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RevRagnarok t1_iyjlnha wrote

Encroaching on their living spaces and decades of Maryland screaming "guNS ArE Bad" so not enough hunting.

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BakeBeginning7863 OP t1_iyjlzcs wrote

What are your reasons for being pro-hunting.? It doesn’t seem like the amount of deer is dangerous that they’re starving or need to be controlled by humans?

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PsychologicalCost8 t1_iyjresa wrote

Overpopulation of any species can cause ecosystem collapse, even without their obvious starvation or encroachment. Overconsumption of feed species (plant or animal), destruction of habitat for other species through overcompetition, runoff characteristic changes causing erosion and overfilling of streams, which has run-on effects for watershed health that affects both our drinking water and our waste removal systems.

For an extreme example, check out writings on the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, specifically how the physical environment rebounded based on decreasing overpopulation of non-predatory species. i.e. deer: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/yellowstone-wolves-reintroduction-helped-stabilize-ecosystem

The lack of a predation force on grazing animals like deer in suburban areas is a genuine problem for the local ecosystem - though arguably comparable to other issues like grass-monoculture and non-organic runoff.

Despite the commenter you wrote to, Maryland's gun laws are pretty pro-hunting on the whole - little restriction on the types of firearms used for and useful in that activity, and well more than half the year is some sort of hunting season at a state level. The problem is more HoCo-specific, which prohibits private discharge of a weapon at basically all times and has no hunting grounds at all, as far as I've found. The county does two culls a year with hired sharpshooters, but it never quite seems to be enough to really curtail the population in safe bounds; I'd be curious to see them study private-land hunting in-season in the western part of the county, and also study bowhunting in denser areas.

At the end of the day, the problem is that nature doesn't exist outside of human development, but despite it. We're collectively generally pretty bad at actually examining how we fit into ecosystems, treating them like problems to be excluded from our communities rather than complex systems that we're trying to fit ourselves into. Modern life is pretty good at scaring off predators, so instead we have to deal with the prey - we've become the apex predator of the local ecosystem, and failing to act it is a bit like taking the wolves out of Yellowstone.

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Shento t1_iyjwixd wrote

They do have to be controlled though. Multiple reasons, but spreading ticks and Lyme disease is a big one. I live in Columbia and the Columbia association will shoot deer occasionally hey put up signs to let people be aware for obvious safety reason.

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FarmerExternal t1_iynvdh6 wrote

Have you noticed there's a lot more car accidents this time of year? It's typically not car on car, it's someone hitting a dear on the highway. The population of deer is dangerous to humans, and unchecked will very soon become dangerous to the deer themselves because over overcrowding. Food is not the only concern here, in overcrowded animal populations there's a much higher chance of them catching and spreading disease amongst the community

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