Close calls with Deer

[nondairycreamer]

nobody wants to cull Bambi, or foxes. Now, if they looked like large black rats, I'm guessing the problem would soon go away.

We call them forest rats. They're just larger rats. But twice in the last eleven years Blue Tongue disease has killed a lot of them. I had one die about 100 yards from the back door, imagine holding a 10 day dead mouse under your nose. It was impossible to breathe outside the house at all for about eight weeks.

But I spoke with an older gent about the numbers and he told me when he was young that it was very rare to even see a deer. I have them in the back yard almost every night. SE Kentucky. Too few hunters now. It's easier to go and buy hormone/antibacterial laden beef than to hunt and dress a deer. So they thrive. And this feeds the coyotes and wolves ( two of those behind the house a few years back) which will also take your pets and even attack us if we are alone against two or three. I personally know one hunter that was attacked when squirrel hunting and he fortunately had an auto Browning shotgun, killed four coyotes. I no longer take long hikes in the woods without a pistol or rifle. As the population nationwide here grows in the cities and shrinks in the rural areas the antigun thoughts seem rational. Especially with the mental cases that kill so many (and those seem to be mostly city dwellers---it is the crowding of rats that causes the violence in controlled lab experiments, not the cocaine). But if one lives in a rural area, where the drug crazed desperadoes can and will attack like a rabid feral dog or an opportunistic forest predator, one cannot fathom the antigun hysteria.

Back to near misses, huge buck sliding into my lane as he tried to avoid me, I could have slapped his face as I slipped by at 50 or so. I also have had a wild turkey hit my helmet at about 40mph, it hurts. Last week a near miss at 5am, a coyote closing on one of my cats. Next time I'll light his ass with a lazer before firing.

 

[Checkswrecks]

Leaving the politics aside, they definitely are forest rats. We get the darned things in the heart of DC, as they follow the parkways with all the nice grass. I've had a number of close calls in Georgetown of all places, and a carcass was rotting a couple of days ago near where Canal Road passes Georgetown University.

 

[Don in Lodi]

I can just imagine the tree huggers getting all uptight and demanding something be done to save the defenseless deer from the ravages of rampaging vehicles... ::025::

 

[Madhatter]

politics, someone say politics.... just messing around... deer are prey animals, they are supposed to be on the menu..... need more hunters.

 

[Sierra1]

I can just imagine the tree huggers getting all uptight and demanding something be done to save the defenseless deer from the ravages of rampaging vehicles... ::025::

Ssssh....somebody might hear you. ) I know people that would rather see a human injured than any animal. I've never seen an aggressive coyote. There's a pack of five that live in my area; they run at the first sight of a human. Now, if you're a Corgi....run!

 

[nondairycreamer]

A documentary film about coyotes in Chicago (estimated 2500) had footage of a coyote stalking a jogger at night. If you do a search there are videos and news articles. Rare but these are an opportunistic predator. If you have them in your area they will kill pets. They have also been known to attack and attempt to take away small children. They do tend to avoid humans but all predators will. But when hungry or threatened they will attack.

 

[OldRider]

We call them forest rats. They're just larger rats. But twice in the last eleven years Blue Tongue disease has killed a lot of them. I had one die about 100 yards from the back door, imagine holding a 10 day dead mouse under your nose. It was impossible to breathe outside the house at all for about eight weeks.

Over the years I've had three get hit by cars and die in my front yard. I'm lucky I live in the country, all I had to do was get the four wheeler out and drag them 1/4 mile out in the woods. (downwind)

 

[Don in Lodi]

A documentary film about coyotes in Chicago (estimated 2500) had footage of a coyote stalking a jogger at night. If you do a search there are videos and news articles. Rare but these are an opportunistic predator. If you have them in your area they will kill pets. They have also been known to attack and attempt to take away small children. They do tend to avoid humans but all predators will. But when hungry or threatened they will attack.

Have you seen the documentary on the hybrids? They call 'em Coywolf. It's a normal thing for wolves to actively hunt down and kill coyotes. But in some areas they are interbreeding. Amazing animals. Living right inside city limits.
Back in my college days we studied the Kaibab Deer Herd in the Grand Canyon area. It was an ecological disaster. In the days of exterminating every predator of any kind, the entire herd ate itself into extinction. Most herd animals will reach an equilibrium with their environment, graze, predators, etc. Humans and their artificial environments throw a monkey wrench in the whole thing.

 

[stutrump]

Love some of these replies and yes we NEED more deer hunters in the uk and yes I agree that its so mad we dont eat them and would rather buy some crappy meat from the supermarket.

 

[Checkswrecks]

I'm in a very liberal county of Maryland and virtually nobody doubts the need for thinning the deer badly. I regularly could "hunt" by dropping a brick out of my living room window. What makes people not want the hunting here is that even though the area is fairly wooded, lot sizes are small and there are houses everywhere. Even though we are a shotgun-only area, it'd be hard to take a shot and have a ricochet NOT go through somebody's yard. (It's also rocky here.)


I wish there were a way to get people to understand that bow hunting should have less stringent rules than firearms on where you can take a shot.


