Deer Hunters Would Freak if They Saw a Wolf
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

By Jim Robertson, Exposing the Big Game / Animals in the Wild
November 2013

Approximately one million deer in a state as small as Oklahoma. And exactly ZERO wolves. 100,000 deer killed during hunting season, and it’s not even a dent in the deer population. Natural processes have been ousted and ignored–hunters there would freak if they if they saw a wolf. I can just hear their screams of, “Those wolves are going to eat all our game…” It’s the same story that’s going on across the country. Hunters don’t want healthy deer or elk populations, they want a surplus to justify their “harvests.”

Despite news that wolves are starting to spread out to other states, after their re-introduction to the Tri-state area of the Northern Rockies, wolves are still extinct in most of their former range in the continental U.S. Yet, it seems there’s no shortage of deer; in fact ungulate populations have been booming since the near continent-wide extermination of wolves and other predators that left the lower 48 in ecological turmoil.

Take Oklahoma for example. According to their ”local OKC weekend hunting news”:

Oklahoma’s gun season opens Saturday. The rut is expected to be going strong across the state in the coming days. State wildlife biologists in Okla. expect the peak of the rut in most areas of the state to happen sometime before Saturday’s opening.

Barring any major weather events that keeps hunters at home, Saturday will be the biggest deer hunting day of the year. More deer are taken on the opening day of gun season than on any other. The rut, the mating season of deer, is triggered primarily by moon phases. However, the rutting activity that hunters see has more to do with the weather.

The first time Oklahoma hunters checked in 100,000 deer for all seasons combined was 13 years ago. Since then, there have been only three years that Oklahoma’s deer harvest has not exceeded 100,000.

Photo by Jim Robertson, Animals in the Wild

Wildlife biologists estimate deer hunters take about 10 percent of the deer population during hunting seasons. This gives Oklahoma an estimated deer population about one million.

Approximately one million deer in a state as small as Oklahoma. And exactly ZERO wolves. 100,000 deer killed during hunting season, and it’s not even a dent in the deer population. Natural processes have been ousted and ignored–hunters there would freak if they if they saw a wolf. I can just hear their screams of, “Those wolves are going to eat all our game…” It’s the same story that’s going on across the country. Hunters don’t want healthy deer or elk populations, they want a surplus to justify their “harvests.”

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