Posted on 10/23/2017 4:28:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Darwin is at work out there in the wild, where some way, somehow, deer, especially the big bucks, seem to know when it is deer season.
For most of Northern California, that is now. In a sign of the times, field scout Tom Hesseldenz stopped at a crosswalk last weekend, the opening of deer season, in order to allow a trophy buck, a 4x4 black-tailed deer, to stroll right past the front of his car.
“I couldn’t believe it, right in front of me,” Hesseldenz said. “I pulled out my phone and took the picture.”
In the photo, you can see how the deer is walking across the street between the white lines that mark the crosswalk.
From the Marin Headlands, a panorama of the town of Mendocino, often a sunny paradise in fall Mendocino: Fall’s sunny side of paradise Perry Norris, executive director of Truckee Donner Land Trust, looks out on to the meadows of Carpenter Valley near Truckee Calif. Wednesday, September 6, 2017. World-class adventures abound on the Sierra’s western slopes A rare California long-tailed weasel appeared in the courtyard at the
Hesseldenz is a landscape architect, the former director of the organization Cal Trout, and is responsible for leading crews to build some of the best trails in Northern California. In the past month, he said he’s been working a job in the north state in Yreka, and sighted the big buck walking across Main Street, of all places.
These kinds of encounters are becoming more common. More than anything, the deer seem to know the safe zones. That includes golf courses, parks, RV campgrounds, open space, inside the city limits of rural towns and the backyards of those with a little acreage.
Many deer also now spend their entire lives in a 5-mile radius, often in areas where there is no hunting, according to a GPS collar study by the Department of Fish and Wildlife. These deer can seem like a newly evolving species, “The Black-tailed Domesticated Deer,” nearly tame and comfortable around people. Most hunters, who pledge fair chase in the wilds of the mountains, have no interest in them.
For the most part, the once great, mass migrations of the large, wild herds, from the high Sierra Nevada to the foothills above the Central Valley, are gone, blocked by highways with no passage and expanding cities. That’s what happens in a state that has grown to 39.5 million people and counting.
Even then, within the wild stocks in remote areas with little contact from people, the deer somehow know when hunting season is afoot.
One year, before the mountain deer season started, my two boys, Jeremy and Kris, made several trips to scout the prospects. They traced out game trails to find where deer were bedding down, drinking and feeding. They then intercepted many deer on these routes to learn their patterns, and on the Friday before the season started, sighted a giant buck with 5x5 antlers.
The next day, opening day, that deer vanished. Each day that followed, there was no sign of it, not even a mark. The big ones, for instance, will leave marks in the dirt from the tips of their antlers when they feed. Without ever seeing the deer, you can then measure the distance between the tip marks in the dirt to gauge the spread and get an idea of how big the antlers are.
My husband might agree. He’s hunting a huge, big mass antlered 8 point with a club of a drop tine that has shown up on all three of his trail cams all summer. This deer will go 300# easy. Bow season starts - nothing. Nada. Zilch. He even passes up a nice tall ten at 15 yards so he could keep his buck tag open. Well, the 10 point was scrawnier.
Old guy on Saturday morning radio garden show always says, “If you want to thin the herd of squirrels in the neighborhood, just change the speed limit every couple of weeks”
My opinion differs. The week before the season opens, hunters force the behavior changes. They scout and drive and invade habitat, tramping and speeding about, disrupting normal patterns of the animals. I was out scouting Montana pronghorns this season, glassing from a mile away, but the night before opening the dopey hunters from out of the area started driving vehicles at the animals scattering them up to five miles away and putting them all on edge, ready to bolt at any movement.
Bottom line: It’s not that the animals are so smart and psychic; it’s that inexperienced hunters are stupid and psycho.
Which, in turn, forces me to change behavior. Namely to find an area where the dopey humans are bound to drive the jittery animals so I can ambush them when the critters come by. It’s not my preferred hunting style, but I have to take what the dopes give me.
Is my opinion.
They can read a calendar just like anyone else.
“Shhh, don’t let them know we’re actually not color-blind.”
“I think they just get stuck in a rut.”
Very good! Wonder how many caught it, lol!
When the shooting starts and the deer pick up the scent of fear and blood, that is when the deer disappear.
I thought that was when the deer caught wind of cigarette smoke, beer farts and fox whizz.
For the hunters out there, that have never seen it, here is the best (and only as far as I know) deer camp movie.
Watch it every year for luck....
The bucks have been savvy for a long time. They are dumb stumbling beasts right up to opening day, then they become alien ghosts. I tracked a big one into a ravine in perfect tracking snow, and tracked it right out on the same trail — it passed within a few feet of me, crouching and sliding its way through briers. A neighbor had a buck sleeping on the porch with his dogs one year. I’m glad they don’t get people tags.
For all those anti-hunters out there, deer in the city/town can b a big problem, a nuisance and potentially life threatening.
When the deer herds invade suburbia, expect more automobile deer accidents, which can cost money, injure or even kill people in the car or from vehicles swerving.
And believe it or not, deer can be quite aggressive, especially the bucks during rut. Those antlers can kill you, and they can rear up and slice you with their front hooves.
And for the deer, when they over-breed, and no natural predators exist except for a few human hunters—and NONE in the city—they can literally starve to death over winter; brutally, painfully and slowly. Finally, too many deer increase human Lyme disease due to many more ticks surviving and thriving.
I’m not saying they’re a scourge, but too many is just that. Allow carefully selected bow hunters in town.
It makes me wonder. There are certain lands you can’t hunt on, but perhaps you could engage i behaviors that scree the deer back onto fair game land.
Deer fencing around vineyards also changed the natural pathways.
Bttt.
5.56mm
Being from Michigan (a Troll, not a Yooper) I love that movie. Several years ago I found it on DVD.
"Well check out the big f@#$%^g brain on Tom there!!
And for the deer, when they over-breed, and no natural predators exist except for a few human hunters—and NONE in the city
A suburban city near me figured this out a few years ago and decided to have limited permitted bow hunting inside its limits.
They did not get a single application for a permit. They ended up having to hire professional hunters to come in and thin the herd.
No one wants to take on the liability of hunting in a city.
Professionals will have liability insurance that the city will pay for in the contract.
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