>> I would think it's {sterilization} a better option for the deer than killing or slow starvation due to disease.
How would that work? Chemicals in bait? Catch / spay / release? That last one sounds expensive.
I would have guessed that feral deer were like feral cats, and that more would drift in from the edges of any area where all the locals were sterile, until the local sterile + fertile population density was high enough to keep newcomers out. But would that density be low enough to eliminate the original problems like malnutrition, crop destruction and car accidents?
Or would the sterilization program be ongoing, so that fertile deer that drifted into the region would be poisoned or caught and sterilized before they had many fawns?
I don't think that "reducing their numbers" can work for more than a few years. They do seem to reproduce fast whenever there is any browse.
>> When herd density becomes critical they become malnourished because there isnt enough "browse"
I agree. That seems like the cruelest option of all. "Just let them starve." And malnutrition does cause more diseases and probably stillborn fawns. And stripping all the bark off all remaining natural vegetation isn't responsible either. Destroying even the remaining bits of forest or range should be prevented - it's all a consequence of our moving into an area and turning forests into subdivisions.
A deer jumped in front of a friend in a small old car, and both the car and deer were "totaled". Maybe that meant that the cost of repairs was more than the value of the (old) car. He was wearing a seat belt and not seriously injured. Maybe a newer car would have been so light that the deer would be injured less and my friend would have been injured more.
My feeling is that, anywhere we've cleared most of the forest that was their habitat and eliminated their natural predators, we are responsible for managing their numbers. Probably that means that we are obligated to become their (humane) predators. Harvest them as painlessly as possible (i.e. responsible hunting by trained hunters).
Being squeamish or shortsighted is not enough excuse to let the consequences of residential development torture the herd and destroy the rest of the remaining local ecosystem.
I was horrified at first to learn that professional hunters were brought in to "slaughter" enough deer to keep them from starving, and they left "a mountain" of bones and offal in an Oregon town where my SO lived. Allegedly the carcasses were thrown over some cliff, which doesn't sound very good for public health and sanitation! (Probably it was the lowest-cost solution.)
It does seem like a huge amount of meat was wasted. My guess is that the "animal control department" wouldn't spend any of its budget to help the "social services department" or private food banks - or poor people. Couldn't the funding be found to pay for some dressing and butchering and hauling, when the value of the meat saved would be so much more than the costs? Or are there "well-intentioned" regulations that prohibit common sense?
I don't know what else to suggest. Frequent semi-pro "hunts" or "slaughters", with budgets for saving the meat and regulatory relief from unhelpful regulations?
In that neighborhood, even BB guns were strictly forbidden. Maybe residents there were such total Elmer Fudds that hunting really would have been unsafe. It was fairly dense residential with patches of State land and a few large farms visible on the other side of the gorge. My guess is that the most important training needed would have been "don't shoot a deer when the backdrop is a house".
But even after the big one-time slaughter, "herds" of deer still wandered every yard, eating anything green, like Sherman's march to the sea. Previous owners had put a wire cage around some bush that looked like sage. It was invariably trimmed back flush to the wire by deer.
The only people who had any garden had a Stalag-style fence around it. Big, big yards with almost nothing green in any of them.
There was a local mountain lion or big wild cat of some kind. From the number of scattered bones, it must have been one fat cat. Needless to say, there were NO pets off leash for long in that town.
