About 15 years ago my family had a driven deer shoot on one of my farms. Farm is sitting on a peninsula, along the river, with 30-50 acre wood sections on three sides. Shooters were placed in the middle fields waiting for the deer to be driven out by the beaters. Deer were everywhere. They only drove two sections of woods and all the remaining deer were now in the last section. Some cousin made the remark with 23 deer dead that there was a lot of work ahead and thought adding more to it might not be wise. I’m sure the farmer was happy for 23 less deer to feed soy beans to, but would have been happier with another 20-30 killed. Took about three hours to clean up the mess and load up the gutted deer for the processor. By then deer were popping their heads out of that third section of woods.
That was the first deer drive in my family in almost 40 years. Deer drives were very effective way to kill deer in my youth. With near pestilence numbers of deer today drives are no longer needed to obtain deer. I know it would not last long but a 50% herd reduction would go a long ways to getting deer numbers under control and allow for better management. I can kill 75 deer on that farm, according to the state, but I am not allowed to do anything with more than the legal number of deer I am allowed to harvest. I won’t just shoot and waste so now I rent the deer hunting out and give them a discount on next years rent for every deer killed over 24. Kill less than 24 and the rent goes up next year. I don’t want hunters passing up every deer they see hoping for one prized buck. That just eats the farmer out of business. If they only knew 100 would be the magic number for both myself and the farmer. Still 30+ helps.
