As I'm writing this, sitting at my desk, there are the usual six deer in the backyard, the closest about 15 feet from the picture window in my office. ( Mike Feltman has been offering to rent my home office as a bow-hunting blind ) If I open the window and yell at them they will look up, but not move.

Of course, they also eat pretty much anything even vaguely green, so now that my new construction is finished and I'm getting ready to start re-landscaping I am researching deer-be-gone products.

( actually, I already have a pretty extensive arsenal of of pretty-much-anything that is wearing Kevlar begone products but I've become kind of fond of these critters and just want them to eat lunch in the neighbor's yard <s> )



>This morning, when the sun was rising (closer to daybreak), I walked out onto my front porch and there was a doe standing at the edge of the woods (about 50 feet away). I sat down on a chair on my porch before I saw her. I typically spend a few minutes each morning relaxing before the day begins on my front porch. Usually, they will run off when they detect a human. This morning though, she calmly walked right up to my bushes in my yard (about 15 feet away is all) and started munching. I froze so as not to startle her. I had to sit there for 5 minutes until a car drove on the next road over to startle her into moving back into the woods. They are there almost every morning walking around the woods next to my home. I see alot of rabbits, snakes, wild chickens, possums, owls, hawks, and a variety of other birds as well.
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>>Sorry Tracy, I guess I was still thinking about Mike calling them pests for intruding and then the other posts saying that the deer cause havoc and all. then your post on the heels of it talking about someone being killed by a deer... I just jumped on it. No offense meant.
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>>>Hi Alan,
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>>>I never wrote nor implied that. I was simply pointing out that deadly accidents do occur between vehicles and wild animals. I must have missed something in the discussion...
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>>>>>I personally knew two people who were killed by deers leaping over their cars (one in Wisconsin and one in North Carolina) while they were driving down the road. Both were killed by a deer hoof to the head. I see 4 deer everyday outside my house. They live in the woods beside my house. My daughter has had her drivers permit since August 2006 (we have a graduated system here) and she has had to avoid deer(s) in the road 5 times already. One night a deer was running down the road straight into oncoming traffic.
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>>>>The deer are just doing what they've always done. The fact that we came along and stuck a roadway and homes in their paths doesn't make them villains.
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>>>>>>>>>>Now I can shoot a deer and feel a primary sense of joy and excitment instead of guilt. Sure if it is a poor shot and it suffers, I feel bad. But the feeling of a clean shot and quick kill of a deer is definitely one of the top 5 joys in my life.
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>>>>>>>>>And that you feel that way doesn't bother you? If you were living in frontier times and killing that deer meant your family would eat for a week instead of going hungry, I can understand the feeling. But in the modern world, how can killing an innocent creature give you joy?
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>>>>>>>>>Tamar
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>>>>>>>>It's easy to paint deer as innocent little creatures, but they are a pest here. People die from car accidents with deer,
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>>>>>>>Er, isn't it that deer die from people running into them? It's not as if the deer flatten the cars.
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>>>>>>Actually the deer do flatten the cars. I've seen cars all but totaled after the driver hit a deer.