Larry,

I don't think you sound like a jerk. The deer can be a huge problem if they are eating plants you don't want them to eat. We don't hunt them, but I'd never quarrel with anyone else's right to do so....as long as they aren't hunting them on our property.

I love the deer and we don't shoot them. They have struggled so hard to survive here this year and were so thin all summer long. We've been feeding a lot of deer since June, and have a feeding area where we put out food for them, have two food plots planted for them, and have waterers out for them. The regular herd consists of 8 to 11---they don't always come in one large group, sometimes they come in a couple of smaller groups. And, then, there's more transient deer that come in small groups of up to about 4 or 5. Bucks often come alone.

I have no doubt that hunters will kill the deer on the property to our north, west and south where hunting is allowed, but people ask to hunt on our land all the time and we say no. I feel like the deer should have some place where they can live without being killed.

Do they drive me crazy in terms of eating plants I don't want them to eat? Yes, they do. I just plant everything they like to eat inside the veggie garden, which actually has a mixture of veggies, herbs and flowers growing within it every year. It has a 9' tall fence to keep the deer out. In the remaining unfenced areas of the yard, I just plant stuff the deer don't eat, or at least seldom eat. It isn't a perfect solution because sometimes the deer surprise me and eat plants that they normally won't eat, but that's only in the worst of the drought years.

When we bought this land, we knew we only "needed" a small portion of it upon which to live and garden. We just figured we'd leave the rest of it in its natural state and encourage the wildlife to stay there. That mostly works, but you know, there's always nuisance wildlife that comes up to the house, barn, orchard and garden area, and with the nuisance wildlife, we shoot them. For us the nuisance wildlife includes raccoons because they kill our chickens, skunks for obvious reasons, and bobcats and coyotes. I'd rather chase off those last two than kill them, but if they keep coming back and killing our animals, we'll kill them too. For you, deer are a nuisance animal and I understand that. For me they would be a nuisance animal if I didn't have a fenced garden that excludes them where I can grow the plants that they like as much as we do.

People here normally hit a lot of deer in the roads at night at this time of year. There's just so many poorly lit, rural roadways where the deer enter the roadways with no warning for the drivers and you cannot see them until it is too late. This year, beginning in about late July or early August, there have been oodles of livestock accidents, mostly involving cows in the roadway but sometimes horses, goats, pigs, or donkeys. It has been just horrible. So far, there's been more livestock-vehicle accidents than deer-vehicle accidents and they can tear up cars even more than the deer do. I just think the drought has sent the livestock through, over or under fences looking for greener grass elsewhere, and with the drought, there hasn't been greener anything anywhere until the last month or so.

A couple of years ago deer were hit and killed in the road right in front or our property 2 or 3 separate times within maybe a 6 week period. My dog, Jet, is very sensitive to that area of the roadway to this day and when you take him for a walk and he gets close to where the deer died, he wants to turn around and go the other way. I've always wondered if it is his memory of the scent of death in those spots, or if he sees ghosts.

Dawn

My nephew and his 10 year old son spent two evenings sitting in a makeshift blind here on our place hoping to get a deer but had no luck. We would have been happy for them to get one.

Like Dawn, we have decided the permanent solution is a deer-proof fence. That's on the agenda before next gardening season. Years ago we quit planting winter rye and wheat because it encouraged the deer to think of our garden as their pantry. This past summer was the worst we've had in years for deer getting into the garden. This was also the year we caught a raccoon That destroyed at least 50 ears of corn.

I'm just glad they can't get into the greenhouse, although this evening I went in there and there was a cardinal flapping against the windows. There is only one small gap big enough for birds to get in now under the roof peak and he found it.

Larry - you don't sound like a jerk to me either. Just sounds like the guy had a pretty comfy "blind" to hide in!

The herds can get so large that they become a huge problem. The larger the herds, the less for each one to eat so they starve, get ill and act all crazy. Often their searching for food is what causes them to cross roads which in turn cause vehicle accidents. We too provide corn and a food plot at the back of our land for them in an effort to keep them away from the road. DH is a hunter, but we wouldn't shoot one here unless it was an absolute necessity. We use 7ft tall deer netting around our gardens. I just finished rolling up part of it yesterday. It last for 3 or 4 years and is a price we can handle.

Let us know if you need any venison recipes! I only bought ground beef last year maybe twice and that was for my daughters who won't touch venison.

Paula

Dorothy, The tall fence has worked great for us and this summer we raised its height from 7' to 10' because I was worried the hungry deer might be able to breach the 7' fence even though they never had before. Tim's best friend says the garden looks like a prison with that tall fence, but I don't mind that as long as the deer are outside the prison fence.

Paula, I know the deer have to be thinned every year because there isn't enough food for them all to survive the winter, but I just prefer the hunting not happen on our land.

I don't like venison and don't cook it anymore although I did for years, so no one in our family hunts any longer. I told the guys they'd have to cook the venison themselves, and apparently they don't like it enough to prepare it themselves, so they stopped hunting.

I can't understand how we keep any deer around here at all because in hunting season, so many people are out hunting them in our county that the gunfire is just constant, like firecrackers on the 4th of July.

Some people do not obey "Posted--No Hunting" (or "No Trespassing") signs and we've had bullets almost hit us before. These were from guns shot off our property. Once, a bullet went by me so closely that I could hear it whistle as it flew by my ear. The same thing happened to one of our neighbors on the same day. He tracked down the teenagers who were shooting a gun recklessly onto his property and ours and after he spoke to their parents, it never happened again. I am not sure what he said that put an instant end to the guns being fired from that property, but (and it could be completely unrelated) within a year those people had sold that property and moved away. However, we still have a lot of trouble with trespassing hunters and spotlighters. Unethical folks like that give hunting a bad name.

Dawn