It's probably harder for bison to free range like deer these days. Deer are extremely agile and can leap most fences with ease. Deer are also pretty docile when they're not in rut. Outside of nature preserves it doesn't seem realistic.
Deer have become almost a nuisance species closer in to Chicago. I’ve seen them in Oak Park about 2 miles away from the nearest forest land. In River Forest, which actually contains forest preserve, things got so bad the village wanted to hire a firm to shoot the deer, but the residents were too shocked by that proposal and it never happened.
I’m in River Forest and the deer are a pain to deal with. They eat your plants, they’re not afraid of people (because they get hand feed) and they get hit by cars.
They’re lacking their natural predators — and the logical solution of introducing them is ruled out because the local forest preserves aren’t large enough to support wolf packs.
Maybe the coyotes will figure out how to take them down.
You need to shoot the people who are feeding them - that's the logical solution to the problem you posed 8) Their natural predators are now cars because that is how things are now.
An environment is whatever it is at a point in time. You have described how things are around you and that is the current normal. You may not like it or even understand it but that is how it is.
You have to decide whether deer should live within your domain or not. At the moment it sounds like they are a negative factor for you. When you have run out of deer, will you start on the coyotes? When you have run out of creatures with backbones, will you start on arthropodia or amphibians?
Not really. The deer that thrive in suburban areas learn to watch for traffic. Even where deer vs car collisions are common, deer multiply well beyond what car traffic takes out. Really, hunting is the only way to thin the numbers.
Deer eat grass, they can thrive almost anywhere in North America just fine with or without people feeding them.
In suburbs they probably need to capture and slaughter some number of them to keep the numbers reasonable.
Deer can eat grass, but it's not their preferred food, and they can't thrive on it. They eat forbs, shoots, browse (twigs, buds, etc.) and mast like acorns (they are set up to deal with the large amounts of tannin in acorns).
"Although low quality forages such as mature grasses provide adequate nutrition to animals such as elk and cattle, the quicker digestive process of whitetails requires more readily digestible forages to fulfill their energy and protein requirements. On severely overpopulated and depleted ranges, white-tailed deer have starved to death with their stomachs full of low quality forages."
Point taken. Of course, again there is no shortage of shrubbery in suburban environments. And the last point is just what always happens when a species that evolved as prey is no longer hunted.
Well there was a lynx spotted in north Oak Park in the last couple-three years so there’s another potential predator, but yep, they definitely need predation. I’ve seen some sizable herds north of North Avenue in the forest preserve there (along with lots of bread put out by people who wanted to feed the deer). They’re a lot bolder there than south of North.
Look up to my post—the village proposed shooting the deer and residents decided that they’d rather have nuisance deer than see Bambi shot in their neighborhood. (There’s also the safety questions around shooting deer in residential neighborhoods to deal with as well.)
An additional data point is that Midewin's bison area is surrounded by a double fence - a barbed-wire one to keep the humans out and a stout steel one to keep the bison in.
The Fermilab bison used to have (probably still do) a sign in their field that said, amusingly, not to jump the fence into the field unless you can cross it in 9 seconds, because the bull can do it in 10. (grew up on the DuPage county side of Fermilab, got to take physics there too, which was awesome)
I realize bison can force down many fences but thats what I mean. I've seen neighborhoods where deer thrive in the suburbs largely grazing in people's yards and medians on the roadway. They are sometimes even fed corn by the residents. Bison are not only much more destructive, they are sometimes quite violent and will charge and horn people without warning. They need to be on ranches with special fencing or preserves.
