Fort Harrison State Park will be closed to the general public next week during the first of two hunts this year to reduce the deer population.Fort Harrison is one of 17 state parks closing Nov. 17-18 and Dec. 1-2 as hunters cull voracious deer herds eating their way through native forest.“Deer are browsers, and basically they eat anything,” said Department of Natural Resources park naturalist Jeff Cummings. “It’s been my observation deer seem to eat even when they’re not hungry. They apparently eat practically 24-7. They’re always eating.“And basically what happens is too many deer will end up browsing a forest completely clear of everything.”That’s what’s been happening at the former military post, where the deer population had grown for decades from natural reproduction and encroaching business and residential development.“I don’t know if we’ve got 30 or 3,000,” Cummings said of the park’s deer. “What I do know is that the plants that should be here are not.”To ease the problem in the Northeastside facility and other state parks, the DNR initiated periodic deer hunts in 1993, inviting hunters to throw their name into pools for a chance to bag extra deer beyond annual season limits.Then, by evaluating the recovery of vegetation each year, DNR biologists determine if more deer kills are needed. At Fort Harrison, Cummings said the frequent site of deer grazing in open grassy areas might be cute to passing motorists. But to scientists and wildlife officials, the grazing signals a problem.“That means they’re starving and they’re just basically looking for anything that’s green to eat,” said Cummings, who called grass a nutritionally poor substitute for the woody vegetation deer are meant to eat.The deer hunts — with guns at some parks and bow-and-arrow at Fort Harrison and a few others — help by reducing the herd and their impact on plant systems, which will then become a renewable food source for fewer deer.Of course, the desired effect hinges on hunters, who must show up rain or shine and then must rein in their quest for a trophy buck to instead take down whatever is available, preferably does.“Though the parks have had much success since the first reduction in 1993, a high no-show rate of individuals drawn and over-selective hunting remain a challenge,” said DNR coordinator Mike Mycroft.At Fort Harrison, where Cummings said an ideal hunt would bag two to three deer each for about 60 hunters, the park naturalist said the hunts are probably here to stay as a method to control and balance deer populations in the absence of mountain lions.“Everybody needs to understand that we love deer,” he said. “We’ve just got to do something to get the herd managed. And it’s working. I have seen plants starting to recover.”