Oh, Deer
Posted on October 8, 2017 Posted by John Scalzi 30 Comments
There were deer in our yard this evening and then suddenly there weren’t, because our neighbor’s dog decided that he really needed to chase them. I managed to get a couple of pictures of them as they sprinted away — this was one of the less blurry ones. Those deer move fast.
In other news, hey, rural and suburban North America, it’s now deer migratory season. Be careful driving out there. Deer are cute but they’ll wreck the crap out of your car if you hit one.
Pfft. When I came home from work the other night, there were 7 deer in the yard, and that’s just the ones that stood in the headlights. If you want to see deer, come to South Carolina. And they won’t be purple!
I guess there is at least one reason to be happy for all the coyotes around here. We never see deer nearby.
Before I moved, my house backed onto a wildlife preserve. I never saw any deer, but my grandmother apparently used to see them out the window of that house back in the day. (Maybe there weren’t coyotes then?) Now I live in the city and I’ll never see them.
Not necessarily; when I lived in the city I saw plenty!
I was at a stop sign one night and a herd of at least 20 (deer, not stop signs) crossed right in front of me. At least they crossed at the right place!
So true, so true. Not many deer hereabouts (too hot in the summer) but elk? If you think a deer can mess you up, try elk.
A few years back (2014) $DAUGHTER was in Phoenix for a conference so I bribed her into taking a road trip home (Montana) with me. As I’d just bought a new ride and her husband’s pickup was no longer up to commuting in a Montana winter, I gave them the then 12yo Honda Civic — 200+ Kmi but ran splendidly.
Going through Utah towards Cedar City on the first night we were coming around a turn with lots of oncoming traffic and discovered a suicidal doe in our lane. No way to avoid even if we’d had time so we limped on to CS and packed it in.
Long story slightly slightly shorter, after emergency repairs by a couple of gents who weren’t even supposed to be working that Saturday, we made it up to Helena and took the beast into the shop (conveniently within walking distance of their home, no less) and USAA covered the repairs. Nice job. Now that they need a Montana Mom ride they’re not driving it any more, but it serves well as a caution.
We see deer a fair bit in the yard. The deer eat the apples off our trees when they can. Dog likes to chase them away but he’s indoors a lot and there’s no hope the 10 year old boy will ever catch one :)
No elk around here.
But there are moose and when they decide its time to see whose the biggest baddest boy in the area they take over wherever they happen to tussle. Middle of the road, driveways, yards – they don’t care. They just put their heads down & go at it.
And if you happen on them they stop, look at you like “What the hell do YOU want ?” and go right back to it.
God forbid you ever hit one
Please be careful out there. Because even though it means more hours for my hubby in the body shop, car accidents suck.
And if a big green tractor hit one, we’d say “Oh, Deere!”
It will also wreck the crap out of the deer if you hit one!
Yeah, they’re fast because they are motivated.
Those look like whitetails flashing their white tails. We’ve got lots of deer around these days, including a bachelor herd that’s been milling about. Our border collie-ish dog goes ballistic when they’re behind our house.
I saw a prime six-point whitetail buck in the middle of my street today!
I’ve just started seeing the seasonal signs warning us about wandering animals around here as well. Though it’s more looking for mates than migrating, and the animals in questions are koalas.
Do the deer come from wild bush/forest nearby, or are they living on farm land?
Vague recollection of bro-in-law hitting one several years ago (suburban Jersey). That really will mess up the vehicle (Unless you’re driving a tank) and the deer. I’ve seen a couple in the more expensive suburbs in NJ. Robin Williams described deer as like supermodels with hooves.
Wildlife collisions in a car are just bad. I once lost a co-worker to a moose, he was riding his bike home after a two-week holiday, went around a bend on the road (doing less than the posted speed limit, according to the forensic report) and hit the moose pretty much centre of mass. Neither moose, nor former co-worker lived to feel the impact on the road.
So, yeah, they can mess you up pretty bad, if you give them a chance.
Hope the neighbor knows the dog chases deer and does something about it. Sad fact that many dogs who chase deer end up dead in the road too or with a bullet in them.
