Some deer hunters here in Wisconsin are complaining because they never see any deer,
\nand because they don’t see deer, they think the population has decreased
\ndramatically. And yet, recent statistics say that 60 percent — more than half — of
\ncar collisions in the state are car\/deer collisions.<\/p>\n
Estimates also place the White-tail deer population in the state at 1 million. That
\nworks out to be about 1 deer for every 5 people.<\/p>\n
When Randy and I went to the town hall Tuesday evening to vote in the mid-term
\nelection, we saw lots of deer — 10 in all in three different locations, and that was
\njust at the side of the road. If we’d had a spotlight, I wouldn’t have been
\nsurprised to see 20 more out in cornfields and bean fields that had recently been harvested.<\/p>\n
One evening last week after the neighbor had picked his corn, I saw 7 deer out in
\nthe field. I went for a walk around our hayfield, and two of the deer took off for
\nthe woods to the north, two of them stayed where they were, and three more ran into
\nour hayfield in front of me. Out of the three, two went back into the cornfield
\nright after I had walked past, and one took off to the south to get down to our “old
\npasture” where there’s a few trees and some brush for cover.<\/p>\n
I think the reason hunters are not seeing deer is that so many people are now
\nposting their land against hunting, either because they want to hunt themselves or
\nbecause they don’t want anyone hunting the deer. During the gun deer season, the
\nhunters who are out chase the deer into these “sanctuaries” where no one
\nhunts or only one person hunts, and they stay there until the season is over. No one
\ngoes in there to bother them so they don’t have any reason to move.<\/p>\n
White-tail deer are beautiful animals. It is tragic that so many of them die in car
\naccidents — not to mention the cost of repairing the vehicles and the increased
\ncosts for automobile insurance and the risks that people run if they have an
\naccident with a deer.<\/p>\n
If we end up with a bad winter, it is tragic that so many of them die because of the
\ncold or the deep snow.<\/p>\n
I do not want the deer to die in car accidents. I do not want them to starve to
\ndeath in a bad winter. In a good year when there has been food over winter and plenty
\nof food in the spring and summer, some does have triplet fawns. Twin fawns is
\na completely common occurrence.<\/p>\n
When I was a kid growing up on our farm, if we saw a deer it was a rare occurrence — something
\nthat made you stop and watch the deer because we saw them so rarely. It was unheard of then to
\nsee seven deer at one time. And in all likelihood, we didn’t see seven deer in the course of a year.<\/p>\n
No, it’s not that we don’t have enough deer nowadays. And if they can keep from running out
\nin front of my vehicle at night, all the better.<\/p>\n
LeAnn R. Ralph<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some deer hunters here in Wisconsin are complaining because they never see any deer, and because they don’t see deer, they think the population has decreased dramatically. And yet, recent statistics say that 60 percent — more than half — of car collisions in the state are car\/deer collisions. Estimates also place the White-tail deer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,1,34,103],"tags":[104,105],"class_list":["post-1225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-rural-route-2","category-weather","category-wildlife","tag-deer","tag-white-tail-deer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2043,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions\/2043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}