Category Archive for ‘deer herd’ at Beside the Stream

Archive for the 'deer herd' Category

One less deer in the herd

Published on April 13, 2008 in deer herd and dogs. 4 Comments

When I came home yesterday, Sam and a friend were in the road. Back up 100 ft, he said. Really. You’ll want to see it.

One of the little yearling deer in ‘our’ herd had been hit by a car, leapt a neighbor’s 10′ deer fence, and was lying unable to move. There was no blood and he was unmarked, but he couldn’t get up. A woman walking by with her dogs said she was a deputy sheriff, and that she should shoot the deer in the head instead of having it torn apart by dogs. Since we both knew that the two German shepherds that live there would in fact tear it apart, I drove her and her dogs back to her house (my dog and her two made three in the back seat), where she picked up her gun.

She shot the deer in the head.

She was sad that she had to kill it, and made the Catholic sign of the cross over the deer’s broken body.

The carcass was dumped up the hill, and although she said very nice things about completing the cycle and returning the body to the earth, we both know that if the birds don’t finish it off really quickly, the dogs will have a heyday. But we both pretended that’s not part of the schedule.

Amen.

A good spring hike

Published on April 12, 2008 in deer herd, dogs and riparian edge. 3 Comments

In some areas, the snowmelt reveals unexpected surprises. This road was closed for the winter, and it’s the first time I’ve been here since fall.

I get a kick out of gravity. It’s so predictable.

This rock is so big it’ll take heavy equipment to move. And when I look up,

it seems like that rock might not be lonely much longer. I move right along, since I definitely don’t want to be standing under this many tons of stone, soil and tree. No thank you.

Across the river, the slope is made up of decomposed shale, which repels water.

It’s a peculiar material, because that water-repelling quality makes it hard for plants to get their roots down. This slope isn’t recently denuded; it’s been that way for ages. It makes for an odd riparian edge.

Another dog joined us back a mile ago, and now I see why: it’s not just fallen rocks that the snow left behind; it’s fallen deer too. This dog has visited this carcass before, I think.

My dog was so happy to be able to help.

Deer Repellent

Published on April 3, 2008 in deer herd, gardening and recipe. 2 Comments

I tie on bars of Irish Spring soap to deter deer, while Bob uses a less subtle approach: he sprays the foliage with a product called “Liquid Fence”, layering the chemical soap scent with the odors of rotten eggs and garlic.

The price tag on this gallon jug reads “$124.99″. He must have bought it when he bought trees, because that’s the only way he could have justified the cost. Our deer herd could take down a young tree overnight, and this is the only deer repellent I’ve seen with a money-back guarantee (and it’s organic). This is the second year he has been using this single gallon, and it’s still 2/3 full. Liquid Fence’s motto is “It Really Works“, and it does… so when you think of it as a garden-saver, the $40 of Liquid Fence Bob sprayed on the foliage last year was a bargain.

Meanwhile, two longtime gardeners I know swear by their old-time homemade deer repellent:

Beat together 2 eggs, a cup of milk, and a few cloves of pressed garlic. Add a dollop of cooking oil and good squirt of dish soap, shake it well, and put it in a tightly capped jar for a few days of sun. When it is ripe, add it to a gallon of water; spray liberally on any foliage you want deer to avoid. (Vary by adding a tablespoon of cayenne.)

When I read the fine print, it turned out that the ingredient list for Liquid Fence is putrescent egg solids, garlic, sodium laureth sulfate (soap) and potassium sorbate, a preservative. So Bob paid $125 for a jug of rotten eggs, garlic and soap, the exact same deer repellent that our friends make in mayonnaise jars. Woops!

It makes me think that while the people at Liquid Fence use the motto “It Really Works” on their label, they might have a different motto in-house. I’m guessing it’s something like “I can’t believe that people will pay such inflated prices for rotten eggs and garlic.” Of course, now that I have the recipe we’ll never ante up for Liquid Fence again. And now you have the recipe, too.

Excellent recipe.

Why I love Irish Spring soap

Published on March 25, 2008 in deer herd and gardening. 3 Comments

In the arid West, deer pressure can be pretty intense. People live on most of the acreage near the waterways, they’ve diverted most of the water, and the areas that aren’t next to the streams and rivers are often too dry to be very productive. The deer can get fierce in their need for the plants that you’re growing… and since it was their land and water in the first place, I sympathize to a point.

I’m happy to have a deer herd around, but I don’t want them browsing my gardens. So I try to work with them. I grow plants that they don’t like to eat, mostly cultivars of native species and old favorites. Daylilies, lavenders, mints and hyssops work fine, and so do lilacs and potentillas. I used to get plant lists from the state agricultural extension service, and now you can find lists of deer resistant plants online.

Bob regularly sprays the twigs and foliage with an appalling mixture of rotten eggs, sour milk, garlic and red chili pepper (more on this later).

And I do love that Irish Spring soap. On every newly planted tree, I tie a bar of Irish Spring in a knee-hi stocking at deer-nose height. When it rains, that Irish Spring perfume works its way down the trunk and coats the surface of the ground… and deer detest it.

