SALEM, Ohio — When Josh Waddell wanted to know why his alfalfa fields weren’t producing the expected yields earlier this year, he walked the edges of the pasture and noticed some of the crop had been eaten.
Who was the alfalfa connoisseur secreting morsels of the nutritious forage? The culprit was deer living in the wooded areas surrounding his 3,200-acre farm near Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.
“They’re eating it all,” Waddell said. The alfalfa “will outgrow what they can eat, but there is definitely a yield drag.”
The Cumberland Valley farmer said he was not comfortable revealing the sum of his losses, but said the hit to his bottom line was significant.
Waddell is not alone. When the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau questioned growers about their biggest concerns late last year, wildlife damage, specifically damage from deer, was consistently a top concern.
The organization identified wildlife damage as one of its priorities in 2024, urging lawmakers to act and farmers to be vigilant.
How big is the problem?
Wildlife damage encompasses all manner of animals from raccoons to groundhogs, but deer are among the most prolific threats, said David Varner, media and marketing specialist for the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.
The extent of the problem is something of a mystery. Pennsylvania’s Department of Agriculture and the state’s Game Commission don’t track crop damage from animals. Likewise, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson said the agency no longer tracks wildlife damage.
The game commission does issue nuisance tags farmers can give to hunters outside of hunting season. The number of those tags inched up slightly last year. The commission issued 610 tags in 2023, compared to 427 in 2022.
“Not many people can give you those hard numbers,” said Calvin Norman, an assistant professor of forestry at Penn State.
However, farmers increasingly bring up crop damage caused by deer as a consequential issue, Varner said.
“It is definitely getting worse compared to years ago,” he said.
In an informal survey conducted by the farm bureau at the 2023 Pennsylvania Farm Show, a handful of farmers in 28 of the state’s 67 counties estimated they saw a total of $279,050 worth of losses from wildlife damage during the 2022 harvest.
The Farm Bureau says the problem stems in part from fewer people hunting deer. However, while farm bureau officials correctly note that the number of hunting licenses has dropped precipitously since the coronavirus pandemic, the number of deer killed by hunters actually edged up in 2022 and 2023, according to PennLive.
Experts note that the problem is not a new one, and say today’s farmers are paying for 19th-century short-sightedness.
Beasts of prey like cougars and wolves were driven from Pennsylvania in the 1800s, leaving deer with few natural predators.
“There are still deer predators like bears, bobcats and coyotes, but they’re more secondary predators,” Norman said.
The carnivores that keep deer numbers manageable are gone and in a state as heavily populated as Pennsylvania, re-introducing them would be a logistical nightmare, he said.
Why is it an issue?
Waddell said some fields are less likely to experience deer damage, so he’s moved the crops that deer seem to prefer.
“There are places where we can’t grow beans because they eat them all,” he said.
This means he can’t rotate crops — a practice shown to improve soil health and crop yields — in some fields, Waddell said. “It affects the bottom line.”
Hungry deer also make it difficult to grow corn for forage, he said. Corn grown for silage is harvested sooner, so even if the deer eat some of it, there is still something left.
“There are instances where we grow corn for forage, but by the time we shell it there’s nothing left,” Waddell said.
But Waddell is not entirely sure why the animals target some fields but not others.
Deer tend to cluster in places where they feel safe, he said, but beyond that, their grazing patterns are anyone’s guess.
The four-legged forest dwellers eat all manner of crops, said Melanie Barkley, an extension educator for the Penn State Agricultural Extension in Bedford County.
“They’re not only going through row crop fields,” she said. “They’re also consuming a lot of hay.”
What can be done about it?
Waddell has considered building a fence in the past, but decided the benefit was not worth the cost. Now, however, he’s leaning toward constructing a barrier around his farm, thinking it would pay for itself after a few years.
The farm bureau also has some ideas.
One of the organization’s ideas involves building a database of farmers across the state that farmers can call if they want to rid themselves of problem deer.
“Farmers sometimes have a hard time finding a hunter,” said Andy Bater, a farmer and district director for the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.
Farmers can give nuisance tags to hunters outside of the hunting season if deer are causing problems, but Varner said finding good hunters is a struggle. The bureau is lobbying to create a database to help aid in that endeavor, he said.
“It’s all very helpful,” Varner said of the current system. “A lot of our members and farmers across Pennsylvania use it, but there are some farmers who say it’s just not enough.”
