One of the biggest benefits to proper deer management is a sustainable population of deer.
“You’re trying to keep your food in balance with the number of animals you have so they’ll have plenty to eat,” Paul Wiggins said.
Mike Staten, an Anderson-Tully Lumber Company biologist who works with Wiggins and his fellow club members, said maintaining the balance between animals and food is not just important but critically important.
“That’s the cornerstone of it all,” he said. “You need to constantly be working on your habitat.
“I like to say that deer are solar-powered: Sunlight to the ground makes the vegetation that deer can reach grow, and you have to have that food to have healthy deer.”
Staten said that becomes a real issue when trees aren’t harvested and their canopies meet to shade out understory.
“If you don’t have the food, you can’t grow deer,” he said.
