The Buck Stops Here

If you have read my blog posts recently, you know I have been having some issues with a dozen or so rogue turkeys tearing up my lawn and garden area. For some reason, I haven't seen them since just before Thanksgiving. Either they high-tail it out of town during the turkey-eating season, or someone ate them. As much as I love Nature, I was getting very tired of cleaning up their daily destruction. I would have shot one and eaten it for Thanksgiving, but you don't know how much work that can be - cleaning the bird, pulling out all of those feathers, and then sitting down to eat a gamy, stringy brown-meat turkey. A Butter Ball is a much better deal - and easier.

My nemesis, the turkeys, are oblivious to rocks, shouts, cussing, and dogs being sent after them. I even tried peeing around the perimeter of my property - quite a feat since I have about three acres, but that didn't work either. It apparently works for wolves. I have not seen any of those. It does not work for deer.

I have this huge, tall fence around my vegetable garden to keep out the deer. Last year, they ate a grapefruit tree that wasn't fenced! This year, they nibbled on the Asian pear before I got the fence around it. Unlike turkeys, I love deer. They are beautiful creatures and I am basically living in Bambi's backyard. Yesterday, I spied about three elegant bucks, including one with a quite a rack - maybe ten points. They hung around with several doe, eating my grass. Unlike the turkeys, the deer were really neat about it. They didn't even poop on the lawn.

In my teenage years in Pennsylvania, we all hunted. In my entire hunting career (that lasted only a few years), I shot one turkey (hence, my experience in this area), a few rabbits, a squirrel or two, some quail, and a few ring-neck pheasants. I went deer hunting several times, but I never killed a deer...with a gun, that is. I did get one with my car in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Hitting a deer scares the crap out of you and of course, so does the repair bill.

The closest that I got to killing a deer during hunting season was when I was 16. I stopped to rest and sat down my gun in order to drink from a little stream. I looked up and the biggest trophy buck was just standing there about ten feet away. He, too, was taking a drink. We sort of look at each other; surprised. After a few awkward moments, he scampered off. As I watched him walk away, it suddenly occurred to me that I was deer hunting! I should have shot him. It was that moment that I realized what a lousy hunter I was.

Deer Season in Michigan is bigger than Christmas. Schools and businesses are closed; no classes in college, either, since the professors and the students are out hunting. When we first moved to Michigan, my wife asked me what those big bags of carrots, sugar beets, and salt licks are for at the gas stations.

"That's to feed the deer," I said.

"Oh, How sweet! People love to feed deer in Michigan!"

"No, they love to kill deer. They feed them most of the year, and then shoot 'em when the come to eat breakfast one morning."

On opening day, someone gave me a weird, one-antler deer, so they could go and get a better one. I took him down to the local deer-processor for butchering. It was only noon on opening day, and there were already over a hundred deer carcasses stacked like cord wood in the freezers. Those carrots and sugar beets really worked.

About two weeks later, I picked up my load of venison; mostly steaks and ground meat. Over the course of the next half-year, I ate those steaks and a good bit of the ground venison, but I ended up giving away about thirty pounds to a neighbor when I moved. He put in the freezer with the hundred pounds that he already had.

I talked to my brother yesterday, who lives in Maryland. A few weeks ago, his wife hit a deer. He had the car fixed, only to hit another deer himself. Apparently, deer are like rats back East. Hundreds of motorists are killed every year by collisions with deer, or hitting a tree trying to avoid them. There are several thousands of deer-automobile encounters every year, according to State Farm.

I don't mind sharing my property with deer. I do my best not to plant things they like and to protect the things they I have that they do eat. I don't send the dogs out to chase them away. I just get my camera and take pictures. As much as I like venison, I would never kill any of my resident deer. If I had some carrots and sugar beets, I would feed them, but I suspect it would attract those damn turkeys again.

The buck can stop here anytime.

Related Topics:

• Wild Things
• Turkeys!