In your back yard, if you see a bird or squirrel, the wild creature will look to see you and assess the danger and then go about its business. Meeting a deer is an entirely different experience. The deer will look at you and hold you in her gaze as if she knows you. It is not subtle; it is a compelling encounter. Deer do know humans. Deer are not domesticated but they are domestic in the sense that they live among us and have always been a part of the human experience.
Deer are wild but not wild. They live among us and have been part of human consciousness since the time of the cave dwellers who painted deer on the wall of their dwellings. Erika Howsare writes in The Age of Deer, that deer. “occupy a middle zone between…domestication and wildness. Far from time they are experts at living with people, and in many ways the actually prefer to share habitat with us.”
When we lived in small town Kentucky I would only occasionally see deer, perhaps there is so much area with easily reached food that the Kentucky deer don’t need our tomatoes. But in the semi-arid parts of Colorado, the deer are companions of our irrigated landscape and gardens. We see them daily in the neighborhood, in the suburban yards, in our pathways and gardens. Today, a doe came by to show off her two small fawns. A small herd liked to walk on our deck that is surrounded by low vegetation and communicate with our little dog. A few weeks ago, we a five foot fence built to contain our dog Lucy who stands all of ten inches high. Will it really keep out the deer? Not at all, for that a full eight feet or higher fence is needed.
In the 1930s deer were over-hunted and were nearly extinct. They were saved with management and careful breeding. Now there are plenty for the hunters and more than plenty for gardeners and drivers. The green suburbs provide an ideal environment for deer and they thrive. Outside of towns, deer populations are to some degree kept in check by eleven million hunters including what must almost be the entire male population of Kentucky. Even though deer hunting is the most important means of managing the deer population it is not enough writes Howsare. Predators are being introduced to help control the seemingly uncontrollable growth of deer herds. Recently, wolves have been released in parts of Colorado, and the ranchers are not happy even though there has been established a compensation fund for farm animals who become prey.s Deer can be a menace. Through deer ticks, people can contract Lyme disease a truly awful and sometimes long-lasting malady. Deer can carry and possibly transmit COVID. Then there are the DVCs. Deer-vehicle-collisions. The average cost of a collision with a deer is in the thousands for medical bills, towing, repairs and even $2,000 for the value of the deer itself. Hunting license fees pay for much of herd management but there also costly structural requirements for highways where deer are present. With over population, deer can wreck their own environment and ours too. Deer can desroy our trees and garden and even burst into stores and houses and cause enormous damage and danger. Some places have chosen to cull the populations of deer. There are at times efforts to employ sharp shooters to reduce the deer herds in cities and suburbs. Sometimes hunters can apply for special permits to cull the deer. Still, we love to see deer.
A glimpse of a deer is a sighting of the wild and the untamed. Wilderness. The English word comes from a combining of wild+deer+ness. Native peoples used deer hides for clothing and colonials viewed buckskin garb as uniquely American. George Washington delivered ten thousand buckskin shirts for his army to display the fierce nature of his forces. Mythology of many nations feature deer in the role of symbols of nature and of the origins of life. Deer represent the essence of nature as peaceful creatures who provide humans with clothing and food. But only if they are killed.
Hunting is a passion among rural American men representing not a hobby but an activity integral to their sense of self. “A hunter killing a deer is an interaction that happens between our species more than six million times every year in the U.S.” There is a code among deer hunters. Deer must be respected and treated with dignity. Most hunters do eat the venison they harvest. Many hunters express a feeling of grief after a kill. A fawn alone is fair game but a doe with a fawn is not to be harmed. Some hunters will only kill bucks.
The respect for deer is not the primary reason to hunt bucks. It is the antlers, the trophies. Boone and Crockett, the hunting organization co-founded by Theodore Roosevelt, measures and records trophies and awards certification for the prized antlers. The Boone and Crockett organization opposes the breeding of deer which is done to stock deer farms for hunters. The charges for shooting deer on these deplorable deer farms are determined be the size of the antler trophies. The prices are in the thousands. Breeders of bucks with enormous antlers can charge even more for breeding stock. A prized “breeder buck (ranchers like to give their studs names, like High Heat or Majesty) can command more than $50,000.”
Of course, many people oppose hunting altogether. Yet often people say that as long as they eat what is killed it is okay. Well, I go with the opposition to hunting altogether and eating venison as well. It is not the harm to the deer that bothers me, after all, hunting is beneficial to managing the herd so that it does not destroy its own environment and our gardens as well. What bothers me is the pleasure hunters get from unnecessary killing. I think it is repulsive and degrades the humanity of the hunter. In Kentucky, the state constitution protects a Kentuckians right to hunt. On the other hand, Kentucky regulations allow for “harvesting” roadkill which I suppose is a step above hunting if the very thought doesn’t turn your stomach.
Erika Howsare who made such a thorough exploration of deer and hunting could not bring herself to become a hunter although she found some respect for them. She did learn to enjoy eating venison. She relates a curious new development. Young people are turning to accepting venison for food not only as a kind of anti-agribusiness and healthy practice, like free range meat. But also, the idea is that it is environmentally sound. It could reduce cattle production and thereby reduce green house gases and reduce the deforestation of the South American rainforest.
Maybe so but hunting and deer are here to stay. Deer are in our culture and history. Deer are in our highways and woods. Occasionally, in our houses and often in our yards and gardens. But I love to see them.
Two Strikes 