Looking for solutions
There’s an irony in this picture. Gale, the man feeding the deer, owns this 300 acres I live on. One of the reasons he originally bought it had to do with the passion for hunting he spent most of his life following, which, 40 years ago was a passion we shared and was one of the ties leading to our becoming friends. Between us we’ve killed more large mammals than either of us can remember, though I don’t recall we ever hunted together.
Each of us following the routes our lives took us gradually and independently lost any interest in killing any more if it could be avoided.
Which is still a long way from sitting on a rock feeding tame deer every evening. I’ve never arrived there. I’d far prefer the deer staying out in the woods tending their own affairs and leaving me to tend mine, which they refuse to do.
Now, along comes the extended drought. Today he’s feeding a herd of 30-40 starving deer up there, spending $100 + per month on corn, range cubes and hay. If he tried to feed them enough to get them beyond near-starvation he’d bankrupt himself doing it. He’s picking cactus tines out of the lips and noses of his tame deer because they’re so hungry they’re trying to eat prickly pear cactus.
I’ve got another 20-30 down here I’m not feeding intentionally. ‘Mine’ are so desperate for food they constantly hang around waiting for me to feed the chickens, refuse to be run away further than I can throw a rock, and even come onto the porch for the cat food when any is left outdoors.
But watching a herd of deer starve to death, whether you’re feeding them and given them names, or are just some guy trying to mind his own affairs and have them forced on him as unwelcome guests, is a troubling position to be in. A few days ago he and I were discussing it trying to come up with some means of providing them more to eat without him having to spend a lot more money doing it.
Eventually it came to me people in Kerrville are probably still mowing their lawns, bagging the grass clippings and putting them out on the curbs to be picked up by the city. We talked about this a while and considered the fact the bags of grass ferment when sealed, creating a feed we’ve both been around called silage, which livestock love.
Next time either of us goes to town we’ll be looking at lawns to see if we’re right in believing they’re still watering grass and mowing it. If they are, I’ll soon be putting up a post on Kerrville FreeCycle Yahoo Group asking if any of them would,
- be willing to allow a trailer to be positioned on their lots where others could bring bagged grass clippings so we could haul them off weekly or a couple of times per month to feed the deer, and
- if such a lot and such a trailer were in place in Kerrville, would they be willing to carry their clippings there instead of just to the curb in front of their homes.
But this mightn’t work, and even if it works it’s only a partial solution to the problem.
I’m looking for ideas and information. You others living in drought-stricken areas, do you have any idea what, if anything, locals with starving deer populations are doing to supplement their feeding?
Any ideas or experiences that might lead to even interim or partial solutions will be appreciated.
Thanks, Old Jules
Money isn’t the solution to this problem, but the performance in Cabaret does seem apropos somehow:
Cabaret- Money
So Far From Heaven 
Interesting… I woke up in the wee hours of the morning thinking about the deer coming up onto your porch to eat the cat food and how hungry they must be. Mmmm. Anyway, In the Minnesota winters of many moons ago, the DNR would provide free bags of cracked corn to feed them if we wished to do so, and we did. I doubt there’s that kind of money floating around anymore in government agencies, but you might want to check. Also, I don’t know what the apple situation is there, doubtful there are any happy orchards right now, but it’s another possibility, if you could locate a generous donor. Stores, getting ready to chuck them into the dumpster. small ideas grow sometimes.
Interesting picture of Gale and the deer. Such a beautiful view, holding a troubling story.
Thanks Teresa Evangeline. This being Texus the smart money says government money won’t be in the equation, but the second part of your reply appears to me to have a lot of potential. Grocery stores are almost certainly throwing away wilting and aging produce and probably a lot of it. They might be willing to have us park a trailer behind the store where they could put it so we could pick it up and leave an empty trailer until our next trip. Maybe restaurants, also, or alternatively.
I’ll discuss it with Gale and one of us will probably be talking to some store managers about that one. Excellent idea. I’m grateful to you.
Gracias, J
My brother is a partner in this company, His field of Study is Wildlife game management. Even got the degree to prove it. He was here couple weeks ago and telling me more about the product he had invested in be cause he did his research and this one really does do what it claims. He is also using it on the ranches he leases for guided hunting.
I AM NOT AN AGENT FOR THIS NOR ANY COMPANY . With that being said, maybe worth looking into for food supplement for your deer herd
http://www.alternativewildlifenutrition.com/index.html
Other wise I tip my hat to you for your concern about the wild life and wanting to keep them wild
Thanks Ben: Looks as though it’s a good product. I went to the store locations page, though, and it would be a long trip to the nearest store carrying it. I’ll talk it over with Gale and if he’s interested maybe we can talk a feedstore owner into ordering a pallet or two to see whether there’s a market for it in this area. We mainly only go to Kerrville to do business, but there’s a feedstore in Harper, which is only about 15-20 miles away, under new ownership, and possibly open to trying something new. Thanks a bunch for the suggestion.
