Wanted: More Hunters

America's deer crisis isn't confined to human population centers. In all 50 states it extends to wildland (sometimes vast tracts) where deer--including elk, moose, caribou, blacktails, whitetails, mule deer, and such aliens as axis deer--are managed more by superstition than science. First we killed too many whitetails, then too few. They've increased from an estimated 500,000 in 1900 to an estimated 33 million today, and they now occur in all 48 contiguous states. There is even concern that the explosion will cause the extinction of mule deer because whitetail bucks breed mule deer does, producing sterile males.

Most state game and fish agencies are funded largely by fishing and hunting licenses and taxes on sporting equipment, so they tend to cater to the appetites of sportsmen instead of their long-term best interests. You would get the same curricula in schools where the kids signed the teachers' paychecks.

No state had managed its deer more abominably than Pennsylvania, but now it's leading the way. Backed by the Pennsylvania Habitat Alliance-- a coalition of conservation, sportsmen's, and land trust groups put together by Pennsylvania Audubon and its partners--the state game commission is allowing and urging hunters to shoot more deer, especially does. If the herd is reduced to carrying capacity, deer will be bigger and healthier. Ruined range that can't support deer now will be able to do so, and there will be far more habitat for other wildlife, including other game species. "The commission has finally seen the light," comments Pennsylvania Audubon's director, Cindy Dunn. "This is precedent-setting. We think Pennsylvania can become a national model, where the hunter's role changes from resource taker to provider of an environmental and ecological service."

In Pennsylvania, where towns cancel school on opening day of deer season, animal-rights groups dare not show their faces. Here the hunters accomplish the groups' mission for them by promoting the "sacred doe syndrome," the notion that "Dammit, does make bucks" and "I never shot a doe, my pappy never shot a doe, and his pappy never shot a doe." Bucks are nice trophies, but you can't control deer by shooting them; they're polygamous.

Before the tireless, charismatic Gary Alt took charge of Pennsylvania's deer program in 1999, every biologist who tried to control the herd got canned. Deer were tearing up the woods as early as 1917, when the game commission director, Joseph Kalbfus, "thank[ed] God" that he would not be around in a decade because "someone is going to have hell to pay." In the September 1950 Pennsylvania Game News, commission deer biologist Roger Latham wrote about a man who was presented by a good fairy with a pile of gold and a cloth bag. The fairy warned him not to take too much because the bag would rip, and he'd have nothing. But, blinded by greed, he kept piling in the gold until the seams gave way and he "was left holding the bag." "Were the deer hunters satisfied when the deer population was doubled from 1913 to 1915," demanded Latham, "doubled again by 1921, again by 1924, again in 1927, and again and again until at its peak the herd was estimated to have increased five hundred fold? Has not the game commission warned for the past 20 years that the bag contained more gold than it could safely hold?" He inquired if deer should be managed by "well-trained wildlife men or . . . the whims, fancies, and selfish desires of the deer hunters themselves." Choosing whims, fancies, and selfish desires, the hunters had him fired.

In the past two years Gary Alt has given 150 lectures. When he speaks, auditoriums overflow, and people watch video feeds from cafeterias and gyms. There is much shouting and cursing. Alt has become a master at cowing bullies. "Suicide," he called the job when it was offered to him; then he toured the woods and got mad. "It just drove me to my knees," he recalls. "I couldn't believe it. I'm not talking about little pockets but thousands and thousands of square miles that have been devastated. Raising more deer than the land can support has been the biggest mistake in the history of wildlife management."

But the problem isn't just too many deer; it's also the skewed sex ratio. "We shoot 80 to 90 percent of our bucks every year," says Alt. "For good natural selection the biggest, strongest bucks should dominate breeding. A buck is in its prime at four to eight years. Hell, they're not even alive. Less than one in 100 makes it till his fourth year." Beginning in 2000 you could shoot two does in Pennsylvania, and in 2001 doe season ran concurrently with buck season instead of being offered later as a consolation prize. In each of the past two seasons hunters killed about 300,000 does, a decent beginning.

With help from the Habitat Alliance, Alt has made fair progress in selling the need to kill more does. But it's a monumental challenge. The big concentrations of deer are in the deep woods, where few deer hunters venture; many hunters are convinced that the population is down, because they hunt near the roads. At Alt's lectures the Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania, which claims 60,000 members (with no supporting evidence), passes out such printed invective as, "Dr. Alt and the PA Game Commission have caved in to the environmental's [sic] community, who either oppose hunting, or don't want any deer." Spokesman and board member Charles Bolgiano blames Audubon, claiming, "Audubon is pushing this because it's their policy to promote flower and shrub growth."

But other hunters think that a little flower and shrub growth is not all that unreasonable a goal, and that it's okay for them to do a little hoofing. Deer hunter and outdoor writer Ben Moyer has enjoyed the wildflowers in the hollows along the West Virginia border since he was a child. Each year there have been fewer. Two springs ago he was admiring about a dozen large white trilliums where there had been hundreds when a herd of deer appeared and consumed every one. Jim Seitz, president of the Pennsylvania Deer Association (a member of the Habitat Alliance), complains about hunters who want to "jump out of the car, walk 50 yards into the woods, and shoot a deer."

Each year, Pennsylvania's 1.6 million deer destroy $70 million worth of crops and $75 million worth of trees. About 40,000 of them collide with motor vehicles annually, doing $80 million worth of damage. This isn't just a wildlife-management issue. "If we can bring our deer herd under control, it will have enormous impact all across America," Alt told me. "But if deer hunters don't seize the initiative here and elsewhere, society will do it for them."