Saturday, January 31, 2009

But They're Pooping In Our Yards!

Last night, I was able to catch the 10 pm news on CBS58, and saw a story on how Oshkosh was going to block off streets so that sharpshooters could go in and kill a herd of up to 40 deer. Unfortunately, the station's website mentions the story but does not have the video. But I do recall the story including people whining that the deer are eating their shrubbery and pooping in their yard.

Coincidentally, in this week's copy of the Iola Herald, one of the local newspapers that I subscribe to, reports that people went to the town meeting asking for sharpshooters for the same reason.

This irks me on several levels.

First of all is the emotional level. I have already spoken about how my wife and I enjoy watching the deer up north by our castle, and have come to see them almost as pets.

Another is the seeming contradictions of reports. This past fall, there were repeated reports of grumpy hunters complaining that there weren't many deer and that the herd has gotten too small. Now they're complaining that there are too many deer and that they are becoming a nuisance. Which one is it? It can't be both, and the fawns don't drop until June, so there was no sudden population explosion.

But this also strikes me as one of those situations where if you have a hammer, every problem is a nail. When my grandfather passed away four years ago, a couple of friends gave me a hydrangea as a memorial. We took the plant up north, and to make a long story short, eventually planted it in our backyard, near the marsh, where deer tend to pass through. Unfortunately, we did not know at the time that deer find young hydrangea sprouts to be a rare delicacy.

But instead of wanting to shoot the deer, we explored options. The first thing we did was sprinkle cayenne pepper around the plant. Animals don't like the smell or the taste and will avoid it at all costs. (Mix a little cayenne pepper with your birdseed and it will keep the squirrels and raccoons away out of your bird feeders.)

We then explored our options, including various deer repellents and other methods. We settled on a deer fence which is nothing more than a very fine mesh made out of black plastic. We put in some stakes around the plant and wrapped the meshing around the stakes, and Whallah! (oops, sorry, wrong blog). I mean Voila! No more deer using our plant as a salad bar. The mesh is so fine that it does very little to impact the view of the flowers in the summer.

As for the deer poop, that is laughable. Deer scat is pellet form and we almost never see any. We have a bigger problems with the turkeys crapping all over or people letting their dogs run free and not cleaning up after them.

Another common complaint is deer-auto collisions. While sometimes such accidents are unavoidable, as my friend Billiam pointed out a while ago in the comments of one of my earlier posts. But all I know is that I have gone up there for over thirty years with increasing frequency and I have never hit a deer. Of course, I pay attention and I don't go 60 mph down a country road when I know that the deer are more likely to be on the move.

As an interesting side story, a young couple who live near the northern castle, had gone fishing in the Hayward area and killed one of the biggest black bears in state history. They killed it when it ran into the side of their truck while they were driving. And black bears don't have the numbers that deer do, which proves that sometimes the stats don't mean much.

To further show how dumb the culling idea is, even though they set out bait, blocked off the streets and endured the protests, they only managed to kill three of them. That tells me that either the problem isn't as bad as some hot heads would have you believe, or that the deer are actually smarter than the hunters.

I personally would go with both theories as being true.

3 comments:

  1. Had a home office window that looked out on a neighbor's back yard. The neighbor's routine was work from 7:00 am to about 5:00 pm. Three years straight, the neighborhood monster buck strolled into the neighbor's yard about 7:10 am and slept tucked up in the hedge next to their deck. Both of our houses were about 50 feet inside the village limits where no gun hunting was allowed.

    I would feel it safe to assume that those area deer moved back to the woods when the sharp-shooters arrived.

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  2. Capper, there's no question that a LOT of deer are living where no gun-hunting is allowed.

    I had a herd of about 15 eating everything in sight in my yard (yes, I counted them, and yes, they ate EVERYTHING.)

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  3. Dad29,

    And did you do anything to protect your plants?

    The best we've seen at one time in our yard is six, but it was only for a few minutes. And that is in a hunting zone, during the season (but in the evening).

    My point still stands though. I think they are overreacting to a nonexistent problem.

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