Here’s a bar of soap that made it though the winter, and to the deer it still stinks. The bears hate Irish Spring too.

Here’s a bar of soap that a bear ripped out of its stocking and buried under a red twig dogwood. I dug it up when I was weeding a few weeks later, and put it back up in another stocking, claw marks and all. I think Irish Spring is one of those anti-deer miracles.

If people say it doesn’t work, it’s because they haven’t tried it.

Time: Three months

Published on March 18, 2008 in deer herd and time. 2 Comments

Here is part of the deer herd December 10. The snow came late, so these girls are in prime condition.

Here is nearly the entire herd March 15, at the end of the winter. See how moth-eaten this doe looks?

And doesn’t it seem like these are photos of the same doe, after and before three months of winter rations?

Living with Wildlife

Published on March 13, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey and deer herd. 8 Comments

In contrast with the little horse who won’t let me near her, the wild deer and turkeys are happy to have me around. When I took this picture, I was standing ten feet away in plain sight with a 95 pound dog next to me. These animals are willing to coexist with us.

When a flock of wild turkeys moved onto our land, I learned that (wait for it) turkey hunting is not a sport. Radical statement, I know, but this is why: turkeys don’t migrate, they flock together, they don’t fly much and they have a home territory. This means that groups of big birds are out walking on their rounds every day, and roosting in the same place each night. If I wanted to kill five male turkeys, I can do this any day in the backyard at 10AM, or in the neighbor’s backyard at 11AM/ camo is optional. A turkey is too big to hide, can’t fly away, and walks around. You can harvest an animal that behaves like that, but the only reason it is remotely sporting is that nearly all turkeys are already killed so hunters have to travel to remote spots to find the last ones…which doesn’t seem sporting.

Biologists say that wild turkeys are generalists that exploit many different food sources, and their populations can become large if they’re tolerated. Their range includes most of the US.

If wild turkey hunters took a break for a bit, there could be more turkeys next year and less empty habitat the year after that. Wild turkeys are living in New York’s Central Park, I hear, and they could be living throughout suburbia. Then there would be enough to harvest. Until that time, I wish those turkey hunters would just simmer down.

And so does he.

Time: three weeks

Published on February 28, 2008 in deer herd and time. 1 Comment

This is the deer path across our field today, and 21 days ago.

The snow isn’t so deep anymore, but everyone sticks to the paths because it takes less energy.

They’re just as strict about using paths in the forest.

Here’s a place where the deer path going up the hill intersects the deer path going across the hill. See the X?

A photographic Interlude

Published on February 25, 2008 in deer herd. 1 Comment

Breatharians: Mule Deer in Winter

Published on February 20, 2008 in deer herd and what they eat. 0 Comments

Breatharians, who claim to live on sunlight and water, seemed like an absurd impossibility until I see mule deer in winter. With so much snow on the ground there is nothing for these mule deer to eat except twigs. I looked up research papers on mule deer diet, and found that in the winter the deer live on a starvation diet of twigs and lichen, and lose 20% of their body weight. One of the species whose twigs they enjoy is gambel oak, and the mountain behind us is covered in it. So these deer really do live on almost nothing for the season… on twigs.

For Christmas this year, I put out the old pumpkins and gourds we grew for Halloween mistakenly thinking that since deer eat pumpkins in the garden if they can, it’d make a nice holiday treat for the herd.

It took more than a week for ten deer to eat four old pumpkins. The deer didn’t seem hungry, and clearly weren’t thinking of Christmas.

It’s not that the deer didn’t like the pumpkins; it’s that they didn’t really want them. And they didn’t need them.

The winter continues, and our little local band of mule deer continues to eat almost nothing.

The neighbors feed the birds a few cups of seeds and cracked corn each day, and the deer path across our property went to their feeding station.

For a few days last week nearly a dozen deer started moving obsessively back and forth along the path, back and forth. There was a frantic note to the herd’s restlessness. Bob put out about 4 cups of alfalfa pellets at the start of the path, and the whole scene immediately calmed down. We didn’t add very many calories to the landscape to change the tone.

This is the same buck with the uneven antlers as the one eating pumpkin at Christmas, but this is after nearly two months of winter starvation. The snow is deep and has been deep all along, and it’s crusted so he’s still confined to paths. The herd has been living on twigs up the hill and a little birdseed and cracked corn put out by the neighbor, and just a little of the cracked corn I put out for the turkeys. Two months of a starvation diet, and they’re not starving. We’re living with Breatharians in our midst.

Mule Deer: a guy can change his mind

Published on February 19, 2008 in deer herd. 0 Comments

A young male pauses at the edge of the field before going down the deer path. He doesn’t see that another male has started down the same path going the other way.

Once they see each other, it’s too late to back down.

They can’t resist a good antler shove, seeing as they’re guys and all. The loser goes around

stepping high through the deep snow and continues on his way. And the larger male reconsiders and follows the smaller guy out.

I whistle: Hey you guys, give me a better shot than your hind ends

And the deer says, Just ignore her; she’s been taking pictures for months. Sorry for making you jump into the snow and all… did you notice how big my antlers are getting? Wish I could find some shrubbery.

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