
(Beth Clifton photo)
Deerland:
America’s Hunt for Ecological Balance & the Essence of Wilderness
by Al Cambronne
Lyons Press (246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437), 2013. 263 pages, paperback. $18.95.
Reviewed by Merritt Clifton
Opens Al Cambronne, “We live in Deerland. The U.S. now has over 30 million deer, a hundred times more than a century ago. They routinely disrupt entire ecosystems. They ravage our gardens and suburban landscaping, and every year they kill and injure hundreds of us on our highways…Still, deer are magical. Their mere existence makes the woods feel wilder. They signify far more to us than just meat, antlers, or a graceful, mysterious creature slipping through the shadows…We commute farther and borrow more so that we can live beside them. If money remains, we buy vacation homes where we’ll see even more of them. A few of us happily spend two or three years’ salary for a small piece of untillable land on which we can hunt them…Regardless of how you may feel about hunting, in many parts of America we now have a very real problem with too many deer. In some of those places, hunting is a big part of the solution. It’s also, some would argue, a big part of the problem.”
That, in 12 sentences, is Deerland. The rest of the book fills in the details.

(Beth Clifton photo)
“The Deer-Industrial Complex”
The first half may be the most informative to non-hunters, exploring what Cambronne calls the “Deer-Industrial Complex,” the competition among hunters to kill deer with ever-larger antlers, and hunters’ feeding and baiting strategies.
Along the way, Cambronne describes an ongoing transition he perceives in the culture of deer hunting, from the pretense that it’s all about getting meat to near disinterest in venison among many hunters, who focus instead on shooting a spectacular trophy. In areas easily accessible from big cities and known for producing deer with big antlers, such as Buffalo County, Wisconsin, hunting as part of a rural lifestyle has given way to hunting as a pursuit of affluent urbanites.

Mural painted in 1937 by Kurt Wiese, who had in 1929 illustrated the first U.S. edition of Bambi, by Felix Salten.
Hunting has evolved toward the European model
Hunters today are older, richer, more politically organized, and more influential than ever before, but hunters are also less numerous. From being a pastime of average rural Americans a generation ago, hunting has evolved toward the European model, as a pursuit of a landed gentry [hereditary in Europe, merely wealthy in the U.S.], their guides, and their gamekeepers.
Cambronne details the transition in Buffalo County at considerable length, noting similar trends in many other parts of the U.S.
The second half of Deerland is less expository and more contentious. Cambronne would probably rather be called a nature writer than a hunting writer, but he is chiefly a hook-and-bullet writer, whose arguments tend to be less about deer than about what would be most likely to boost hunting participation.

(Dennis Baker photo)
“Too many” deer
Central to Cambronne’s case is the idea that we currently have “too many” deer.
Indeed, we have more deer than ever before, including large herds in some highly problematic places. Almost a century of “buck laws,” which encouraged hunters to shoot bucks but spare does, manufactured unprecedented deer abundance to the point that many states now aggressively promote doe hunting instead.
Yet, unlike in the mid-20th century, when the U.S. had less than half as many deer but had frequent mass losses to starvation, mass starvations in recent decades have been vanishingly few. Factors from maturation of the suburban tree canopy (now providing more browse and acorns) to the effects of climate change appear to have significantly increased the carrying capacity of the habitat.

Quail. (Beth Clifton photo)
Deer vs. birds
Indeed, deer in much of North America have depleted the forest understory that is the breeding habitat for many neotropical migratory bird species.
But that same understory can fuel wildfires, which also deplete breeding habitat.
Whether the net effect of deer on birds is positive or negative is accordingly unclear.

Puma at Big Cat Rescue.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Abundant deer have meanwhile facilitated the recovery of pumas in the western half of the U.S., and of wolves in the upper Midwest and Maine, and have helped the recovery of alligators in the Deep South.
Claims about deer overpopulation, usually voiced as arguments for more hunting or culling, tend to be about the population levels that the public will tolerate, called “cultural carrying capacity” in wildlife management jargon––rather than about the actual needs of nature.
Options
If as a society we decide we want fewer deer, we have six options, which are not mutually exclusive:

(Beth Clifton photo)
- We can let the situation take care of itself, through disease, predation, and the effects of vehicular collisions;
- We can amend our own habitat preferences to make our yards and urban green spaces less attractive to deer;
- We can let our dogs habitually run at large to harass deer, as was customary until under 40 years ago;
- We can accept the use of contraceptives for deer;
- We can hire shooters to cull deer, already widely practiced in Northeastern and Midwestern cities where recreational hunting is impractical;
- Or we can revitalize recreational deer hunting, now practiced mostly by men over the age of 50.
Bowhunting? Venison?
The latter option, favored by Cambronne, includes encouraging more bowhunting, using pulley-drawn bows and perhaps crossbows rather than the recurve bows of a generation ago.
Cambronne argues that although arrows shot from recurve bows kill deer outright barely half the time, bowhunters using current weapons have a killing rate comparable to that of hunters who use rifles.