Gracias, J
Hello Jules…I’ve been keeping a small water tub filled for the thirsty critters around here..but never considered the deer being hungry. We do have a few deer here..and near here.(poet didnt knowit).
Wonder if I can find some deer corn this time of year?
Bigfoot in Aledo, TX
Hi Bill. There’s a livestock feedstore in Benbrook and a few in Weatherford. All of them would carry it, probably at a price of around $10 for a 50# bag. I doubt you’ll get it more than a few cents cheaper from one than from another. But if you can find a stack of alfalfa hay a year or two old where the guy died or went defunct it would still be good enough for deer and you could probably get it for straw bale prices or less. Corn’s good, but part of the problem is they need other components to their diets and, at least around here, those components didn’t come around this year. Mainly the cause was the lousy acorn fall. It just didn’t happen and it mightn’t even have anything to do with the drought. Acorn falls on any given year might be heavy or absent without showing any signs of having anything to do with rainfall.
Thanks for the visit and reply. Good luck to you on whatever you decide to do with your deer. Gracias, J
Hmmmmm, do I have to be a member to follow your blog? Can’t seem to find a “follow” button nowheres. Read your blog every day….interesting stuff. Kudos to anyone feeding the deer population.
Hi Anon, Admin. here. You can sign up for email notifications if you like. It’s on the left-hand column. Ask again if there’s a different way you’d like to follow along and I’ll look into it. Thanks for the question. Edit: Also, using the RSS feed gives you options about how you’d like to receive the posts.
I’m late top the party here but these are very good ideas. Here they do not want you to feed the deer and elk. We had one die and out of a herd of about 55 that wintered on the golf course for the first time in 20 years that I know of.
This is tough and good luck Jules.
Hi One Fly. Thanks for coming around. Good seeing you nailed inside on a weekend instead of galavanting around from hell to breakfast enjoying yourself and taking pictures of it for me to enjoy. Yeah, it’s a tough question, the whole gig of whether to let nature do the job of reducing the size of the herd by the means available, or succumbing to the heart-twanging melody crying to try to give them a hand through what might be just a tough year. I’m not sure this place would have supported more deer than you can count on one hand this year, and the official estimates are in the neighborhood of triple what we’re actually seeing at Gale’s and here. There’s 50 acres or so to the east nobody’s been on for a considerable while and 75 or 100 to the west I doubt either of us has visited in several months. I’d guess the deer down there look worse than the ones he’s seeing and I’m seeing. Thanks for stopping in. J
This is a strange post coming from you. It is uncharacteristically wrong-headed. Hubris in a shot glass.
The problem is not a lack of feed. The problem is too many deer. Find some way to cull the herd. Isn’t deer season about to start in a month or two? Stick a sign out on the road. There’ll soon be plenty of well-armed idiots up from Houston stopping by to help.
If all you want is the deer off your porch, what you need is a fence. Your landlord is causing your problem, if he’s feeding them on site. Pity is just an attractive nuisance.
Having lived in Texas all my life, including through several droughts as bad or worse than this one, I am pretty sure charity is misplaced. You need to kill a bunch of ’em, until the food stores match the herd. If you don’t cull ’em, the coyotes and other varmints will. That, or disease, which is even more of a mess.
The best thing to do about this, if you can’t afford to fence and yer killin’ days are over, is to do what the deer do. Endure. Maybe learn to whittle. Next year the herd will be back, only not so numerous that the cervine pests are driven mad enough to steal cat food off your porch.
These things come in cycles. Wait, and your problem is solved.
Bob, not much inclined to treat wildlife as livestock.
Hi Bob: Gale has the advantage on me by being better educated and having more common sense than you’d ever suspect, just looking at him. Likely as not he’ll do what you think he should do unless he makes up his mind he should do something else. Thanks for offering your opinion. When Gale reads all this he’ll most likely consider it.
Gracias, J
I don’t like always being the fly of doom but nature will eventually takes it’s course just like eventually it will do the same with humans.
Moving my stuff down to the new place this Wed and will come back and work through the month of Sept. I’m going someplace over labor day weekend. Later TB
Hi Jules,
We’re out near Big Bend National Park and our wildlife is greatly suffering too. We’ve been putting out alfafa, which at $14 a bale gets kind of expensive. Its not uncommon for the deer, etc. to drink a 17-gallon washtub full of water overnight. This is the first time we’ve ever seen that happen. We feed the birds milo. The bad part is the Farmer’s Almanac for 2012 shows another year of almost no rain for our area. In a little over a year we’ve received 8/10 of an inch of rain.
