Above: Deer at John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Credit: Craig Lewis/USFWS, via Flickr.
Every cold winter night ends in the same way – with the woodstove. Open the air intake. Open the stove door and scoop out any excessive wood ashes. Rake the coals to the front. Load some firewood, and burn on full blast until all pieces are glowing. Then, reduce the air intake to a light flame for an overnight, sustained burn. Replace the pot of water atop the stove for humidity. Of course these steps contain some time lag between and are not continuous. In between I might be having a conversation with my wife, gathering more firewood, locking up the chickens for the night, or… watching deer. Watching deer!
Last night was a full moon. It was so bright outside I could make out the neighbor’s cat stalking a couple of deer on their front lawn eighty yards away. After I load the last pieces of firewood for the night is the most time for waiting – and watching for deer. Forest regeneration is mostly impacted by bud-browsing deer during this food-scarce time of year – much to the chagrin of Foresters, Landscapers, and Gardeners. During the day, most deer will seek cover in the woods to escape observation from humans and other potential predators. However, many of our woodlands are maturing and offer very little in the forest understory (below five feet) for deer to browse upon.
Unbeknownst to many humans, our landscaped lawns, gardens, and vista-clearing offer a lovelier deer-scape. Although some deer are bold enough to browse the home-owner’s expensive plantings during the day, most will find it more convenient to trade the cover of a day-time’s forest canopy for an evening’s darkness – just in case an irate homeowner decides the hunting season has not officially ended.
Waiting for the firewood to catch, I stared out the front window. I could make out some shadows in the neighbor’s front lawn where none existed before. “No, the water well is over there. That must be something else,” I thought. When one of the shadows moved a little bit, then stopped and nervously put its head up to look at the neighbor’s spotted cat – it was obvious it was a deer. The cat stalked the deer for a minute or two – imitating its larger feline cousins. But the deer weren’t afraid, and the cat knew the jig was up. The deer browsed upon the yew my neighbor had planted 2 yards from his front door. Another came in from the other side of the lawn and was browsing on some grass. Deer are much calmer during the night when they believe nobody is watching. They took their time and walked nonchalantly across the road to my front lawn. One stopped right next to a fruit tree I had planted. Luckily, this fruit tree and the four others were protected from hungry herbivores like this deer. Each tree had its own five foot tree tube, specially made to allow light and air in while keeping out browsers.
I watched the deer move closer to the house – browsing on some more grass remnants. The deer stood three feet from the tree tube with its head down. The other moved closer to inspect the shrubs near my front door. “Tick, tick, tick, tick,” sounded the stove-pipe – indicating that the fire had been roaring and was now beginning to over-heat the stove-pipe. I damped down the stove and watched the flames slow. The deer now made their way to the side of house near the peach tree and outside my field of view – so I decided to quit and climbed into bed.
Lying in bed, I couldn’t help but think about the deer and this modern-day phenomenon. Yes, the chickens were in – safely protected from domestic animals, weasels, coyotes, bear, and fox. Now, there was another responsibility – another agricultural/cultivated product that needed to be locked in from predators. This time it was not from the howling, fanged coyotes, or the weasly weasels. This time it was from the moonlight munchers – the big, bad, white-tailed deer. Now we must not only tuck in our small birds, but also small trees. For small trees, a deer’s mouth is as scary as the talons of a red-tailed hawk are to a Rhode Island Red chicken. The next time you buy some fruit at the store, take time to appreciate all the work that goes into making it – the fencing, tubing, fertilization, pest control, pruning, etc. Of course, it is not the deer’s fault alone. Our habitat – especially our forests, can be better managed for wildlife like deer so that they are less dependent and impacting on what little is available around our houses. Call CFA to learn more about wildlife management and how you can manage forest land for quality, not quantity. www.catskillforest.org
