Hunting Accelerates Replenishment of Deer

Congratulations Hillsborough on your comprehensive deer management program. Your strategies have great efficacy…. except for one.

According to Hillsborough’s own data, annual deer hunts have proved ineffective via the rapid replenishment of deer killed. It revealed that since 1997, the highest number of deer killed was 170, in this 2024-2025 season. This was an increase from 146 kills the previous year …the second highest killing. Obviously, the deer population is moving in the wrong direction. Many deer are killed but the next birthing cycle insures replenishment - and more. It is the science of deer biology and behaviors why hunting to reduce deer is not effective.

Joanna Ehler’s research in, The Hierarchy of Deer,” reveals that the alpha elders determine breeding rights. When they are killed, young bucks and does breed earlier, resulting in additional fawns. Ehlers also found that hunting keeps the herds young, which maximizes fecundity right up to their deaths. Older does cease to reproduce.

Research by Richter and Labinsky, “Reproductive Dynamics and Disjunct White-Tailed Deer in Florida,” found that twinning on hunted lands was 38% compared with 14% on unhunted lands.

Left alone, herd growth and recruitment are balanced by natural mortality and the average growth is zero —stabilization.

Dr. John Hadidian, author of ‘Wild Neighbors’ has advised to, “manage the negative effects of deer, not the number.” Hillsborough is misguided to allow hunting as a component of its program.

When a municipality is concerned with its deer population, it often resorts to the most dangerous and ineffective activity- hunting. The Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) reports that its safety regulations of a 450’ buffer for firearms and 150’ for bowhunting, “isn’t a magic shield as misdirected projectiles can still enter (human populated) areas.” Why does Hillsborough’s township committee gamble with the safety and lives of its residents with a proven ineffective tactic?

Deer hunting creates a vacuum and compensatory rebound. It is like cutting flowers off plants to reinvigorate more bountiful blooms. The plants’ energy, as with deer, is redirected to accelerate regrowth.

The DFW has a statewide aggressive strategy to further maximize proliferation of deer, which they rarely talk about. Wildlife Management Acres (WMAs) are leased to farmers with incentives for them to leave “in-kind parcels” of crops as deer/wildlife food. Heavier deer are healthier with maximized fertility.

South Mountain Reservation’s (Essex County) 20+ year deer hunting program has been deemed a failure by pro-hunt advocates. The evisceration of the kills revealed that a high percentage carry twins. More than two decades later the reservation had deer overpopulation.

Watchung reservation’s deer hunts have also inadvertently dislocated refuge-seeking deer into inappropriate urban areas (Plainfield and Scotch Plains), causing problems.

If you need hard proof of the ineffectiveness of deer killing, visit dfw.nj.gov deer harvests 1972-2024. Exactly 2,282,772 deer have been killed, yet public perception is still of too many deer.

The long term estimated deer population in the state is 170,000. Yet in the mere five years from 2020-2024 exactly 204,919 have been hunted (NJDFW deer harvests). If effective, there would be total annihilation of deer. Yet approximately 40,000 deer are still killed annually.

Hillsborough’s Wildlife Commission is dominated by hunters (100%), as is the state’s agency. It is self-serving to have immediate access to huntable land…. precisely what the DFW wants.

To attempt to reverse declining hunters, it seeks easy access hunting for recruitment, retention and reactivation. To sell tens of thousands of licenses annually, hunters must be assured success via excess inventory for a shootable surplus. In large part, the number of hunting licenses sold qualifies the state for federal grants from the Pittman Robertson law (aka Wildlife Restoration Act).

It is unfortunate that hunting is usually endorsed due to politics. As quoted, by Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize Winning economist “success it’s not the merits of an issue, it is the politics of the issue.”

So, residents, having gained insight into the big picture, must decide if they have lost tolerance of the dangerous and ineffective recreational deer killing.

My recommendation to Hillsborough’s Township Committee is to remove hunting for nine years (half the number of hunted years) and reassess the outcome. I think that this would prove that using dangerous hunting of a deer management strategy has no positive effect whatsoever on your deer management goals.

When I moved to Hillsborough in 1995, I researched the prevention of vehicle/deer collisions. I have been following the Township’s deer mismanagement for almost 30 years,

Rose Reina-Rosenbaum

Coalition For Animals

Hillsborough