(Beth Clifton photo)
Another possibility, discussed by Cambronne and favored by Jim Sterba in his 2012 opus Nature Wars, would be to allow hunters to sell venison, thereby encouraging them to kill deer in greater numbers.
(See Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards Into Battlegrounds.)
Developing more tolerance
Alternatively, we can develop increased tolerance of deer. We can learn roadkill avoidance, for example, learning to look for a second deer after seeing one deer cross a road.
Accepting that we live in “Deerland” and behaving appropriately could go a long way toward mitigating deer/human conflicts.

(Beth Clifton)
Deer predators
For much of the public to accept the presence of deer predators in suburban neighborhoods might, however, be a tall order. Pumas, wolves, and alligators passing quietly through in the wee hours of the morning may be ignored, but those same animals feasting on a deer carcass within sight of a school bus stop are another matter.
We cannot pretend that deer populations will regulate themselves in absence of predators. Deer do regulate their numbers to some extent in harsh winters, when starvation causes some does to reabsorb their fetuses, bearing only one fawn in the spring, or none, after having conceived two. But that does not happen often in most North American deer habitat, and will happen less as climate change makes winters milder.

Vultures consume roadkilled deer.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Denial won’t work
Neither can we pretend that denying the grievances of people who believe we have too many deer will make those grievances disappear.
Landscapers in new suburbs may be able to plant trees and shrubbery that deer don’t like, but people whose trees and shrubbery are already decades old will mostly not find that an attractive option, while orchardists need to be able to grow the trees that bear fruit.

(Beth Clifton photo)
Market gardeners and floralists likewise have valid reasons for wanting to minimize deer depredation while growing what they want to grow.
No perfect solutions
Deerland spotlights the problems associated with what Cambronne calls the “hunt for ecological balance and the essence of wilderness.”
Deerland does not offer perfect solutions, certainly not from a humane perspective.

Merritt & Beth Clifton
But perfect solutions, at present, do not yet exist, and maybe never will. For now, we can only seek the approaches to deer management that do the least harm.
The biggest problem with the “too many deer” argument isn’t too many deer, but rather too many people. Humans are the species that throw the balance off for the whole of our planet. Surges and declines are common in the natural world, but humans cause lasting ebb and flow that surpasses tipping points.
If society were serious about controlling deer numbers, it would be through contraception. Predictably, the objection to that compassionate method comes from hunters, the very group responsible for high deer numbers thanks to bucks-only hunting regulations, and government programs that pay farmers to leave a portion of their crops in the field, mainly to feed deer. More food means more deer.
The hand-wringing from the hook and bullet crowd should be completely ignored. A caring society would embrace, and insist on contraception.
There could be an added benefit to darting deer in the woods. If there are hunters present, they could be darted too. Then society would reap some real benefits – no more hunter offspring.
Thank you for this review. I live in a part of the country where deer hunting is king. Public schools are closed the first day of hunting season. While I may see a vehicle in this area advertising the driver’s veganism two or three times a year, not a day goes by when I don’t see a pickup truck plastered with stickers depicting trophy bucks. These trucks cost anywhere from $20,000-$60,000+.
Hunters set up trailcams to scope out the “quality” of the deer on their land. They have automated feeders that dispense feed–bagged corn with brand names like “Record Rack.” There are countless baits, scents, salt licks, etc. to lure deer. And the sheer amount of sound-based calls is pretty stunning, too. I bought a few of those on markdown at Walmart to use in my photography.
I’ve learned quite a bit about deer hunting by osmosis, living in this area. I can tell you when hunters tell nonhunters that it’s all about “spending time in the woods” and “getting meat for the table,” that is, for the most part, BS. I would suggest that nonhunters spend some time in a store such as Cabela’s or Bass Pro (or on their websites) looking at the sheer amount of “stuff” involved in hunting, and the prices of said stuff. It’s just another luxury hobby–albeit one that snuffs out many thousands of innocent lives.
The one animal there truly are far too many of is the human animal, which causes far more harm than all the other animals combined. And yet, no one except sociopaths would condone “sport hunting” of humans, harassing humans with dogs. or letting humans die off due to disease. The double standard, as with so many troubling issues solely involving humans, is alive and well, unfortunately.
30 million deer did you say? Western state wildlife depts will claim that a handful of the returned native wild horses and burros are “overpopulated”, yet they as returned native North American post gastric, (as compared to ruminant) herbivores are much needed to balance out the ecosystem, enrich soils, seed plants. See my book The Wild Horse Conspiracy, where I go into concise and honest detail on this important point. It’s available on Amazon.
Check out what is happening in Colorado They want to kill predators to boost deer populations, for hunters no doubt.
https://summitcountyvoice.com/2016/08/09/colorado-will-kill-bears-and-lions-to-boost-deer-herds/