The only scientificaly proven cost effective way to keep deer heards at healthy population levels is through hunting. In these grim financial times we are facing in our state and country why spend/waste money to place fencing in targeted areas and reproductive control by surgical or chemical means which has proven to be ineffective? Just what is the cost to trap each individual animal?

There are alot of people who are out of work struggling to put food on their tables to feed there families, I am one of them. Let licenced hunters hunt the deer in the park and ask them to donate the deer meat to "Hunters Feeding the Hungry".

In my opinion this is a win win situation. The deer heard gets thinned thus helping the natural forest and struggling people get fed healthy meat.

I can't believe hunting is even being proposed as an option, here. There is only one way we can humanly control this problem. A condom distribution program will stop 98% of the pregnancies. When used every time, and properly, they are proven to be 98% effective. We can raise taxes for this important initiative to form a committee, which will need to form additional sub-committies, to handle the purchasing, distribution, and enforcement of the new laws which will be passed to ensure the young bucks are using them. I can't think of a more effective means to control this problem.

Condoms being too messy, we can use the tax money to pay Dr. Ruth and the Dog Whisperer to assist the deer in overcoming their lusty ways. Female deer who normally file head of household and produce less than two fawns in the 2012 tax year will be awarded an annual rebate of $200. Hopefully they will put the money aside and send the young'uns off to college one day, thus creating a long term population reduction plan.

How sad that there are people who find the systematic killing of deer humorous!

That russell lady doesn't know anything about the management of deer. She made up a title for herself to fool people into thinking she is important. It's like she bought a toy police badge and convinced herself she can chase down speeders. It's both comical and pathetic.

Hunting doe not create more deer no matter how abstract you want to be in presenting your case. You need to read intelligent, professional, and credible analysis on the subject. You can't extract a passage from a report or study and massage it to fit your world view, not with any credibility. You're trying to convice people that if there were 100 deer and 50 were killed, that the remaining 50 would reproduce more deer than if the 100 deer were never killed. That's as crazy a statment as was made by Susan Russell in the article.

The author of the article made a HUGE and SERIOUS error by saying there are "58 deer per acre."
He should have said "58 deer per square mile."
And, people should understand that these "counts" are not accurate in the first place.
I walk through Jockey Hollow all the time and I rarely see a deer.

The article says:
"The Morris County Park Commission, which operates adjacent Lewis Morris County Park, began a deer hunt in that park in two decades ago...A recent aerial count[y] of deer in Lewis Morris found 58 deer per acre [should say per square mile], a new park commission park said. A manageable number is 15 to 20 deer per acre [should say per square mile], the report said."

Obviously hunting does not work to control deer numbers, if hunting has been going on consistently over a period of 20 years, and yet supposedly there is still a deer density of 58 deer per square mile. When will the general public realize that the whole hunting thing is a scam. If various agencies even breathe a word of any form of non-lethal management, the hunting forces will jump on them and demand a piece of the action, in the form of a hunt. The shooting will go on ad nauseum because, as Ms. Russell correctly stated in the article, hunting stimulates a higher rate of deer reproduction.

I love animals, but I would like to see every damn deer eradicated. They are destroying the forests everywhere. Every tree in my area is at least 50-80 years old. Anything young that starts growing gets eaten before it has a chance to grow. Bullets are a lot cheaper than fences. The reason that hunting doesn't reduce the population enough is that the season isn't long enough. The deer hunting season should be from January 1 through December 31 every year until the problem is solved. The only natural enemy of the deer right now is the automobile, and there clearly aren't enough automobiles able to drive through the woods to take out all of the deer who don't come out onto the asphalt to sacrifice themselves.

Hello! It's time for everyone to realize that we have so many deer BECAUSE the State of NJ deliberately propagates deer on over 327,000 acres for hunters to kill for "recreation." The deer are the victims of the State.
Be a bit more like a kind man who said...
Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans. ~Jimmy Stewart

It seems that Metzler and Jarnstedt are reading the same proaganda or maybe even have a hand in writing it with Russell. If there is any attempt at proagation it's not by some covert State agency looking to destroy the earth by reproducing deer and giving the spoils to hunters, but in the spreading of their kooky beliefs. These are animal rights tactics 101, nothing more.

Just as I thought, I ust took a moment and found that Metzler and Russell are part of the animal rights cult. They are part of some animal league association and the leader of the group is listed on the Anti Defamation League website as an extremist that locked hersel in a bear trap and is part of a press office that touts ecoterrorism in America. There's no credibility in any of the statements they are making.

