&*%$#*&@ Deer!

This is apparently the year of the Deer. They are a total nuisance. I guess its karma, but it still isn't any easier to swallow.

It all started with some poor trucker sucker who apparently did not know how to secure a load of hay. He lost six of the really large bales of Alfalfa off the truck along the Hwy just below Crooked creek on Hwy 95. Four of the bales were broken open, but two of them were still intact. It was obvious that he either did not know or accepted the loss and just kept going. There was no way that he was going to be able to recover them. These bales weigh approximately 1200 or more pounds apiece.

Well Ezra, our horse, would enjoy some of the high quality hay, so I went home, picked up our "car hauler" trailer, loaded my quad on to the front, facing backwards and chained it down. Karen and I drove down there, and backed up to one of the bales. I took the ramps and set them in front of the bale and winched it on the trailer. After unloading it, we went back and pulled the other one on as well, taking them back to the house. The other four broken bales were picked up by some one with a horse trailer, so nothing was wasted.

I am not sure if the increase in Deer here at the house is due to the exodus of the Deer that used to live in the area burned by the "Long Draw Fire", or if it is just due to the fact that the ranchers have pulled all their cattle out of the burned areas and stuck them on the home ranches. I do know that the cows on the ranch surrounding me have grazed the ground to almost nothing. The ranch surrounding me ? sells tags for trophy Deer, and have quite a herd that they cultivate, or take advantage of. They have some really nice bucks on their place and they do not shoot the little ones, just the monsters.

In any case, whether it is karma or the lack of food, but those two bales of Alfalfa have called in more Deer than I have ever seen. They are not skinny either, they are butterballs, and they are afraid of nothing.

I knew that there was a "four point" (Western count) and a bunch of does using the hay, and being curious I put a trail cam on the stack to see what was using it. What I found was that they were feeding off of it almost all night. They were feeding off of it in two hour segments, with a break in between of an hour or two, then back again. All night long.  Well that was too much. I had thought to just leave them alone, but they were breaking the bales apart and scattering them all around, plus the number kept growing. Something had to be done.

Well I tried yelling at them, they just waited until I went back in the house and went back to what they were doing before. Next step was bird shot ( #9 ) in the shotgun. The damn things would just stand there or run off 50 yards or so and stop to watch.  Well that was a disappointment, so I had some M 80's that were about 15 years old, and I figured that I could light them and shoot them among them with a sling shot. That didn't scare them either. I figured that I just needed to keep it up and they would soon see how scary and fierce I was, but they still treat me with contempt.

I was racking my usually fertile and sneaky brain for a solution to the problem, and think I may be on the right track for most of them.

I took the drive way alarm and stuck it on the hay stack to tell me when they are there. I also parked the car by the stack. Now when the alarm goes off I hit the "panic button " on the car keys.

https://vimeo.com/54645763    password - owyheeflyer

The first night I started at 7 PM and continued off and on until we went to bed. I took the receiver for the alarm into the bedroom and put the keys on my night table. I was woken up around 14 times that night. I was pretty grumpy the next day, but felt better. The large deer have left us and now I just have a few young ones to convince.

There is a young buck that I have run out of here three times so far tonight. Not sure what I am going to do. This seems to be working better than anything that I have tried so far, but poor ole Ezra hasn't had a decent nights sleep since this started. He hates car horns and spot lights.