Attorney General - have agreed to a Nov. 29 deadline for filing motions in the case.
A court date of 10 a.m. on Feb. 28, 2011, has been set in the event that the lawsuit is not decided before.
Official details about the lawsuit were hard to come by, but it was clear by this issue's deadline that efforts have been made to settle the case out of court. Although, a call to Haws' office went unreturned, and the Game Commission would release no information.
In it's fifth year, Charleston's urban deer hunt set a new record.
City Manager David Molgaard says 60 deer were killed during the several month-long season that ended Dec. 31. Forty-two animals were does.
The number of deer killed grew from 2009 even though less permits were issued in 2010. There were 184 permits issued in 2009 and only 124 in 2010.
The hunt targets the white-tailed deer population, which county officials say is over-browsing forests in the park, damaging the landscaping of private homes in the area, spreading Lyme disease and leading to some car accidents.
The county estimates there are 140 to 150 deer on the 1.75-square-mile reservation, a number they would like to reduce to 35 but anticipate falling short because there aren’t enough hunters and the season is too short.
Two similar skin infections in hunters who field dressed white-tailed deer led to the identification of a new parapoxvirus, which can mimic other infections and lead to diagnostic delays, according to researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In both cases, the hunters, one from Virginia and one from Connecticut, cut their fingers in November 2008 while field dressing deer that appeared healthy at the time of death, according to the researchers, who reported their findings in the Dec 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (abstract here).
Patients with parapoxvirus infections typically have a single lesion, developing over 4 to 8 weeks, that progresses through four stages—papule, vesicle, shallow annular ulcer, and scab—that heals with little or no scarring.
Infections can recur, and smallpox vaccination doesn't block parapoxvirus infection. The group noted that human infections are likely underreported, because many patients may not seek medical care because of the usually self-limited nature of the disease.
The clinical course was similar for both patients. About 7 weeks after the field dressing injury the hunters sought medical care for a nodule at the wound site that didn't heal. In the case of the Virginia patient, doctors removed and biopsied the lesion, but it recurred about a month later. The Connecticut hunter was treated with antibiotics, and his doctors biopsied the lesion. In both instances, specimens were sent to the CDC for evaluation.
Ten years ago, the City of Fair Oaks Ranch took a survey and counted 2,800 white-tailed deer within city limits.
Back then the city took some steps to control the population.
In a recent survey, more than 5,700 white-tailed and axis deer were counted within the city limits.
This is why for the past nine months, the city has been studying a variety of options to control the population - everything from bringing in sharpshooters to trap and relocate programs.
"It’s hard for hunters who are seeing about 30 percent fewer deer from the population peak," said Tom Litchfield, DNR deer biologist. "We are reaching population goals throughout eastern Iowa. Even in the far southeast corner, the deer herd is at middle to late 1990s levels."
Sharpshooters from Five Rivers MetroParks will thin the deer herd in Hills and Dales Park for the first time this year, with the nighttime shoots beginning as early as this weekend and continuing into the winter.
Michael Enright, MetroParks’ conservation biologist, said the latest aerial infrared survey showed 22 deer in and around the small park on the Kettering-Oakwood border. That population has changed little since 2003, but Enright said it is almost three times higher than the 20 deer per square mile recommendation, and over time, the forest has begun to show damage.
[The] Sallas [Forest Strata Corporation], a group of private landowners with property on the opposite side of the island from the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, completed their second fallow deer cull last month, using a mobile meat processor and specially designed dark rooms to keep the deer calm.
Now Parks Canada, which has already provided staff and in-kind support for the cull, is hoping to expand the corral and cull system to the park area.
The population of Mediterranean fallow deer was introduced in the 1920s and, despite 30 years of trying to check the population through First Nations hunting, commercial hunting and shipments to deer farms, the animals have continued to ravage underbrush and eat newly planted trees.
Valley Forge National Historical Park can proceed with its controversial plan to use sharpshooters to radically reduce its deer population, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
Calling the imminent plan a looming "bloodbath," animal-rights advocates, who were awaiting the outcome of a suit filed last year, had requested an injunction late Tuesday night to stop it.
But U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg ruled against that suit Wednesday, thus making moot the injunction requested by Friends of Animals and a Chester County group, Compassion for Animals - Respect for the Environment.
66.5 percent of respondents would prefer the deer population decrease.
45.9 percent of respondents are very concerned they will be in a deer-vehicle collision within 12 months.
50.4 percent are very concerned they will contract Lyme disease within 12 months. (62.7 percent believe deer are directly related to the risk of transmitting the disease)
62.7 percent support public managed deer hunts
66.4 percent support the Archery Program to help manage the deer population
64.2 percent are not at all familiar with the current Fairfax County deer management program.
59.5 percent oppose no deer population control efforts; 12.2 percent of respondents support no deer population control efforts.
Around 74,000 deer are hit on Britain's roads every year, according to figures from breakdown service Autonational Rescue.
Such accidents can cause up to 700 human casualties, including several fatalities, and annually cost more than 21 million pounds in damage, according to the data.
"There are probably around 200 accidents a day involving deer," said Autonational marketing manager Ronan Hart.
"It's a much bigger problem than people realise and not something that happens once in a blue moon to motorists," added a spokesman for deer protection organisation, The Deer Initiative.
Kiran said the district’s police officers are in training now for the project. To qualify to be Illinois Department of Natural Resources sharpshooters, each must shoot five bullets into a 1.9-inch target from 50 yards.
In the forest preserves, the officers will not fire at targets more than 50 yards away, and they will always shoot downward from stands or by using the terrain. They will also only shoot into the parks at a distance of at least 300 feet from the parks’ boundaries.
Cook says he believes the district should consider shotguns or even bows and use hunters, who know the considerations for safely bringing game down.
“Hunter management works well and safely,” he said, “and you only reach 70 — 80 yards with a bow — a far cry from two to three miles with a high-powered rifle.”
Hunters and hikers should be wary of a potentially disease-carrying parasite that has established a foothold in Ohio, the state Department of Natural Resources warns.
A reproducing population of black-legged ticks, or deer ticks, has been found in Coshocton County, said Glen Needham, an entomologist with Ohio State University.
The tick, which can carry Lyme disease, is fairly common in surrounding states, and hikers have come across single ticks in Ohio for years. But scientists didn't discover a population large enough to reproduce and sustain itself until this past spring, he said.
Chronic wasting disease has cast a pall over the Wisconsin deer herd and the state's deer hunting tradition since it was discovered in 2001.
One could argue the only good CWD-related news in the last decade is the nightmare scenario has not played out - the disease has not jumped the species barrier to affect humans or livestock.
Wisconsin wildlife managers have taken aggressive measures to initially try to eradicate the disease and more recently to reduce its spread. The disease is now found in a 9,000-square-mile area of south-central Wisconsin.
The primary tools have been deer reduction efforts (hunting or sharpshooting) and transport prohibitions on deer and elk.
Canadian researchers are testing a CWD vaccine they hope will add another tool to the tool box.