Obviously, JBBaker does not know or understand what is going on and only wants to criticize people who care about wildlife. Even the State claims in a statute that animals are part of "The whole brute creation" and that killing is animal cruelty.
And, the NJ Departments of Agriculture and Environmental Protection are attempting to educate people about tree-killing bugs. Forests are also failing everywhere due to
fragmentation, sprawl, the draining of wetlands, the clear-cutting of forests, flourishing pests, fungi, pollution, invasive species, climate changes, and the acid rain that has been falling throughout the entire 20th century. In addition the soil in most areas was already acidic because the many rocks are acidic.

We all love animals. I enjoy looking at deer. They appear gentle and at one with nature. But when you consider the growing list of problems they create for we humans living in their midst, it seems clear something needs to be done to lower the number of deer in our area. If we were able to imagine the deer were instead snakes, cockroaches, rabid racoons or rats, we'd have no problem eradicating them tomorrow morning. It's their appearance and our collective memories of "Bambi" that keep us from simply eliminating them in large numbers. As with other crises, this one will fester and little or nothing will be done until Lyme becomes epidemic or until a child is killed in a car accident after hitting a deer. I don't know if the claim the state is trying to grow the deer population for hunters is true. If so it is not just wildly irresponsible but yet another waste of our scarce tax revenue.

There is so much misleading information about Lyme Disease.
Borrelia burgdorferi is vectored principally by a hard tick, Ixodes dammini, which was first and commonly found on the Deer Mouse, (Peromyscus maniculatus). That, I think,is how the name "deer" tick came about!!!!!

Only the mouse is a disease carrier. Deer and squirrels and other wildlife, including birds, are not disease carriers. They can carry ticks, but they do not give ticks disease!

A 3-year study in NJ showed that areas with heavy vegetation had an average of 108.8 ticks per 100 square feet, whereas areas marked by less vegetation and open ground had an average of only 4.6 ticks per 100 square feet.

The reason? Mice need dense ground cover to feel secure. Mice have three principal requirements to inhabit an area: variety of food, nearby water, and ground cover, which is extremely important for protection, whereas open space is dangerous. So, when the deer eat the vegetation, the mouse leave and the tick numbers drop.

By the way, mice find themselves at home in lawns and hedges. Mice and ticks often hide in plants such as pachysandra and ivy and mulched areas.

Also, Dr. Rick Ostfeld, an ecologist in Millbrook, NY, said that a reduction in biodiversity limits other animals that the ticks may feed on. Therefore, if we kill off other wildlife such as deer or foxes, the ticks will then feed mostly on mice, increasing their chances to become infected with Borrelia. Dr. Ostfeld also said that cases of Lyme increase when there are no deer to attract the ticks and the ticks therefore land on people.

Most car accidents are with other humans rather than deer.
Drivers need to assume responsibility and drive defensively!

I drive past Jockey Hollow many times a week, and I have never had to avoid a deer on the road.

Most car accidents are caused by: Driving too Fast, People who are Erratic/Reckless, Inattentive, and Drowsy, Failure to Yield, Failure to Obey, Water, Snow, and Oil, Physical/Mental Condition, and Potential for Distraction (Such as cellular telephone).

In reply to JB.Baker ~
Policy Statement:

Doubtless readers are aware that ad hominem attacks and personal aspersions in blogs and comment pages are generated by hunting clubs and individuals.

Be advised, however, that LOHVNJ will not tolerate malicious libel or slander against any of the upstanding, mainstream, and accomplished individuals who represent this organization.

Such "ecoterrorism" smears in New Jersey began with the recent establishment of the "New Jersey Outdoor Alliance," a hunting and trapping PAC with ties to the Center for Consumer Freedom (see Sourcewatch:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Consumer_Freedom),.

The Center has attacked Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Centers for Disease Control, and the Humane Society of the United States. It has been forced to retract defamatory"ecoterrorism" -- also alleged against the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society.

State Committee
LEAGUE OF HUMANE VOTERS OF NEW JERSEY

a) That is a very poorly written letter, bordering on wholly incomprehensible.
b) I cannot find any post in this entire thread signed by anyone who asserted themselves to be representing LOHVNJ, so the letter appears to be out of place and irrelevant anyway.

The letter he refers to may be incomprehensible to Jon, but most people can understand it. It was posted in reply to one by JBBaker 6:34am on Tuesday, August 2, 2011.