Joining the people urging drivers and riders to avoid hitting deer if at all possible. Very bad results for all the living creatures involved.
Hope deer don’t get as easily-annoyed this time of year as elk do. One of my aunts was vacationing near Rocky Mountain National Park during the elk rut a couple years ago, and her car was attacked by a bull elk — apparently there was just enough image reflection on the back window to look like a rival bull. _That_ was an interesting call to the insurance agent.
Most of the wildlife I see inside city limits are wild turkeys, but I’ve seen a few deer as well. Drive careful, and give them a chance to get out of your way; most of them will (unless they’re a bull elk with raging hormones).
I’ve got pictures of three whitetail, eight-point bucks on our front steps, right here in DC. They mow down our hostas like living WeedWackers. And they don’t move fast; you can hardly shoo them away.
To where do they migrate?
We get mule deer here in the Interior of British Columbia, and during the summer one or two took to bedding down on the grass in our back yard in the shade of the cedar hedge.
What with the wildfires in our region this summer (more than one million hectares burned; that’s 2.4 million acres), lots of wildlife has been displaced, and I expect it will be a bad fall/winter for deer/moose interactions with vehicles. I had a close encounter back in May (before the fires started); I was driving home at night from the 150th annual Clinton Ball, and suddenly – along a dark stretch of Highway 97 – I spotted something out of the corner of my eye at the right side of the highway. I began slowing down, and sure enough a deer bolted across the highway in front me. It cleared the path of the car, and I thought ‘Phew, that was close’; then it turned and headed back. It must have missed the front left bumper by inches. Sure gets the heart racing, and I’m glad it wasn’t much worse.
Cute buggers but when you try to have a vegetable garden it’s, at times, hard to see them as anything but dressed up locusts – and as a friend of mine found out the hard way, Bambi is also really into marihuana plants.
Bambi is also really into marihuana plants.
Whoa. Need lots more details about that!
I regularly visit friends in Ocean Shores, Whidbey Island and Port Townsend and those places are Deer Central. In Port Townsend they hang out on street corners like youth gangs – and regard gardens as All You Can Eat buffets. A friend who used to love seeing them, but who also tried to keep a garden, now refers to deer as “long-legged rats.”
I don’t garden, so I can continue to love seeing them whenever I go out of town.
Mom has trouble with deer coming up out of the park next door (it’s a BIG park) and nipping off any flower she plants, except for the impatiens. She also thinks she may have seen claw markings from bear, which although extremely unlikely, is possible; there have been bear sightings in the same Metropark. The critters, they be movin’ on up.
Rats on hoof. They eat everything in sight, except the weeds.
If they’re going for your garden, try planting chilies. Especially the small ones like tepin — they developed capsaicin to keep the mammals from eating the bird fruit.
I haven’t seen a single deer since I moved to SC. I used to see them now and then back in NJ. The best encounter I had was driving home one evening past a farm. I saw two deer on the side of the road, so I stopped. It was a doe and a fawn. The fawn kept trying to step into the road, and his mother kept stopping him. It looked just like she was teaching her fawn to look both ways before crossing the street. Eventually he (or she)did… and he and his mom crossed the street in front of me.
CaseyL: In the Czech Republic people are allowed to grow a small number of plants (six, if memory serves) for private use. My friend does so. This year two of her plants disappeared in one night. She has one neighbour, a sixty years old guy who is above suspicion. He likes his booze but I very much doubt he’s into (stealing) marihuana.
Weird bonus factoid: snails actively dislike marihuana plants. You can use yellowed or fallen leaves as part of anti-snail barriers around those plants and herbs they do like.
My daughter and I live in the burbs outside Chicago. One day while she was riding the bus to school the kids all got to see a deer get wiped out by an SUV. My daughter was traumatized for weeks. Reminds of the cow scene in Napoleon Dynamite.
Hit a deer broadside and it will roll up onto the hood of the car and keep rotating, so those pointy sharp hooves come through your windshield. Learned that from a highway patrol guy years ago. He advised against the experience
Miriam Kaufman asked, “To where do they migrate?”
The dinner plate. Right next to the mashed potatoes and gravy.