Where are you most likely to hit a deer while driving along, minding you own business:
#1 – West Virginia
#2 – Pennsylvania. Your risk level is HIGH, 1/71. We are the 42nd most expensive state for car insurance. State Farm, Erie and Allstate are the top three providers. Frankly, I was surprised it wasn’t number ONE!
To read the article and see the top 20, click here –
White-tailed deer in Toronto, Canada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Jeff Houdret once enjoyed watching white-tailed deer roam Valley Forge National Historical Park.
But Houdret, whose Wayne home borders Valley Forge, has not seen a deer in at least a year.
“They’re all gone,” he said as he walked his two Yorkshire terriers through the park on Thursday afternoon.
With birth control not yet a viable option for combatting deer overpopulation, officials from Valley Forge said they would continue to employ sharpshooters next winter as part of their deer management plan.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20140609_Controversial_deer_kill_thins_Valley_Forge_herd.html#Lss3le0CP020DwoL.99
Image via Wikipedia
A controlled hunt will be conducted in the next six months by the Park Service staff at Gettysburg Battlefield and the Eisenhower National Historic Site to thin the deer herd by about 150 animals. The population spiked recently to 80 animals per square mile. The goal is 25 animals per square mile.
The hunt will be conducted at night and in areas closed to the public. The venison will be donated to the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank in Harrisburg. A portion of that will return to Adams County. Last year 17,000 pounds of venison was donated to the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank.
An overabundance in the deer population can prevent forest regeneration and stress the ecosystem. They cause damage to private property, farms, fields and can interfere with overall park management.
Image via Wikipedia
The deer population in Valley Forge Park was cut in half (approximately) when the herd was reduced by sharpshooters starting in November. Estimates put the deer herd in the park at 1,277 animals. The eventual goal is the have less than 200 deer in the park.
Despite lawsuits from animal rights activists, the culling was carried out over sixteen nights starting in November 2010. The overabundance of deer was damaging the forest growth and crowding out other animal species in the park.
Image via Wikipedia
Erich May of State College was so excited to see a deer, that the fact he was on an interstate highway, used by millions of people every year, did not enter into his decision to fire a gun. Erich killed a deer in a wooded median between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Interstate 80, near mile marker 107.
Okay, does anybody really have to question why this was incredibly dangerous and frankly stupid? Those medians are not sufficiently wide enough to keep a rifle bullet or shotgun slug from hitting an unsuspecting motorist. Imagine driving along at 65 miles per hour and having your car struck by a bullet? If you were lucky enough to not be killed, can you imagine how this might scare the bejeebers outta someone and make them crash their vehicle? Imagine the disaster a high-speed crash on a highway full of trucks might cause.
Erich, I hope they throw the book at you and hit you with it!
A federal judge has cleared the way for Valley Forge National Park to begin “thinning” the deer herd from 1,200 to about 200 animals. Annual shoots will begin in November and end in March. They hope to reduce the herd by 500 animals the first year.
For the entire story from the Philadelphia Inquirer, click here:
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