With the increasing illness of the deer around here, there also seem to be less hunters because people don't want to put in the effort and then be afraid of the meat.

 

[magic]

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a huge problem here in Wisconsin too. Many of the area meat processors will not process venison anymore. This leaves it up to the hunter to cut up his own deer, this is one reason people around here gave up deer hunting. The main reason I quit deer hunting was the complete lack of any common sense regulations. There have been proposals over the years to have a longer season and to open it earlier. Historically, Wisconsin's 9 day gun deer season has always opened on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Now, depending on the calendar this could be anywhere between the 17th and the 23rd of November. I think those numbers are accurate. Where Michigan has a season that runs November 15th-30th every year. This change was proposed and met a lot of resistance from the sportsman groups. Some even fought it in court. When the Wisconsin season opens late, hardly anyone hunts after opening weekend. This year our governor, Scott Walker signed a bill that removed the minimum age for hunting. 10 deer tags were sold to infants less than 12 months old, and a 4 year old registered a deer. By signing this bill, Walker effectively removed the requirement for hunters to take the hunter safety course. He also took a lot of the deer management decisions away from the Department of Natural Resources and gave them to the state legislature. Where's the common sense here? We also had shotgun only in many areas, now almost the whole state is open for rifles. Every year there are reports of bullets going through houses.

On the deer whistles, I can't say if they work or not, but if you are running them, keep them clean. They get plugged up with dead bugs and don't whistle very well.

 

[Madhatter]

watched a PBS documentary about a type of hybrid super coyote , seems wolves and coyotes can mingle... mostly a northwestern areas phenomenon . and bow hunting is less prone to ricochet since most bow hunters like to be elevated . their shots point to the earth. that could work with shotguns have people shoot from elevation..... coyotes in the central texas area (rural) tend to be shy of people because people shoot on sight. and coyotes do not hunt in packs as wolves so deer are pretty hard for them to bring down , it happens I'm sure but not enough to control deer populations . a 5lb Chihuahua is a easy snack compared to a 150lb deer that can jump over your car in a single bound.... what we need are wolves and bears and mountain lions to do their jobs ,( but we don't have those in central Texas) , then we would have another problem.... I bet yall have rednecks in Maryland , grill guards on their pickup trucks can take out a few deer....

 

[Madhatter]

I said northwestern , been awhile since ive seen that doc. north eastern is what I meant to say.

 

[nondairycreamer]

The latest genetic studies claim that there is only one pure wold left in North America and that is the western Gray Wolf. All others have some coyote genes. In the 1980's a close friend bought 5 hybrid wolf pups. "Hybrid" wolf was a way for breeders to skirt the laws. My friend wasn't the only person out there with an ego problem but after a couple of years feeding raw meet to the wolves he decided he could not afford to continue and he turned them loose. Also in the same general time frame the Fish and Wildlife critters were secretly releasing wolves in SE Kentucky. Their efforts have recently included Elk which are worse than the deer for destroying rare plants. We do have a few mountain lions in the area, a neighbor got a picture on of one on his front porch using his security camera. Where a pair of coyotes (large) or wolves will corner and attack a human, a single mountain lion will stalk and kill a human. One bite through the back of the neck severs the spinal cord.

Someone mentioned how humans cause the problems. All over populating critters, four and two legged, cause problems. Lyme disease was unheard of until the suburbs encroached on wilderness areas. Then it became a problem for humans. Do we let the four legged predators deal with the disease carrying deer that also wreck cars, destroy lawns and gardens, etc? Or do we encourage hunters to shoot them? If we prefer to allow the so called natural predators (I'm not natural?) then we need to accept the inevitable loss of pets and small children when the deer population drops and when the pets and children are the easier mark for those predators. This idea that a hunter is the heartless psycho is what happens when people spend their lives in cities, believing that the meats they buy in markets are "humanly" raised and killed. They are delusional.

 

[Madhatter]

you are correct mr. nondairycreamer.

 

[RCinNC]

They used to put deer whistles on the fronts of our patrol cars up in Pennsylvania; they usually got knocked off when the patrol car hit a deer.

I've never been a hunter, but I'm glad I knew guys who were, because venison tastes way to good for it to remain on the inside of a deer. As bad as they are, I'm just glad we have them instead of feral hogs. If we had to deal with what guys in places like Texas do, I'd definitely take up hunting, preferably with a minigun.

 

[Sierra1]

....I'm just glad we have them instead of feral hogs....I'd definitely take up hunting, preferably with a minigun.

) Give them time. They'll get there. I like the mini-gun idea.

 

[RCinNC]

If I'm not mistaken, I think I've heard reports of them in Georgia. If that's the case, I can't believe they aren't here already. If you're searching for a destructive hellbeast of biblical proportions, you don't have to look much further than a feral pig.

 

[Madhatter]

them pigs be all over the south, ive killed them in my back yard.

 

[Sierra1]

I used to watch a show, Wild Justice, filmed in California. At the time they were restricting the number of feral hogs that could be hunted/possessed. Guess they don't have a problem with them....yet. Harvest them and solve world hunger. (I like "destructive hellbeast" also)