First cousin farms in LA . We ; me , my son in law , his dad , brother and two nephews go down the last week of season and hunt his property. I didn’t go this year but the rest of the crew killed 10 , mostly does . Every deer was given to a needy family. Last year I had 5 processed and brought them home to my freezer . Cousin does use the permits in the summer to shoot deer . He doesn’t have to shoot as many if we do a good job during the season. If you saw what a herd of deer will do to a peanut field or young cotton plants you would rethink your position.
I don’t necessarily have a position. We lease about 200 acres of our property to farmers. From my untrained eye, I can tell beans get ate, and so on with corn, too. But how much loss there actually is, I wouldn’t even know how to calculate it. I’ve never in my life drove by any farm field and said “my god the deer have absolutely destroyed that field” though.
Like Matt said, if this is the best answer for everyone involved, I’ll take the professionals opinion on it.
One question I have though, is, Why the summer? Why not do this shooting during deer season? I get that their crops aren’t standing during the winter, but couldn’t they (the state) just base the number to be harvested from the study performed at the picking of the crops?
