“Killing Deer With Kindness”

Out To Pastoral

by John Idol

HILLSBOROUGH, NC—(Weekly Hubris)—3/8/10—Over the course of the past few months, devoted admirers of Bambi and her herd of kin in the Triangle Area of North Carolina have spoken up in Town Council meetings and filled many column inches in the “Letters to the Editor” sections of local newspapers.

Decisions by Duke University and proposals considered by city officials in Chapel Hill to thin herds by allowing harvesting by bow hunters stirred Bambi lovers to action.

Powered more by imagination than reality checks, a few letter writers opposed to bow hunting pictured deer dripping in gore as they wandered about looking for a place to die, all the while suffering excruciating  pain.

As I read of Bambi’s miserable demise, I remembered seeing a beagle named Cheney in my neighborhood in Clemson, South Carolina, the unlucky victim of a kid who’d tried out his bow and arrow on the poor dog. Shot through the stomach, the arrow having passed through and through, Cheney went about his business, romping about the neighborhood, barking at strangers, and enjoying petting by concerned dog lovers. He was in no mood to expire, bloodily, on some lawn or porch or behind some patch of shrubbery, alone, wretched, unloved. If he were miserable, his tail had not that tale to tell. If he survived, why not a deer, I ask myself when I read bleeding-heart letters to the editor?

I’m not a bow-hunter, but the ones I’ve talked to all want a clean, quick kill, for they are not out to inflict pain. They have respect for the animal they hope to bring down, desiring for it a death not involving buckshot, high-caliber bullets, automobiles, or starvation.

And it is a death by starvation that Duke University and many towns and cities around the nation also want to avoid for the deer population. Just how many deer now search for food in the United States and Canada is unknown, but in both countries over 1.5 million deer and cars are involved in collisions each year, the human death toll being 150. The tally for serious injury is much higher, and the cost for car repairs reaches to more than a billion dollars.

A drive through the Poconos, on Interstate 81, will graphically illustrate the worst-case scenario of highway carnage resulting from the inability of deer to adopt to the era of high-speed traffic. But I don’t have to leave Hillsborough to see evidence of deer-car encounter. On my four-mile ride to the center of town to check my mail, I have seen as many as four deer killed in a day, buzzards gathered around each to feast on bloody venison.

During my 15 years of retirement to a wooded lot in Hillsborough, deer sightings have grown from a solitary deer rambling and nibbling at the rear of the lot to a small herd of 15 or more. Voracious in appetite, they now devour everything not protected by a fence except daffodils, hyacinths, hellebore, and ferns. They especially relish white clover in my lawn, often lying down in the shade of oaks to digest this delicacy.

On my ten-acre farm in the Blue Ridge, which is part of a tract of 30-plus acres of meadow and woodland, the deer population has exploded. A few days ago, my brother-in-law counted over 60 deer in a Christmas tree farm next to his house, which stands near my farm. Part of that explosion has resulted, I’m sure, from the four handsome bucks my wife and I watched this past summer as they grazed near our camper on Idol Mountain.

But these fine fellows’ gift to cervine fertility came at a high price, for their offspring have vainly searched for sustenance this winter, the ground in much of the Blue Ridge having been covered in snow since late December.

The youngest ones among those my brother-in-law saw, the Bambis of the herd, with ribs pushing hard against their hides, were low on the food chain; candidates for death by starvation. Finding only a sprig of grass pushing through a foot of snow leaves them more than hungry.

And death by starvation is not a good death, not a clean, quick death, not a death that in better circumstances could produce venison to feed hungry kids here in America or abroad. With proper preparation and distribution, deer harvested during efforts to thin herds could become a valued source of protein.

It seems to me that do-gooders in Bambi’s corner have not rationally considered the problem of cervine over-population. They dismiss or disregard the hopes and delights of those who enjoy gardening or creating attractive landscaping. They call for fencing by homeowners who can scarcely keep up with their mortgage payments. They paint lurid pictures of hunters participating in the thinning of herds, and they can’t get past the image of Bambi as a cute Disney creation.

They obviously haven’t encountered a buck using his eight or ten points to push Bambi aside when she tries to share the seed spread for ground-feeding birds. They give far too little attention to the laws of nature, where the fittest survive and the weak perish. They rarely form co-ops to buy grain or apples to feed hungry deer, and they even more rarely seek money or means to promote birth control for deer.

This laissez-faire approach, this worship of doe-eyed, cartoon cuties, this monomania leading to the posting of No Trespassing signs on their lots in a gated community near Chapel Hill that wanted to thin the herd within the gates (a story appearing in yesterday’s Raleigh paper) all lead to over-population—to a munching, nibbling, flower-and-shrub-uprooting herd of pests and parasites, in the view of people wishing to enjoy the fruits of their gardening and landscaping.

Since deer are rambling feeders, they move about within certain areas and follow favorite paths from one source of  food to another, showing little or no regard for streets and highways cutting through their feeding lots. Their foraging for food is a prime cause of their death by cars and trucks.

Herds thinned to a number in areas where food is ample are less likely to ramble. A thinned herd is far less likely to lose members to highway slaughter, less likely to occasion the death of motorists, less likely to become the mainstay in the diet of  buzzards and crows, more likely to end up as a welcome source of food for rich and poor folk alike.

A thinned herd means a herd protected from starvation. Bambi’s staunch supporters end up, paradoxically, out of their kindness, being party to an untold number of cervine deaths. . .and a documentable number of human deaths, as well.

To show that I’m capable of sympathizing with Bambi’s lot, I conclude by reprinting a poem of mine that recently appeared in Pembroke Magazine.

“To a Faun in the Backyard”

Nose to snow-dusted ground,
you lap up seed spread
for ground-feeding birds,
alone now, after twin
when too sudden dashes
were too quick for stopping.

You fed on clover
and just-bursting rose-bud
in spring and summer,
losing your spots
as winter came on,
watched over and warned
by Mom on alert,
playful with twin
when your maw was full.

Your first winter now
just two weeks old,
clover cold and curled
and roses deep-napping,
what food must you seek
but bird seed scattered
as once more you test
the oft-tried margin
of my hospitality?