For a start we have to accept that there is no one silver bullet that will solve the problem of deer damage. Wild deer have to eat to survive and they enjoy the tasty morsels they find in our gardens. However there are various ways we can discourage deer from causing mischief and that is the subject of this interview with Marne Titchenell of Ohio State University. I came across this on Margaret Roach’s A Way To Garden website.
Q. I know that ?know thy enemy? is one of the prongs of success that you preach in wildlife control. Let?s start with getting to know the white-tailed deer, which east of the Rocky Mountains and actually most everywhere in the country except the Southwest, I believe, is the primary deer species In?North America. Many animals haven?t done so well with human development, but why have deer done so well?
A. You?re right. First of all we?re talking about a very adaptive species. It doesn?t take them long to figure out the resources they need to survive and where to find those resources. They coexist with us very, very well.
What?s interesting about white-tailed deer, if you look back at their history in Ohio, for example, there was a time back in the early 1900s where there weren?t any deer?they were extirpated, which means they were no longer existing in an area they once occupied. A lot of that had to do with changing landscape and hunting pressures, but the point being that in 1923 they were introduced here, and only a short 20 years later, their populations had been doing well enough to allow hunting.
So this is a species that has a very successful reproductive strategy and is very good at finding the resources it needs to survive. When we look at Ohio, for example, there are great resources. When we look across the landscape, deer need a nice mix of open habitats as well as forested habitats, and we provide that.
When you look at the foods that they are eating, the Midwest is huge as far as agriculture and that provides a good food source for those deer.
Go to the next page to read more of the interview with Marne Titchenell.
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