History of Deer Hunting

Hunting is a great adventurous hobby. Hunting of animals like Deer is interesting. For some hunting deer is also passion. It has a long history and even many fairytales about deer hunting. Different countries have different rules for deer and their hunts. Some restricts them and some allows them to be hunted. Let get to know more about this beautiful animal and its existence.

Deer are well distributed over the world, but the Virginia deer is a distinct species that is native to America. This fact, together with the American principle of freedom to own arms and the freedom to hunt, makes the hunting of these animals an American institution.

Previous to the discovery of this country, deer, as well as all other game, were the property of the land owning nobility and the right to hunt was denied the common man. This was all changed with the settling of America. Deer were plentiful in this new land and belonged to the man who could bag them. Here the hunting of deer ceased to be a sport and became a serious business, often of almost life-and-death importance to the early settlers.

In the struggle for existence, these animals played an important role and the development of this country would not have advanced as rapidly as it did without the aid of the meat and skins that they supplied. As the country became more thickly settled and the practice of animal husbandry became general, the importance of venison as a food became less. This did little to ease the hunting pressure on the deer herds because there was still a demand for such a choice food and because an increasing number of people, hunting on a sport basis, were soon competing with the market hunters. This unrestricted hunting result in depleting the herds so that deer became practically nonexistent in the more heavily populated areas. Foresighted men saw the need of protecting these deer for future generations and gradually the different states assumed control and undertook the management of the deer herds.

Restrictions were very liberal at first, but even so, there was opposition to them by many hunters. This opposition to restrictions is still held by many short sighted people at the present time, but without these controls, deer hunting as we know it would not be available to the general public as it is today. With the deer population in its present healthy condition, the hunter has an opportunity to enjoy this sport at its best at a cost that almost anyone can afford. Some years ago, I saw statistics that showed that it cost, on an average, a little over a hundred dollars to bag a deer. These figures were based on the amount of money spent by hunters and on the number of deer killed. Probably these figures are considerably higher at the present time, due to inflated prices. This does not mean that every man that shoots a deer must spend this amount of money on the hunt. Those who hunt and fail to bag a deer outnumber those who are lucky enough, or who have sufficient hunting intelligence, to be successful in their hunting efforts, so that average costs do not mean much to those who kill their deer.

The deer not only provides good meats but also has helped mankind in its fight with rough weathers. Therefore there is a growing awareness to protect the increasing hunts for this animal because their unrestricted hunts is signaling its alarming sounds of its extinction from most the forests of the world.