Well, I’m still thinking about all this and while I was, a deer family came into my backyard again, a mama and two still-spotted fawns. The fawns were frolicking under the grape arbor and enjoying what they could of the branches that were hanging. I didn’t mind a bit, well worth the view. The mama was nearby, but then she wondered over behind the lilac hedge and into my small apple orchard where I had purposely left a few apples that had fallen a couple of days ago. The little ones ran after her and through the hedge, but I could see them still through the greenery and they were having a good time. It brought me immense pleasure to see them and to know they were finding things to eat. Now, I know Minnesota is pretty lush right now, and food is plenteous, but my point is, do what feels right to You, Jules, what makes you feel good about participating in whatever way you can to alleviate suffering, and animals do suffer. We are fools if we don’t understand that they are sentient beings who deserve our respect.
That photo of Gale and the deer tells a very important story.
Morning One Fly: Thanks for coming by. Yep, Mama Nature can be cruel. Left entirely to her discretion there wouldn’t be any problem with people being stacked half-mile high in the cities and mile-long stacks of chicken pens for layers never seeing the outside of a 3 foot cube cage their entire lives so the stacked up boxes of people could have eggs to fry after they blow-dry their hair.
People like nature to do her job, but they like her to do it tidy and out of reach of where they can’t see it. Thanks for stopping by. Glad to see you progressing in the direction of getting moved. J
Kathleen: Thanks for the read and the comment. You’ve got it tougher than we do here, though alfafa hay’s the same price both places. But if this drought is going on in places irrigating with surface water likely it will be higher next year. Somebody needs to open up a can of whupass on those people writing the Farmers Almanac. Gracias, J
Teresa Evangeline: Thanks for stopping in again and especially thanks for the suggestions yesterday. Naturally I’ll do what I think’s best within my ability to get it done, and Gale will do whatever he think’s best too. If the two sing in two-part harmony we’ll do it together.
Other people other places will do the same. I just hope nobody else has thought of doing what you suggested and got in ahead of us in Kerrville if it turns out that’s what figures as best where we are. Gracias, J
Well, there’s not a damn thing wrong with making pets and dependents of a dozen deer or so, as long as you know that’s what you are doing and realize the limitations of the gesture.
It only becomes dumb when enthusiasm causes you to lose all sense of proportion. When you begin to take responsibility for things that are immensely beyond your powers to control, you’ve gone and stepped over into the “pride that goeth before destruction” that we’ve all heard so much about.
But kindness as a habit of mind? Go for it. Feeding a few deer is good practice. Moral pushups. Heck, you can even see it as a selfish act.
There comes a time when kindness is all we have. When it is all that matters. As when comforting the dying. That would surely be a bad time to -oops – find you have lost the knack.
Bob
True enough, Bob. Nothing at all wrong with it. As for taking responsibility for things beyond our powers, we humans are addicted to trying it and locking our teeth into the illusion it can be accomplished successfully. We all choose our illusions and the boundaries we think are worth defending. If the dying need comforting I suppose they’d have such a different concept of death from my own as to render me helpless to provide it.
I’d need comfort if I thought old Father Death lost all his reindeer and sleigh so’s he wouldn’t be there when I need him. Gracias, J
I live in dripping springs texas area, I am feeding about 100 deer corn and alfa and put water down, remember that fawns cannot drink from tall containers so I put water low to the ground also for them. I have many fawns coming and mother has them drinking water very young now and eating corn and alfa at a very young age. I may try some goat feed also to see if they like that, anything you buy like carrots or lettuce, apples they like I buy them apple treats that you would give the horses. I want this drought to end also. I love the deer, but know they would be happier with their own snacks from the wild. People have mixed affairs on feeding deer around here. It depends on who you talk to, the hunter or deer rancher feels the need to thin the herd out or badder things happen. I will never understand ,
I don’t want to listen just to the hunter, or the flower person, etc, I want to help and I am. There is alot of wastage in this country. There used to be bar
enclosing a herd in by high fences. Then there is the flower people, they eat my garden up, then there is and it goes on and on. Well maybe we should thin people out to, they drink too much water, or they get sick and cost money and this goes on and on. Well all I can say is god knows your heart better than anybody and I cannot stand by and do nothing for these creatures.
Hi anonymous. Thanks for stopping by and commenting. Dripping Springs used to be pretty good country.
I don’t personally acknowledge, accept, agree there’s any moral high ground on this issue. However, I do acknowledge there’s a passle of potential moral high grounds people can take ownership of and be evangelical about. I’m fine with you doing whatever you choose to do. Gracias, J