A public consultation on the impact of the deer population has found the majority of people believe deer culling is needed.
Some 86% of respondents told the Deer Management Strategy Group a cull is necessary.
The majority of the 1,500 people surveyed - over 80% - claimed the national deer herd is damaging biodiversity.
There is currently no census of deer in Ireland.
Gina in Kildare told Lunchtime Live this is a huge problem for her.
"In the middle of summer going into autumn, we will see maybe 20 to 30 out grazing during the day in the fields", she said.
Fallow Deer are seen in the early morning in Dublin's Phoenix Park in October 2022. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/Rollingnews.ie"We're not even all that rural; but for us to be able to see that many, how many are we not seeing?
"The population is huge and no one knows how many are in the country.
"They really need to find out and they need to decide exactly what a safe level is around the country and in certain areas".
Gina said she "would often see" deer hit by cars in the area.
"There's an awful lot of them, and I don't think people realise just how many there are," she said.
"There's no knowledge of how much and there's no control over a population".
'Deer contraceptive'
Bernie said there are alternatives to a cull.
"I don't think any animal should be killed just for food purposes or convenience," she said.
"In other countries they're already living happily in Australia and America since 2002.
"They use a contraceptive called GonaCon on the deer.
"This controls the population, so there isn't any problem with population.
"Any problem that's been mentioned there can be dealt with".
'Remove the gun'
Bertie said we need to know the extent of the population before anything else.
"In 2022, we executed 55,000 deer legally," he said.
"At the same time there's massive poaching going on, illegal hunting of deer - plus car accidents.
"We could be killing north of about 100,000 deer a year, and against this background we simply don't know how many deer are out there.
"Until we do that we have to establish a baseline: how many deer are in this country?
"When we do find out how many deer are in the country, we will realise that a cull is not needed.
"What we need to do is we need to remove the gun from conservation in this country... nature will balance itself out eventually," he added.
