Deer Directions

     Nearly four decades ago we migrated from a city life, to take up an existence in a rural setting. We acquired a parcel of land that was forested and cut a few trees, in order to make a clearing, where we built a home and planted various kinds of vegetation—a vegetable garden, some fruit trees, shrubs, and flowers.

    Most of these tasty and attractive plants were not indigenous to our new rural environs. In contrast, nature offers little in the way of edible food for humans, or showy blossoms. In our naïveté we chose plantings that we had liked in the city, without realizing that we'd be offering critters in the woods various new and delightful repasts. Numerous insects, rodents, and mammals were happy to see us move in and plant so many goodies for them. They had been subsisting on Nature's bland diet and were delighted to sample and savor our delectables.

What ensued was a few decades of either learning how to fend off the interlopers or realizing that several choices we had made were simply not going to survive their onslaughts. One crucial sanctuary we insisted on, however, was the vegetable garden. Its produce was critical to our way of life, so we built a sturdy, high fence around the vegetable garden, to ward off the larger critters (deer, foxes, opossums, rabbits) and learned how to allow some insects to partake of a modest portion of the veggies, but drew the line on the amount that they took. Since we chose not to use insecticides, this meant we had to find ways to discourage them by using companion plantings and frequent rotation of garden plants. My wife became adept at figuring out when a pest was just beginning its assault, and then hand picking and squishing the early invaders. Like the early bird, she nabbed the worms before they multiplied.

Plants outside the protection of  the garden fence were quite another issue. We could not fence the whole area, so we battled the invaders by attempting to select flowers, shrubs, and trees that we thought did not appeal to their appetite. By far the greatest problem invader has been deer. Once they discover your tasty plants, you have acquired them as permanent raiders. You may put out alarms or spray your plants with deer repellent, but these tenacious, hoofed plant grazers will sooner or later foil all your defenses and dine on your delectables. They drive our choices. 

I recently paused to gaze around our clearing—which is fabulously beautiful in the spring—and it occurred to me that most all of the plants I gazed upon have been selected over the years to be unappealing to deer tastes. They are not the choices of flowers, shrubs, and trees I began with—those are all gone. No, the choices of plants in today’s clearing have been literally directed by the deer. In fact, they seem to have been more in charge of landscaping selections than I. They've patiently guided me.

Alleviating Ignorance—Part 2

A third struggle caused by our ignorance of rural life had to do with trying to grow fruit trees. For a few years we planted and nurtured numerous kinds of fruit trees and even began enjoying apples, peaches, plums, and cherries. In our naivete we had no idea that our mini-climate here was a dangerous one for fruit trees. We live in a small hollow that gets good sun. In early spring the sun's warmth encourages the trees' blossoms to pop out in bloom too soon, because a frosty night will inevitably follow. Cold air flows down hollows, chilling itself even more as it goes. Our vulnerable fruit blossoms regularly got killed by the frosty air, thus killing our chance that year of enjoying fruit.

What few fruit trees managed to survive spring frosts later began to fall prey to fungus and other pathogens drifting in from the surrounding woods. I unknowingly aided these attacks by transplanting some lovely wild plum trees from the woods—native trees that had a natural resistance to the diseases, but were also carriers of them. The imported attacks promptly proceeded to infect our tender nursery fruit trees. Unwilling to use powerful chemical sprays, we mourned as one tree after another succumbed. We eventually did find a way to grow fruit: strawberry plants do not catch wild tree diseases.

A fourth fiasco we encountered was to acquire a few hens, in order to enjoy a steady supply of our own fresh eggs. Doesn't everyone who moves to the country get some chickens and enjoy fresh eggs? A friend gave us several laying hens, to set us up in the egg business. Our mistake was to allow the hens to free range—not wanting them penned up. We hoped they'd also go after bugs, as well as not have to deal with the mess of caged chickens. After all, we'd moved to the country to enjoy the freedom of the great outdoors; why shouldn't our chickens also be free? Well, they sure enjoyed their liberty. The hens sauntered into the woods to lay their eggs in secret places, then came out happily cackling, defying us to find their stash. It was as if they were laughing at us, as if they were smarter than we were (and maybe they were!). We rarely found their eggs, or not until they had rotted. Before long, forest critters like raccoons and foxes solved the issue by dining on our free-range chickens.

A fifth and final example (although I could relate many more) of our ignorance turned out to be a fortunate one, resulting from our free-ranging dogs. (Running free didn't work for chickens, but it sure did for the dogs.) We live far enough out in the woods that our dogs can run free—as their spirit surely requires. Our ignorance in this case was that we did not know what damage deer can cause to a garden. We did not know, for example, that nearby residents were being constantly invaded by deer, and had to resort to expensive solutions like electric fences, tall fences, or purchasing pricey repellents like cougar urine. Our garden—very modestly fenced—remained deer free. Why?

It took a few years for us to realize that our neighbors either had no dogs or that they tied or fenced their dogs. Deer are smart. They will quickly discover that a restrained dog is no threat, and simply move in to dine—even seeming to take some degree of amusement from their surreptitious deed. In contrast, our dogs ran untethered—free to joyously chase any deer that wandered near. This is one good example of our ignorance leading to a happy result, rather than struggling with chiggers, voles, and spring killing frosts.

