The Federalist:

Consider the events of the the past week. A Maryland teenager shot and killed an adult deer after it broke down the door of his house. In South Carolina, a deer smashed through the window of a Gold’s Gym and raced through the weight room as terrified humans scattered. In New York City, the beloved Harlem deer that somehow made its way into the heart of America’s largest city died after police tranquilized and captured it.

These aren’t just zany wild animal anecdotes. This is what happens when state and local governments don’t let people shoot deer. The fact is, deer populations across the country are about a hundred times what they were a century ago. The only thing that will stop the deer uprising is if Americans are allowed to kill more of them.

In his 2012 book, “Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds,” Jim Sterba chronicled a dramatic swing in the fortunes of our continent’s wild animals overt the past century. By 1900, centuries of more or less unregulated hunting and trapping had reduced wild animals populations in America to mere remnants. The conservation movement, writes Sterba, began as a response to this dire situation, and was spearheaded by public figures like then-New York governor Teddy Roosevelt. Public lands were set aside for wildlife refuges and parks, limits were set on hunting, and efforts launched nationwide to restock wildlife. It took time, but the conservationists were successful.

Too successful, it turns out. Wildlife damage to crops and infrastructure now exceeds $28 billion a year, with $1.5 billion from deer crashes alone. Chicago now has thousands of coyotes. Texas has about 3 million feral hogs (and counting), which cause an estimated half-billion dollars in damages every year.

Yes, and the cost of feral hogs in Georgia is even worse, having put entire farms out of business.  Here’s the problem.

First of all, when states began modern game management techniques, it made some sense.  This has caused herds populations to rebound to enormous sizes compared to even what they were in the days before humans and animals fought over the same land.  But as the herd size increased, the inevitable occurred.

States began to see the herds as their own property, charging for tags, huge sums of money in certain cases, and they began to put limits on the kinds of firearms that could be used, limit the hunting season, and control even what time of day or night you could hunt.  Some of this makes some sense even if it involves self policing rather than the nanny state assuming the power to themselves (i.e., caliber size to ensure an ethical kill), but the states controls are implemented for the wrong reason.

Only the king’s men may hunt in the king’s forests, they think.  The second problem is that control freaks have passed laws just about everywhere concerning if and when you can discharge a firearm.  I’ve had Coyotes coming down the road towards me, and I had to use other means besides a firearm to chase them away because, you guessed it, it’s illegal for me to discharge a firearm where I live.  Only the police can do that.  Apparently, only the police need to engage in self defense, according to the state.

Yes, we’re going to have to hunt the herds back down, but we’re going to have to be allowed to discharge firearms when we need to.  And by the way, limits on feral hogs, whether bag limit or when or how they can be shot, make no sense at all.  If your state has such a limit, then the state rulers hate you and love the money it brings in to license you to hunt and tell you how and when to do it.  They hate you because hogs are destructive to the environment and can harm you and your children, and they love money because they have no scruples.