Also, interesting fact.

Bucks will leave you a nice big hefty turd in your yard in the mornings. Was told by a hunter friend that a buck generally does this in the area where it beds for the night. It doesn't look like regular dear poop.

Before I knew what it was, I thought there was something seriously wrong with my dog.

Call your village office if you live in a Columbia village. They keep a list of all the townhome/condo associations and can tell you who to contact - but there’s a chance that the property manager may only want to hear from the landlord… good luck!

You should post this as its own comment. Great explanation.

If you look hard enough you'll eventually see dead coyotes on the highways in MD. You'll maybe see one in passing and it's less and less frequent.

We drove the coyotes out, for the farms to thrive, developed the farms into subdivisions and now....this is what you get. A ridiculous amount of deer eating all our plants and making our dogs bark and startling everyone on the path when you least expect it.

You get deer, or you get coyotes and less deer, or you get too many coyotes. Pick one. No matter what you do-nature is going to win.

Maybe! I'm only renting, so I'm not sure, I'll ask my landlord or my neighbors. Thank you!

Do you have an HOA outside of rather CA? I think most townhome communities do. That’s the people to start with for community stuff.

When I was in a townhome community (not Columbia, but in MD), parking lot lines and open space in the community was the HOA. Even the mailbox, we (HOA) had to to buy a new cluster box when a car hit one.

This is not specific for Columbia, but here's a link to a podcast exploring the reasons there are so many deer around. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cub21ueWNvbnRlbnQuY29tL2QvcGxheWxpc3QvODg0ZjhmMjAtMThjMC00ZTQ1LTk2OGQtYWMxNzAwNWJlZWZlLzIzZWVkYWVkLTFkZDItNDA3MC05MjExLWFkYWMwMGZiMjFhYy80YjA3ZTQ0OS0xYmU0LTQ3ZTktOGVmYi1hZGFjMDBmZjRmOWYvcG9kY2FzdC5yc3M/episode/NDEwNTg5YTYtNTEyNi00ZTVlLTk5M2UtYWY1NDAwMTBkZGY4?ep=14

My daughter has more wildlife around her townhouse in ellicott city than we ever had on our farm in carroll county.

and you can hunt with...Guns!

1. It's deer mating season.
2. Not sure where you're located. With the development of the Blandair Park area, many deer have been pushed into adjacent areas.
3. Have a buck in our backyard from time to time. He's never been hostile.

EDIT: spelling, grammar

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They do have to be controlled though. Multiple reasons, but spreading ticks and Lyme disease is a big one. I live in Columbia and the Columbia association will shoot deer occasionally hey put up signs to let people be aware for obvious safety reason.

There is bow hunting

Overpopulation of any species can cause ecosystem collapse, even without their obvious starvation or encroachment. Overconsumption of feed species (plant or animal), destruction of habitat for other species through overcompetition, runoff characteristic changes causing erosion and overfilling of streams, which has run-on effects for watershed health that affects both our drinking water and our waste removal systems.

For an extreme example, check out writings on the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, specifically how the physical environment rebounded based on decreasing overpopulation of non-predatory species. i.e. deer: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/yellowstone-wolves-reintroduction-helped-stabilize-ecosystem

The lack of a predation force on grazing animals like deer in suburban areas is a genuine problem for the local ecosystem - though arguably comparable to other issues like grass-monoculture and non-organic runoff.

Despite the commenter you wrote to, Maryland's gun laws are pretty pro-hunting on the whole - little restriction on the types of firearms used for and useful in that activity, and well more than half the year is some sort of hunting season at a state level. The problem is more HoCo-specific, which prohibits private discharge of a weapon at basically all times and has no hunting grounds at all, as far as I've found. The county does two culls a year with hired sharpshooters, but it never quite seems to be enough to really curtail the population in safe bounds; I'd be curious to see them study private-land hunting in-season in the western part of the county, and also study bowhunting in denser areas.

At the end of the day, the problem is that nature doesn't exist outside of human development, but despite it. We're collectively generally pretty bad at actually examining how we fit into ecosystems, treating them like problems to be excluded from our communities rather than complex systems that we're trying to fit ourselves into. Modern life is pretty good at scaring off predators, so instead we have to deal with the prey - we've become the apex predator of the local ecosystem, and failing to act it is a bit like taking the wolves out of Yellowstone.

What are your reasons for being pro-hunting.? It doesn’t seem like the amount of deer is dangerous that they’re starving or need to be controlled by humans?

Encroaching on their living spaces and decades of Maryland screaming "guNS ArE Bad" so not enough hunting.

I swear I see more deer here than when I lived in rural Virginia! (Then again, there was probably more room for them to spread out)

It's baby-making season so you'll see them more often than usual. Suburban areas like Columbia (especially like Columbia because of all the wooded areas) are actually an ideal habitat for the deer because of easy access to food and the lack of predators. Can't hunt the city so cars are all that kills them.

Their only predators are cars around here.

There’s just an insane number of deer around and they don’t have a good reason to avoid the paths - they are very accustomed to people and dogs.

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Saw a white tail buck on a trail yesterday, came up on it within 10 feet out of no where. I backed up about 20 yards or so for 5 minutes, let it do it’s thing (eating grass) then started walking as it was a little further from the trail. It then ran away as I started walking

We have to share this planet and arguably they should have first dibs of the green areas, if you were to ask me.

That aside, White Tail Bucks will attack but only during rut, typically September to November. I've heard women menstruating have increased risk of being attacked.

All that said, attacks on humans are quite rare and I've never heard of one being fatal.

I heard bucks will attack humans and don’t want to have that situation

That's true. Sometimes it seems you can get near close enough to pet them before they run away.