Totaled after Deer Collision

To prove to the opossum / armadillo that it can be done.

 

To get to the pile of corn some clown dumped on the shoulder

Mike

 

I don't think of deer as akin to rats, I think they are beautiful.
I won't go on about my views on this, I don't think it will change the minds of those who disagree, so why fight.
This isn't the place for that.

However, I do agree that there is overpopulation in some areas.
Rather than hunting, I would be in support of some sterilization programs or even reintroducing some natural predators, where possible.
Cars hitting deer isn't fun for either.

I briefly lived in a southern state, where nearly every man loves to hunt and there are few restrictions if any.
There used to be a lot of deer.
Just a couple years ago, there were a lot of glum hunters around. They couldn't find any deer to kill.
They had decimated the population.
I think this is sad, but I did notice that one year I had to watch for deer while driving at night, the next year I saw only one, and by then I was used to them being gone so it surprised me.
At least when there were more, I knew to watch for them.

Funny ironic thing I remember seeing there, big trucks with gun racks, hunter stickers, and the like with a specialty license tag "support wildlife". This was common.

Anyway, good luck all.

 

maybe not rats, but deer are godless creatures that wreak havoc. I have not had a decent landscape in nearly a decade., and have seen more than a few get killed by buick....

the cost to trap and sterilize runs about a grand....

in areas where deer population is high, there is no real reason to not hunt them and use them for food. we harvest cows and chickens, why not deer.

Here in Northern VA the only real predator for deer are cars/trucks. Its a shame it takes thousands of dollars in property damage and potential human injury to legally "take" a deer in a populated area.

 

I believe Northern Virginia is trying to control deer populations with contraception although controlled nighttime hunts have also been tried in recent past (unsuccessful). Although coyote are filtering back into suburban areas, they will not kill adult deer, and reintroducing timber wolf might make suburbanites with small children or pets nervous so probably not feasible.
Does aesthetic appeal preclude using something for food?
I would rather use intelligence or ability to feel mammalian emotions to set the boundary of edible vs proscribed. That leaves fish and chicken on the menu but mammals including whales (which Japanese find delectable) and typical farm mammals off. Octopus and squid would be a gray area as they are demonstrably intelligent but have non-mammalian emotional systems.
That said, if I have run into a deer and killed it, the moral issue is moot. In such case, the Alaskan system of using the meat to benefit the poor folks in shelters would seem appropriate and that would be my choice. Yours?
Another case to consider is self-defense: if I am camping in Alaska and a grizzly attacks me or my wife and I manage to kill it, should I waste the carcass or donate it to the aforementioned food banks? (Betting odds would be on the grizzly, of course!)
Just curious as you raised interesting issues.

 

Roger, three years ago I was in florida with my family and we were on our way to dec24 chistmas service and killed Rudolph with my dads gmc Envoy.

drove home dropped off wife kid and mom , called police and returned to the scene. onthe way to the scene we stopped at a 7-11 that had 4 large 4x4 pick-ups and guys wearing cowboy hats. So we stopped and told them about the deer, and they followed us, to the scene, and then waited for the police. Once the cop got there he released the deer to the guys and they went home happy.

Here in NOVA this time of year not a week goes by that I don't see a new dead deer on the side of the road.

 

Um, I feel your pain, Kemo Sabe , as I had to stop feeding birds after the local deer learned how to lick the seed directly out of our bird feeder (eat 2-3 pounds of seed in a couple minutes).

But raising the "godless" issue seems problematic as it seems to raise religious issues. Religions differ on which species are proscribed as pork is for Moslems and Jews, and beef is for Hindus, and some religions try to avoid killing any animals at all (Jainists?). If you were referring to the deer themselves not believing in god, I really can't think of a way to objectively determine that. Maybe the use of burial ceremonies or designated burial grounds would show "godful" beliefs? Decorated Neanderthal graves are used to argue that Neanderthals had afterlife beliefs and thus religion, so that might be one criterion we could use. Since elephants appear to have designated cemeteries or death areas and have awfully big brains, they might well have afterlife beliefs and thus possibly some kind of religion, so I guess elephant would be off the menu. Hmmm.

 

robert...too funny man.... bird feeders are well out of reach from the deer, squirrels are at least fun to watch, but finding nice looking landscape plants that are not a buffet for deer or rabbits... ARGH...
I had to put a 6 foot fence around my veggie garden. Around here they are truly fearless.

 

My feeder is 6 feet up, but a nice two-point buck figured out how to stretch his neck up, kind of tilt it with his nose, and then use that ungodly long tongue to lick the seed out of the side troughs of the feeder. Didn't realize they could extend their tongue like that.
Yeah, they or rabbits are also getting our flowers especially the annuals, but don't bother rose bushes.
But to get back to thread of OP, has anyone found a noise making type of deterrent that would work for deer? I have read the siren thingies do NOT work, but has anyone tried playing recordings of say their natural predators such as wolves? Or is there some law against driving a Prius that is emitting wolf howls here in Virginia? Not sure.
Our deer-on-roads-problem is similar to kangaroos-on-roads-problem in the Australian Outback, and the advice I got from the overnight bus driver driving us to Broken Hill was that he only used his low beam lights as the high beams seemed to startle kangaroos into standing still in the middle of the road. Can anyone think of a captive herd of deer somewhere where we could run some systematic (but non-destructive!!) tests? Where is Consumer Reports when you need them?

 

if running on lowbeams, I'll flash the hi-lo of an on and they they continue eating, Honk the horn, they may glance up while eating.

 

They're taking us for granted, drat it! We really need some combination of lights and/or sounds that will trigger the "run the opposite direction" instinct in those pea brains.
Surely some scientist has the answer.
I know that in Jasper, British Columbia, they scare off grazing moose from the local school grounds by walking at them with hockey sticks held up on each arm to make them look like big predators. I think they also yelled and hollered but cannot recall for sure. That did seem to work for moose, so maybe it would work for deer? Possibly the extra-bright lights like some of those after-market driving lights mounted to make the car look "bigger" , combined with a loud, "predator-like" sound track would do the trick?
Does anyone have an external loudspeaker system mounted on his or her car that we could experiment with by using different recorded soundtracks?
We also need a dependable place to find a herd and run the experiments.
Does anyone know how acute their hearing is? If deer hear the high pitches like dogs, we could try making ultrasonic noise which would avoid angering the neighbors altho it might drive the neighborhood dogs nuts. Hmmmm.

 

Big bummer!

 

I recently read an article about deer. I don't recall anything about their hearing, but they do have a very acute sense of smell. Apparently, the 'deer in the headlights' phenomena is because they are literally blinded by the light, they have great night vision, but if you wore night vision goggles and someone put a flashlight in your face, you would experience something similar.
As for eating road kill, no thanks, but if you'd like to I have no problem with that, and certainly if it helps hungry people in shelters I'm all for it.
I'm not going to comment on the rest of it or you will never get me off my soapbox.