Hunting Archery Duck Deer

Hunters help control deer population - There are about one million deer in North Carolina and every year, more and more of them are causing car accidents.

In 2004, there were more than 15,000 car crashes involving deer.

Some say hunters help keep deer from causing even more car accidents.

For many North Carolina families, hunting is a cherished tradition. Jeremy Hall has been hunting deer since he was six-years-old.

“I went with my grandpa,” he said. “My grandpa was the first person to take me deer hunting.”

But it isn’t just a sport, hunters keep North Carolina’s deer population from growing out of control.

“At one time there were red wolves and cougars and large predators like that roaming North Carolina to help us control deer numbers,” Wib Owen of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission explained. “Those have long since been removed from the landscape. So hunting is the management tool that we use to keep these populations in check so it’s important that we can continue to have deer hunting to do that.”

Five years ago, there were just over 200,000 deer hunters in North Carolina.

In three years, that number jumped by nearly 50,000 to more than 250,000.

But even with more hunters, they’re still killing about the same number of deer. During the 2000 season, hunters killed just over 212,000 deer. In 2004, hunters killed about 214,000.

And without the hunters to keep thinning the deer population, there would likely be even more car accidents involving deer, which puts drivers’ lives at risk.

Deer-car collisions caused an estimated $36 million in damage during 2004.

Wildlife experts said it might appear the state’s deer population has increased, but that’s not true.

Construction and development has limited the amount of land they can roam.

By: Heather Moore & Web Staff