November 9, 2004
(M)otorists (A)gainst (D)eer:
Bambi Must Die: The case against Minnesota's 1.2 million forest-destroying, disease-spreading deer (Mike Mosedale, 11/10/04, City Pages)
A little over five years ago, I was driving back to Minneapolis with my friend Dick after a May fishing trip in north central Minnesota. As we headed south on Highway 64 through a pleasing mix of swamp, forest, and farmland, a white-tailed deer appeared in the middle of the highway. It just stood there, motionless in the dusky fog. With no chance to swerve or brake, we plowed squarely into the animal.Neither Dick nor I was injured. The car--my grandmother's wheezy old Plymouth Horizon--was less fortunate. After climbing out to survey the damage, the first thing I noticed was the crumpled front end. The right headlight dangled from a single wire. Antifreeze gushed from the radiator, pooling in the road.
Of course, the deer was dead, sprawled out with long skinny legs akimbo and guts everywhere. It looked like someone had spilled a cafeteria tray full of sloppy joe. I could tell the deer was a doe; there were no antlers or antler buds that would indicate a buck. I took a closer look and there, in the fading light, I noticed the outline of a nearly full-term fawn, dislodged from its mother's womb by the violent collision.
There was yet another horror. Dick spotted it first: something small, making a flopping motion on the center line about 30 feet away. At first, I thought it was a severed limb, perhaps in some final, nervous spasm. I walked over to investigate, whereupon I found a spectacle as pathetic and macabre as anything I'd ever laid eyes on. The doe, it turned out, had been pregnant with twins. I had just located the other sibling.
Aside from its most gruesome aspects, there was really nothing unusual about my experience. In 2001--when the state's whitetail population was smaller than it is today--the Madison-based Deer-Vehicle Crash Information Clearinghouse estimated that there were approximately 19,000 such collisions in Minnesota. According to statistics from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, that is roughly the same number of accidents drunk drivers caused in Minnesota over the five-year period from 1998 to 2002.
They're tall vermin. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 9, 2004 8:42 PM
I've seen deer munching away at garbage cans in fairly-close in NYC suburbs. You can even see them on the Guyland.
Why not make the deer season a little longer and allow people to shoot does as well as bucks?
When life hands you deer, just make venison.
Posted by: Bart at November 9, 2004 8:52 PMI just had two wander through my backyard. I watched them out my home office window.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at November 9, 2004 8:55 PMI've seen 6 at a time in my yard, and I'm only 28 miles away from Detroit city center.
They are rats in cute outfits.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 9, 2004 9:02 PMMy wife hit one this summer at 9AM on a wide open Interstate. The stupid thing stepped off the median into the side of the car. Thankfully the truck beside her and the cars behind her could see what was happening and were able to swerve off or slow down. She wasn't hurt but it sure changed our perspective on the hunting season.
Posted by: Jeff at November 9, 2004 9:02 PMSure, they're vermin. And tasty, too.
Posted by: Twn at November 9, 2004 9:56 PMDrive U.S. 90 from Del Rio west to the Big Bend area in West Texas around twilight during the fall or spring and just watch the deer come out and stare you down as you pass by on the highway, daring you to drive over 50 mph and basically asking the same question Clint Eastwood did in Dirty Harry -- "Do you feel lucky tonight, punk?" (and these aren't those cute little Banbiesque whitetails, but those big mule deer that will take a car hood, radiator, windshield and occassionally you out with them when they go).
Posted by: John at November 9, 2004 10:15 PMAh. but it's the people who live in the blue cities that make the rules have encouraged this population explosion and prevented any management of it.
But what's funny is that this article is written from a Gaian persepective, in that all he can do is criticize current forest land management practices. Practices which are put in place mainly to please those urbanites who only visit such lands one week a year. And his criticism have been made for decades, but not by the right people.
For example, his bit about exclosures is almost identical to the descriptions that Alston Chase has in "Playing God in Yellowstone" from almost twenty years ago. And Chase got reamed by all right-thinking people for that book. The critics (think people like this author, but working for the NPS) claimed that the exclosures proved nothing.
(And for horror stories, try hitting a bison at 35mph or more. They have a tendency to roll up the hood.)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at November 9, 2004 11:58 PMDeer season started Saturday, the DNR has given permits for 300,000 deer to be harvested. Wild turkeys are becoming more common, I've dodged them on the way to work also. I've also noticed that an enormous super-flock of seagulls has taken up residence in the Burnsville area, near the landfill. Some animals have hit paydirt with civilization.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at November 9, 2004 11:58 PMAny good environmentalist (i.e., scientific and rational) knows that predation actually improves the herds and stabilizes population swings. Since we have eliminated the other major predators to protect ourselves, we have an ecological responsibility to assume the predators roles. We didn't claw our way to the top of the food chain to only eat beef, pork and chicken.
Posted by: jd watson at November 10, 2004 12:43 AMCougars, Wolves.
My question is still: what kind of side arm should I be looking for?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at November 10, 2004 2:38 AMA very easy solution: as noted above, just shoot a lot more deer. Don't even listen to the neo-pagans who think we should be running around the woods giving the deer birth-control pills. Use archery where safety is an issue, and go to crossbows if you are not getting enough archers.
The above stories of deer near cities are nothing. Deer live IN cities. We have plenty of them in our burg. They live mostly in our wooded park area and on the outskirts of our airports. We have road-kills on our urban interstates, and every now and then one gets lost in a built-up area, crashing through store windows and the like
Posted by: Lou Gots at November 10, 2004 4:02 AMJohn:
I used to live in Del Rio. It was like the plains of the Serengetti--I've had exactly the same feeling driving at night out there.
And, to echo Robert, wild turkeys are becoming increasingly common.
If we keep destroying nature the way we have been, it is only a matter of time until we are overrun.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 10, 2004 7:34 AMMN has wolves, so unleash them.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at November 10, 2004 10:47 AMOr the deer could learn about Existentialism, Ennui, and A Doe's Right To Choose.
That would really solve the problem -- to the point of extinction.
Maybe we should import some of Our Enlightened Betters from Old Europe to convert them?
So long as we don't introduce deer to Islam...
Posted by: Ken at November 12, 2004 1:40 PM