Each year between September and December thousands of eager hunters head afield with bow, muzzleloader and shotgun in hand hoping to fill the freezer and bag a trophy buck during whitetail deer season in New Jersey. Hunting is one of the oldest human traditions, yet in our neck of the woods where meat is plentiful at the local grocery store, the number of people hunting each year shrinks. With no other natural predators, and plentiful sources of food, New Jersey’s deer population has grown out of control, with massive impacts to the state’s forests, farm crops, and public safety.

Anyone who has commuted to work during the fall and winter months will inevitably have seen the remains of numerous deer strewn across the roadways. Many will probably have had collisions with deer themselves, or have had to chase them out of their gardens. For all the visible damage caused by deer each year, the damage caused to New Jersey’s forests is far less visible, and its impact far worse. In many of New Jersey’s forests – both public and private – regeneration of native plants and trees just isn’t occurring as overabundant deer eat away new growth, leaving behind inedible invasive species to fill in the gaps left behind when trees and plants die. These factors combined contribute to the slow death of New Jersey’s biodiversity.

Prior to European arrival, deer densities across the state ranged from about 5 to 10 deer per square mile. In some regions of New Jersey today, this number can exceed 100 per square mile. The deer population is so great that many regions have unlimited bag limits for unantlered deer, and require taking one before the chance to take an antlered buck – the ultimate goal for many hunters. Even with these incentives and the sheer number of deer, they can be surprisingly elusive, and bagging one can be a frustrating endeavor, with multiple trips required to earn a clean, ethical shot. For those seeking to use firearms, only a six-day window is available to do so. The barriers to a successful deer hunt aren’t just controlled by the limited window of time, which is further constrained by work, family and weather, but is also confounded by the high barriers to entry for beginners: equipment costs and experience are expensive, especially in a sport where participants have a moral obligation to ensure a clean, ethical kill. This often means that hunting is only available to those who can either invest a significant amount of time and money into equipment and learning, or who have friends and family to guide them. On top of all of this, New Jersey’s regulations – which include 8 different rule sets for over 40 individual deer management zones that can vary from town-to-town or even street-to-street (not to mention separate laws for owning, carrying and shooting firearms and bows) guarantee that the new hunter will be confronted with a labyrinthine maze of rules and regulations to navigate at every step of the way. Neglecting a single one of these rules could land the aspiring hunter in a lifetime of legal trouble.

All of these factors guarantee that the population of hunters continues to shrink, while deer populations soar. This is confirmed by the Division of Fish and Wildlife’s harvest reports for the 2023-2024 season, which indicate a 7% decrease in overall deer harvest from the previous season. Despite this decrease, the harvest of antlered bucks remained about the same, with just a 0.6% decrease. By contrast, harvest of antlerless deer was down 12%, reflecting the reality that antlerless deer are much less desirable, and that many hunters only seek trophy bucks. This highlights the problem when using hunting as the solution for managing the deer population: how do you encourage the taking of less-desirable but more numerous antlerless deer to actually make a dent in the deer population? 

Many environmental groups, including hunters and non-hunters alike, have long advocated for the commercial harvest and sale of venison to encourage the hunting of less-desirable unantlered deer. A model for this already exists in Hunters for the Hungry; however, without a real monetary incentive for culling wild deer, there can be no hope of addressing the overpopulation enough to allow native forests to regrow.