by Michele Byers
New Jerseyans know deer.
They’ve hit them while driving, come down with Lyme disease or had their gardens ravaged by hungry deer. They also take beautiful pictures of deer and are awed by the spectacular fawns.
White-tailed deer are literally everywhere. They’re abundant in all 21 counties and have been spotted on beaches, city streets and even inside stores!
So it’s hard to believe that, in the late 1800s, deer were virtually absent from New Jersey’s landscape. Their meat and hides were valuable commodities, and unregulated hunting for personal and commercial purposes left hardly a doe or buck to be seen.
In the past century, though, deer have made a huge comeback. Between restocking, state policies that encourage healthy populations and game laws banning commercial sale of deer products, deer numbers have skyrocketed — especially since our sprawling suburbs serve as safe havens with their smorgasbords of landscape plantings.
Deer are a resilient “edge” species, thriving along the edges of woods, hedgerows, farms and lawns. Suburbia is especially alluring habitat with all-you-can-eat backyard banquets and lush corporate lawns around every corner. Deer are probably one of the most adaptable creatures to living around humans.
The northeastern United States now has about three times as many white-tailed deer as there were when European settlers first set foot in a vast wilderness of forest where sunlight and squirrels seldom reached the ground.
The New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife just launched an online survey, “Living with Deer in New Jersey,” to find out what’s happening with the state’s burgeoning deer population today.
Take the survey at www.njfishandwildlife.com/survey_deermgt14.htm. It’s anonymous and takes only about 10 minutes.
Among the questions:
• Have you or any member of your household had Lyme disease, an automobile collision with a deer or experienced garden and landscaping damage from deer?
• Does anyone in your household feed deer or hunt deer?
• Do you allow deer hunting on your property?
• Who do you feel is responsible for taking action to reduce damage and accidents caused by deer?
What will the survey’s “upshot” be? Perhaps new hunting rules or new approaches to decreasing deer density in places where hunting can’t happen due to suburban sprawl? Perhaps hunting for commercial purposes in key forest areas since recreational hunting alone has not been sufficient to reduce the population?
Overabundant deer are now the primary cause of forest degradation in New Jersey. More deer are browsing each acre of native vegetation than at any time in evolutionary history, and our forests and 850 species of rare plants cannot tolerate their appetites.
A 2011 article in the Wildlife Society Bulletin argues that a regulated commercial harvest of over-abundant white-tailed deer is consistent with conservation values and would meet market demand for venison.
To read this article, go to www.njconservation.org/docs/WSB-article.pdf.
For additional information on deer biology and ecological impacts, visit the Rutgers Cooperative Extension website at http://njaes.rutgers.edu/pubs/fs1202/white-tailed-deer.asp.
Michele Byers is executive director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. For more information, contact her at [email protected] or visit NJCF’s website at www.njconservation.org.

