Maryland firearm season will open up Saturday. By noon, there will be a dozen plus bucks harvested off my farms of which half or more will be very nice examples. Some hunters just have to shoot the first decent buck they come across, no matter how much they know that that buck is average or worse and another better one will be along shortly. On four farms the harvest should be over a hundred deer in firearm season, about a third will be bucks. Well the farmer who tends it hopes for that number and I concur.
Having too many deer just stresses the entire herd until they are collie size and just about eats the poor farmer out of house and home. What worries me if there is a disease that enter the herd population density is so high herd might have an extreme die off. We had several small die offs in the last two years but they burned out and only caused total die offs in a mile or so area. Still weird and sad to find hundreds dead deer in the woods. excess numbers move in and filled the void but still.
I did close two of my farms to all squirrel hunting this year. We have two different groups of Delmarva Fox Squirrels on them and they are a protected species. Did not want some poor kid shooting a squirrel, getting a ticket for killing a "protected" squirrel species and the DNR are just a-hole enough to do it. Don't know if the squirrels migrated over there, thirty plus miles across land and two rivers, or more likely the MD DNR moved them there without asking or telling me about it. They did the same thing with wild turkeys several years ago which helped, or completely caused, my quail recovery efforts to fail. Bastards think just because you own the land that you have zero say in what is going to happen on it. By the way, the DNR don't get a Christmas card from me.
My second concern is that the Sate DNR will "discover" the population and then claim that timber harvest will never be allowed on my land since it might disturb a protected squirrel species. In fact if they succeed in making it I bet that will be exactly what happens. We have a history. Bastard still claim quail and turkeys are best friends. Maybe I should have bought half a dozen single shot .410s and given them to local kids.