I could go on with a score of other examples of what we learned—how we alleviated a few more ignorances. These many lessons helped us endure, and yes, even thrive out here. Many of our lessons could have been learned from fellow travelers and from public media, but there will always be many more that are unique to one's situation, and that you have to stumble into on your own. Our major transition from city professionals to rural hicks—like any radical change—challenged us in many ways we could not have imagined. Many factors have led to our still being here 35 years later. I'd like to think that flexibility and intelligence played a significant roll, but some luck and stubbornness were probably just as important.

Deer Desperadoes

I wrote last year (“Masting Aftermath,” 12/26/12) about experiencing a heavy masting year for oak acorns. (The masting process is one in which oak trees somehow collaborate to grow a superabundance of acorns every few years, thereby coating the forest floor with far too many acorns for critters to eat—ensuring that some survive to grow the next generation's oak trees.) Everywhere I trekked in the woods last year, the ground was carpeted with countless acorns. I had to watch my step, lest I slip on them and fall.

So last winter the deer, squirrels, turkeys, and other critters were fat and happy—gorging themselves on the oaks' bounty. All that overindulgence came to a screeching halt this fall, as the trees were unusually stingy in their acorn crop. The result is severe hunger in the ranks of these acorn harvesters. I don't know how the squirrels and turkeys are faring, but we've seen lots of evidence of famished deer.

We depend on our free-roaming dogs to keep the deer from invading our garden, and they do a good job of it. A garden fence deters the deer to some degree, but the dogs love to chase any deer who takes a second look at the fence and is contemplating a jump over it into veggie heaven. So once again we made it through the summer with no deer incursions in the garden.

This fall has been a very different story, however. As foraging on tender plants in the woods was brought to a close by the beginning of cold weather and no backup supply of acorns was to be had this year, the deer have repeatedly invaded the clearing. Numerous shrubs and bushes do not get fenced, as the garden does. That is usually no problem, because I've chosen varieties of shrubs known to be shunned by deer.

Well, that may be true for normal years, but when starvation threatens, the deer become desperate. They'll eat most anything green, as well as many other types of barely edible plants. It's irritating as hell to go out in the morning and find that deer have devastated our holly, privet, and other evergreen shrubs.

It makes me wish I had caught one in the act with a large stone in my fist, which I could ricochet painfully off its butt. But when my wave of fury has subsided, I feel sympathy for their plight. What kinds of desperate actions might I take, if I were starving? I try to let go my ire at the severe damage they've caused. After all, most of those shrubs will probably recover next spring... or so I fervently hope.

But I can't help wishing their stolen meal gives them a big bellyache. If so, it might deter them from returning and finishing off what little of the plants they spared.

Oh Deer

Out in our neck of the woods we’ve been increasingly faced with incursions of deer, the last few years. Their numbers and audacity seem to have grown immensely. A century ago they were held in check by big predators like wolves, coyotes, and wildcats; but humans drove them out, so the deer now ramble quite freely. A few decades ago numerous hunters roamed these woods with rifles and played the primary role of deer population-control predator. But each year these woods see fewer hunters and more deer. The automobile may soon become the sole predator.

Deer love to eat the things that people grow: luscious vegetables, fruit trees, ornamentals. These fancy plants are far tastier than tough forest vegetation. Deer may be cute, but they can be pests.

We have been quite lucky not to have been too bothered by deer in recent years—even though many of our neighbors have been. We’ve always had good-sized dogs as members of the family. They’ve roamed the immediate area, spread their scent, and enjoyed a good deer chase.

But that luck has recently been changing. Maybe it’s the increased deer population, maybe it’s the current dog getting older and more sedentary, maybe it’s all the luscious apple saplings I’ve planted. We’ve repeatedly been invaded by deer, with the buggers nibbling off the tender tips of the saplings. Their pruning technique is not to my liking. After some research and a few false starts, I’ve come up with a repellant that does a pretty good job—a noxious blend of raw egg, milk, vegetable oil, liquid soap, and cayenne powder. The sour milk and rotten egg turn my stomach, but I believe that the hot pepper bothers them most. The vegetable garden has yet to be invaded, but how much longer?

There is a worse problem than the deer nibbling our plants, however: Lyme disease. This scary malady is caused by an adaptive little germ—the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb)—that is carried by the deer tick. The tick sequentially attaches itself to field mice, humans, and deer, in that order. We—in the middle—suffer from the disease; the animals don’t. The germ must accomplish that triple-host journey, riding in the gut of the tick and pulling off the unlikely stunt of getting transferred to its current mammalian host and then back to subsequent generations of the tick. Unfortunately, Bb is very successful in meeting the challenge.

The germ’s incredibly complex journey once was rare, but is progressively more common. Humans and deer cross paths more frequently, as people have moved farther out into the exurbs. Lyme disease is nasty. But it’s certain that we’re likely to see more of it in the near future, as we rub shoulders with an escalating deer population. I think I’d rather deal with apple sapling nibbles.