Predators make their presence known: low deer populations
Turning into a pretty dismal hunting season this year on the Pacific Coast. I asked my friend Dan Caughey his thoughts on the matter. Too many coyotes," he said.When his grandfather was trapping on the ranch deer populations thrived. Nowadays they keep dwindling, even though the only area with deer hunting outside of Danny's family ranch is 10 miles away.
California and the West for that matter is dealing with a profound surge in predators like mountain lions and coyotes, that put a real hurt on deer populations when they get to the large number they are due to poor management programs by the DFG, either because of county political correctness that ignores biological research, or simply poor financing.
And did you hear that they found a guy they're paying kill an over population of fallow deer at Point Reyes; this while the parks complain they don't have enough money?
California could take a lesson from the Midwest and Eastern US, where hunters are charged fees to hunt parks and keep the populations down. More money for the habitat and more money for healthy animals in a park...but do the wildlife protectors whose main source of interaction is Golden Gate Park get it? Of course not...it's not in jibe with their group's training film, a cartoon called Bambi...
...I'll be doing my part this winter for the deer on the ranch, mind you...with a scoped .223 and a predator call!
posted by CORK GRAHAM @ 8:59 PM
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