The deer are out to get me. I feel like I have no other notion to explain how in two years to the month I’ve had a deer jump out in front of our only vehicle and bust it up.
What else can explain what is more likely to be a random occurrence, freak luck? Are the deer simply stupid, or suicidal?
The conspiracy theorist in me says the deer are definitely plotting dastardly deeds to make my life harder.
Why, is my question. I’ve never done anything to a deer personally that I can remember. I do find them to be tasty, but I’m not the one out… harvesting them for the meat. I leave that job to my stepdad.
Is it a deer problem, or a Kevin problem? Maybe I’m just hitting a bad stretch of luck in life? Some sort of seven fat years, seven lean years curse against me and my household?
I hope not. There’s enough going on worldwide to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight. Maybe that’s why the deer are jumping out in front of cars. No one wants to watch the world fall down around their ears.
I used to live on Fripp Island, South Carolina, from the time I was… 11(ish) to 16. Fripp was a private resort island and therefore was packed to the gills with houses separated by space in some neighborhoods for a wooded acre or two to thrive. Marshes were protected, and lagoons proliferated everywhere. Two golf courses and nature trails added to the appeal of the seaside barrier island.
The deer population was much larger than it would have been in an area without any real natural predators. Save the alligators.
People fed the deer. They stopped in their golf carts randomly to take pictures with the deer. Oohs and ahhs when they spot them on the long bike trail that ran each tip of the island. Nature preserves sort of stuff.
It is important to note a few more items: first, the island had two (sometimes at odds) leadership running things: a corporation that took on rentals and ran the courses and various clubhouses and pools on the island. (I did spend time as a corporate stooge during this teenage angst time of life on the island for two summers. Suffice to say it sucked.)
Then there was the Home Owners Association. They ran security, ensured people’s houses were up to code, and various other aspects of island living. They ran the water on the island if I remember correctly. That kind of stuff.
The security aspect of this story is important because when animal control issues happened, the security people usually were the ones with the jurisdiction to handle it.
Mom comes home one day from working at the HOA, just bursting at the seams to impart this tale of insanity I still can’t fathom.
Alligators from time to time would catch a deer hanging out near the lagoon, and with a lightning-fast snap of their crushing jaws, drag them into the briny depths, drowning their prey.
One particular alligator had gotten a deer, and somehow with recent heavy rainfall on the island from popup showers, gotten his way into the drainage system of one of the golf courses and stuffed his freshly killed prey into it. Saving it for a later snack opportunity, I guess.
Well, the backed-up drainage pipe began to flood the roadway and someone complained, so corporate called out maintenance guys from one of the golf courses.
They go out, take a look in the drain, and guess who is there guarding the not-so-freshly killed snack? None other than Mr. Alligator, is now all pissed off that these guys are trying to take away his snack in this nice new spot he’s found for sunbathing and swimming.
You can imagine what happened next. Maintenance guys call for help from security. They send out a couple of guys in their Ford Explorers (which were giants at the time, really intimidating to something like an alligator with maybe an 18-inch clearance off the ground.
Oh no, the alligator was having no part of this nonsense. The security guys began driving forward to force the gator away from the drain pipe, but to him, this might as well have been a giant Water Buffalo.
When one of the Explorers finally got too close, the crushing force of the jaws lashed out, and the gator bit holes in the side of the thick plastic bumper.
After that, they called for help from Animal Control back in Beaufort.
Eventually, they got the gator to move and cleared the drain pipe, but I think back to that story now and am in awe at the power of nature. And the annoyance of having too many deer around.
The only time I’ve ever been hunting proper is with my stepdad. He took me one year after Thanksgiving onto our friend’s property, where he had lots of acreage with open fields and wood lines. Perfect place to hunt.
It was zero dark thirty when we got out there, and he stuck me in a tree stand with a rifle and scope. Granddaddy Alton had taught me to shoot when I was eight with a .22, and I had gotten some time in college to go out to the range with friends. I felt competent enough to pull the trigger when required.
Except for when you’re watching your prize running away thanks to a pair of dogs.
It was a little past dawn, and I had waited and watched the area I was in around me for more than an hour in the freezing cold but saw nothing. Just the last remnants of autumn holding on desperately in a breeze.
Then out of nowhere a buck – it wasn’t very old – comes running out of nowhere just around my tree stand being chased by a pair of dogs from a neighborhood just on the other end of the property line in my view. I tried to swing the rifle around (it not being mine I didn’t want to hurt anything) but by the time I could have gotten a clear shot, the buck was back through into the trees and the dogs were following.
Later my stepdad asked me what happened, and I told him in disbelief. Hunting requires more patience than I will ever have.
Honestly, I’m not sure I would have wanted to take the shot if it was available. I’m not one for killing anything if we’re totally honest with each other here.
Don’t let anyone fool you. Deer are a real problem in our neck of the woods. They eat up gardens and tear down fencing. They jump to their deaths when startled by an oncoming car without warning, potentially harming the occupants inside. Deer ticks in this neck of the woods cause Lyme disease in humans and are prevalent here because of the ratio of deer to predators.
We messed with their habitats and the food chains by hunting down coyotes and wolves out of the Eastern United States, and now we pay for it more than a century later. That’s even with the population dropping over the past two decades here in North Georgia, per a UGA study.
I’d say it’s still large enough for two freak occurrences to happen in the span of two years.
Hopefully, the deer will chill out. And I’ll be more hypervigilant of their presence in nature.
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