Bring home a predator to battle deer problem

I have a friend, I’ll call him CK, who finally achieved a long-held dream and moved to a place in the country – near Avondale Lake – with acreage. He asked for my advice recently. He wanted to know what he could do about the “rodents” that have infested his place – “the tall, four-legged ones, some with antlers.”

Several weekends before, I was at another friend’s place, I’ll call him HM. He has a beautifully refurbished and landscaped cabin on the east shore of Lake Coeur d’Alene. He spent much of the afternoon showing me the ingenious contraptions he has been buying to keep deer from eating everything that’s green in his yard. They especially like the deer-proof plants.

I live near 13th and Wallace in Coeur d’Alene and recently I met two deer walking down my back alley. Last winter two bucks snoozed away their afternoons for about 10 days in my neighbor’s unfenced backyard. At night they’d clean up the birdseed that had spilled from my front-yard bird feeders.

Driving Highway 97 to Harrison last weekend and driving Riverview Road out to my daughter’s house any afternoon, I see deer along and on the road. My driver-in-training son herded several deer along Highway 97 at Carlin Bay until I finally convinced him to stop and let them meander off the roadway – he found honking and rushing them with the car satisfying, but useless.

Recently I saw the blood-soaked pavement on 15th Street where a deer must have done considerable damage to someone’s car the night before.

I hear it time and again, “Isn’t it just amazing how tame the deer are around here; it’s so exciting to see them so close.” For some, it’s been a bit too close. Several Kootenai County residents have been beat-up by deer in their own yards – one man in particular was hurt quite badly right in his own driveway by an enraged buck.

So, what was my advice to CK? I didn’t endorse his idea of a .22-caliber bullet to the head. Not only is that messy, illegal and sure to upset the neighbors, but it isn’t effective. For every deer removed from his neighborhood, I am sure there are 10 more waiting in the woods nearby to take its place.

He doesn’t want a 10-foot fence around his private wilderness, and he doesn’t like the most sensible solution – moving back into town. Oh ya, that’s right, the deer are here, too.

“What you have to do,” I explained to him, “is educate the deer you have.” His current crop is keeping those other 10 back in the woods. Deer can be quite territorial, as the driveway man discovered a few years back.

Yes, teach the resident deer to stay in the neighbors’ yards and they will keep the Californialike intruders out of your yard, too. So the question is, how to educate a deer?

HM has tried everything on the market. He’s a city boy who loved moving to the country until he realized how uncivilized and untidy the country – and its native inhabitants – is. Lead-to-the-head was not an option, even for the 28 or so raccoons he’s had to deal with.

As I mentioned, deer-proof plants are so only in the minds of enterprising nurserymen. Offensive scents are so only to the one applying them to the yard.

There’s a lawn sprinkler connected to a motion detector that only works until the deer figure out how to approach it from behind – about five days. There’s currently a noise-making device that emits an irritating click – at least it was to me – which I’m sure they will eventually habituate to, as well.

So, what is it deer dislike most in the entire world? Predators. Why is it we have so many deer to deal with? Lack of predators. My solution for CK? Get a dog.

Put a low fence around the acreage to keep the dog at home. Get a dog that loves the out-of-doors and doesn’t necessarily care all that much about human attention. Pick a dog that also thinks of itself as a predator.

Contrary to popular belief, not all dogs are happiest being our intimates. Not all dogs are happiest living indoors. In fact, many dogs know what we humans have forgotten – they have not fallen far from their wolf/coyote family tree. They are predators, and many of them know it.

I once had a Pomeranian that weighed about 6 pounds – it’s a long story – that grabbed a fully-wild grouse by the neck and dragged it out of some bushes in the forest. Lucky for the dog, the bird didn’t take flight. Lucky for the grouse, the dog’s teeth were small, despite being connected to a vice-like jaw. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t grouse season.

However, the point is, there are working dogs for all purposes. It’s just a matter of connecting the right breed and personality to the job. You don’t see, so to speak, many seeing-eye Chihuahuas. And you also don’t see many lap-dog Walker hounds.

That’s my answer. Educate the deer by putting a predator to work in your little bit of country that’s become too country-like for your liking. The remaining problem for CK – he hates dogs, too.