I’m a little biased, true, but I’ve never been a big fan of deer (especially after I started killing them with my cars*).

An article in today’s The Baltimore Sun discussed Goucher College’s plan to use archers to thin the school’s large deer crowd.

Roaming families of spotted deer are a common sight at the private liberal arts college, which prides itself on its environmentally-friendly grounds. The saucer-eyed creatures are featured on Goucher’s Web site and mentioned in commencement speeches. “Deer of all ages and sizes run freely around campus as soon as dusk falls,” senior Lisa Gulian said in a graduation address last spring when reminding the Class of 2007 “what makes Goucher, Goucher.”

George Timko, an urban deer biologist with the natural resources department, said that he first began advising the college about its growing deer problem in 2004, and that thinning the herd is an effective strategy to promote the health of the surviving animals and protect the humans occupying their habitats.

Overpopulated herds of deer living in confined spaces, particularly in the suburbs, tend to be “not too healthy and not too happy,” Timko said.

The state estimates there are about 245,000 deer in Maryland, and the goal is to reduce that number to 215,000. Timko said that estimates of suburban deer are more difficult to gauge, and that those herds are especially problematic because they are removed from natural predators that feast on them in the wild.

In today’s world, the suburban residing deer’s biggest predator is called “the automobile.” I’m all for ecology, but that includes ecological balance. Suburban growth has pushed into the deers’ habitat. We’ve created the problem of these large suburban deer herds, and as distasteful as it is, that means the solution to this problem is either to import a shit load of bear, or try to thin the deer herds. I mean, I guess we could try to teach deer about responsible population control — y’know, give ‘em condoms, encourage abstinence — but I don’t think they’re going to go for it.

Meanwhile, while it’s easy to characterize the student body of Goucher as not seeing the larger picture (a Facebook group formed to oppose the hunt calls itself “Fuck Goucher”, although I have to say at some point, every undergraduate says “Fuck [their school]”), I found comfort in the words of Erike Cardona, who views the hunt as a “necessary evil”, and said “It has to happen; otherwise, all the other deer will get sick, and we’ll lose the whole population … And I don’t want that.”

*Still no word on my car!

* They could kill all the deer in Maryland, and I’d be okay with it.