Deerland: America’s Hunt for Ecological Balance and the Essence of Wildness

by Al Cambronne

In 1942 America fell in love with Bambi. But now, that love-affair has turned sour.  Behind the unassuming grace and majesty of America’s whitetail deer is the laundry list of human health, social, and ecological problems that they cause. They destroy crops, threaten motorists, and spread Lyme disease all across the United States. In Deerland, Al Cambronne travels across the country, speaking to everybody from frustrated farmers, to camo-clad hunters, to humble deer-enthusiasts in order to get a better grasp of the whitetail situation.  He discovers that the politics surrounding deer run surprisingly deep, with a burgeoning hunting infrastructure supported by state government and community businesses. Cambronne examines our history with the whitetail, pinpoints where our ecological problems began, and outlines the environmental disasters we can expect if our deer population continues to go unchecked. With over 30 million whitetail in the US, Deerland is a timely and insightful look at the ecological destruction being wrecked by this innocent and adored species.  Cambronne asks tough questions about our enviroment’s future and makes the impact this invasion has on our own backyards.   

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Animals, Environment

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's informative, intriquiging, with a healthy blend of ecological and social aspects of ungulate over-population. As someone who respects hunting but values ecological balance more I was a little worried this book would be biased-- it is, a little bit, but the author is extremely transparent about where he's coming from and all of his evidence is backed by real science. He has an almost lighthearted tone throughout the book and readily acknowledges his own biases. It's not dense, and it's a quick read. The only thing I didn't love was the multitude of interviews. They were interesting but often didn't add much; I would have preferred the author spent more time on the scientific aspect, maybe going more in depth about predators and natural deer behavior.

[Greg]

This topic is very interesting and very few people delve deeply into it. Unfortunately I think this book is also a bit too surface-level to satisfy me.

I'm a hunter, and I'm already familiar with much of the information in here. The book progresses in the standard but tedious manner of journalist-visits-many-people-they-could-have-called-on-the-phone. Also like most journalistic nonfiction, the author's point of view is not strongly present.

I was on the lookout especially for some commentary on the "habitat improvement" fad which has swept the midwest and drives a huge portion of the deer hunting industry at this time. "Experts" advising people to perform ecologically-destructive mini-farming activities out in the woods that run diametrically in opposition to the goals of public natural resource managers, and driving a loss of common hunting space that creates a threat to the continued recruitment to the sport. The chapter on this had almost nothing to say about the practice except how it excludes local subsistence hunters and messes up property values. These are legitimate criticisms, but there's so much more to say.

Likewise, when he mentioned Gary Alt and the "deer wars" in PA around the turn of the millennium, I almost sprang up from my chair in excitement. I was an active young hunter in PA at that time in a camp of anti-reformists who thought they knew better than Dr. Alt, the PhD wildlife biologist. He told us that to reduce deer damage to the forests and cars and property, and increase the health and size of the deer we were hunting, we would have to make the antler restrictions much larger and make it much easier to shoot does by combining the gun seasons for antlered and antlerless deer, so that people who could only hunt for a day or two a year in gun season would be encouraged to shoot does to fill the freezer instead of going home empty-handed like they usually did.

The animus among hunters was absurd in the extreme. Nobody will ever see a legal buck to shoot again! A bunch of yahoos in the woods who don't have to confirm antler sizes will result in shooting accidents! The woods will be depopulated of does and the population will crash! Why put an ivory-tower egghead in charge in the Fish and Game Commission instead of a seasoned hunter?

The interesting part of this story is that Dr. Alt got most of his way, and after about 2 years no one complained about it again because suddenly instead of seeing only small bucks, people started regularly seeing 6+ point bucks. An 8-point used to be the trophy of a lifetime on public PA land, now many people see a small 8-point as the minimum buck they'd be willing to spend their tag on. Today, if you ask someone who was hunting in 1999 whether they'd rather get in a time machine and go back to those times or hunt today, I don't know anyone who would get in the time machine.

What I'm trying to get at is that in these issues, usually someone is right and someone is wrong, and I'm frustrated by the approach that tends to lay out conflicting viewpoints, presents criticisms of each, and then abruptly ends the chapter to move on to the next topic.

And this book is like that. It's interesting because of its subject matter, but I think it could be more interesting and incisive than it is.

[João · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting! Not very in-depth, unfortunately, but definitely a broad overview of the state of deer-human relations in the early 21st century: effects of deer on local ecology and biodiversity, trophy hunters, people who manage land to promote more deer, bowhunting, deer watchers who feed deer, the complicated relationship between farmers and deer, deer effects in rural & suburban areas, etc.

I was somewhat aware of many of these facets of this topic, but the chapters on stuff I wasn't as knowledgeable on were interesting and peppered throughout with citations and further reading, which I'm excited to follow up on :)

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So fascinating! I read some sections but generally skimmed, and want to read thoroughly some day because I was quite convinced as the author writes that white tailed deer impact all of us living in the US.