<ir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-4c0a21ad-e8e7-21a5-f1c7-b61f15b0fb6c">While walking through the arb, especially in the mornings and evenings, you may have stumbled upon a herd of white tailed deer. These creatures, while exciting to see out in the wild, have a rapidly growing population in the United States and require strict and responsible management. These are a few ways that the Cowling Arboretum protects habitat from deer and manages the deer population.
Tree tubes: When baby trees are planted, a tube is placed around the tree. Sunlight and water can still get in, but not deer. The tree will eventually grow to reach above this protection, but the tube remains in place for a while longer to protect the bark on the small trunk from damage.
Bud capping: In the fall, volunteers and arb workers staple paper bags over the topmost branches of small trees to protect them from deer browse. This top part of the tree is called the terminal bud, and it allows a tree to continue growing upwards in its formative years. It’s a tasty treat for a hungry deer in the winter, but the paper bags, however strange looking, baffle the deer and protect the tree.
Fences: Sometimes it is easier to protect a very large area of young trees by building a fence than by tubing and capping every tree. These fences have to be very tall to ensure that deer cannot jump over them.
Archery: The Cowling Arboretum has an annual archery hunt permit. This permit allows up to 40 archers to harvest deer in select areas of the lower arb between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. The main impact of this is that it reduces the number of deer overwinter in the arb. Previously, deer were drawn to the arb by the safety it provided from hunters in the surrounding areas. Now, with the hunt in place, there is no reason for the deer to prefer the arb over other nearby land.
To learn more about archery hunting in the arb, visit: https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/arb/visitor_information/archery_hunt/