There are many reasons why deer populations have decreased over the past years. Some of the reasons include their habitat, diseases, and also harsh winters.
Deer are susceptible to a variety of diseases and parasites. One of the main deer diseases is hemorrhagic. Hemorrhagic disease is a general term for epizootic hemorrhagic disease and bluetongue virus. Some infected deer may not show obvious symptoms, while others may die in one to three days. Typical symptoms include fever; excessive salivation; swollen neck, tongue or eyelids; sloughed or interrupted growth of hooves. Not all deer die from the disease but researchers say that almost 50 percent do. You can find it here.
Another reason why the deer population has decreased was the habitat. The most valuable and preferred food plants are browsed out or eliminated. Deer are then forced to utilize lower preference foods with lower nutritive quality. Coyotes are a huge factor on the deer. They work in packs on deer population. Coyotes focus on fawns or the weakest one. You can read this article.
The harsh winters are another factor on why there is a decrease in deer population. The cold weather with strong winds lowers their metabolic rates and they lose their body fat. With the harsh winters it is hard to find food. Deer need good nutrition in order to survive.
There has been a decrease in deer population over the past years. If there were fewer diseases, more food and the winters weren’t so harsh the deer population would be greater and this would give the hunters more opportunities. If you would like to find more facts click here.
I agree that the deer population has fallen and is falling right now because of the harsh winters and disease and it is hard for the deer to rebound from that and produced more deer than the deer that died. With hunting season people have a harder time trying to find deer and have a good shot at one because there are so little number of deer population. If the winters stay harsh and the disease never lets up it will be a challenge for the deer population to bounce back to the flourishing populations of the past. Taking more tags away from the annual drawing I think will be a good thing in the long run so the deer can try and grow the numbers so in the future hunting for children and everyone will be that much better, instead of not having any deer for future generations. Scientists believe that the deer population is just in a drought and will eventually come back to its original state. For more information go to this link.
http://wildlifecontrol.info/deer/Pages/Populations.aspx
I agree with all of the reasons stated about the deer population begging to lower, however with herd management the amount of deer could quickly come back up. Also with habitat management the deer will have an area to live in and be protected from harsh weather. Many deer die from health problems and that can be stopped by lower the amount of deer that are in a herd. If you have a bunch of deer in one herd, if one gets sick it can quickly be transferred to all of the other deer and that could whip out a bunch of deer, but if you there were a bunch of small herds it would whip out less deer and take more time to kill more deer. If there are too many deer they will have to fight for land, food and shelter. But if there is not enough deer hunters like me will not be able to do what we enjoy doing.
http://wildlifecontrol.info/deer/Pages/Populations.aspx
I am a hunter and didn’t know most of the stuff I found here. I learned a lot about the deer population and what was happening to it. I didn’t, however, know about the types of diseases that the deer can get. This was truly an interest blog worth reading.http://wildlifecontrol.info/deer/Pages/Populations.aspx