Professor Ron’s Timely Tips
by Ron Cowart
The other day a friend of mine Bill Kunze relayed the story about walking out into his yard one morning and discovered that something or some animal had striped the leaves from landscape plants beside his house. What leaves that were left appeared to have been ripped with a vengeance.
In my 43 years connected with the Green Industry in which 35 years were on the front lines of landscaping in the midlands of South Carolina, I have seen an exponential increase in deer damage. There were no deer that I know of, in the north east area of Richland County when I was growing up as a teenager in the 1950’s. I remember going deer hunting with my step-father and his friends in the low country one time. We were dropped off singularly and stationed every so often on an old dirt logging road as to not shoot one another.
I stayed at my position, what seemed like eternity, and the woods were silent except for an occasional caw of a crow in the background. Flashes of the movie “Bambi” by Walt Disney came out of the back my mind playing the sequence of Bambi being killed by a hunter. Then in the distance I heard the deer hounds coming closer and closer with their familiar “on the trail yelping and howling”. The drivers on horseback were in close pursuit. My heart was about to jump out of my chest. Then a deer burst out of the brush in front of me, but too far for a good shot with my double barrel shot gun. The buck ran on and on jumping with the greatest of ease to my left and away from me. There was a single shot. There was to be meat on our tables.
Later that afternoon, each one of us drew lots for the various cuts of meat. The men stood around telling stories of days gone by when they had better hunts. There was a sense of comradery among the men. On the way home with my step-father that late evening into the dark , I thought of myself as being more mature than when I awoke that early morning. I had participated in a communal hunt with my peers as it had been done by our ancestors for thousands of years.
Sixty years later, deer are all over the place. The deer are walking through our front yards in the Columbia Northeast area. They are eating our shrubs, rubbing and injuring our trees, eating our vegetable gardens, acting as hosts for Lyme disease, and causing thousands of car and truck accidents per year and some are deadly. I have 2 acquaintances that are hobbling around, one with a walking pole due, to Lyme disease infections. By the way, moments before proof reading this article this morning, I removed an attached deer tick from my right leg. I had a very near miss accident with a deer Thursday May 23 8:22 AM of this year. If I would have been a fraction of a second faster or if it would have been a fraction of a second slower, it could have come through the drivers windshield.
What is causing this rise in deer population? The simple answer is too many being born and not enough being harvested. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out.
The following are some factors to be considered in regard to this problem.
(1) Hunters are not hunting for meat; they are hunting for that trophy deer.
(2) The public would rather buy meat from the market which may have growth hormones fed or injected into them, than deer meat from the wild.
(3)State and county governments enjoy the extra revenue from collecting fees for licenses and antlerless tags. More deer, more fees.
(4)Hunting on large private lands is a “big money maker” by selling hunting rights.
(5)Home owners are feeding deer, hoping to make pets out of them.
(6)Why should we kill and eat deer, after all it is our official state animal.
(7)Leave them along, they were here first. Why should we encroach on them.
(8)Would you like to kill and eat Bambi? This is what the psychologists call the Bambi Syndrome. I’m sure you have read the book or seen the movie.
What are we to do?
These are the deer damage control options.
- a. Live with the damage
- b. Change the plant (food) habitat
- c. Manage the deer herd ( Eliminate Doe Tags)
- d. Use scare tactics
- e. Apply deer repellents to the plants
- f. Erect physical barriers
My advice to my friend Bill Kunze is to employ options d and e.
There is a device known as the Scarecrow Sprinkler that seems to work well. It comes on as a result of a motion sensor. The sudden noise and water scares the deer.
My friend Johnathan Fulmer has had very good results from spraying a repellent purchased from Tractor Supply known as Repel All. Another repellent highly recommended by Tractor Supply is Liquid Fence.
Let us hope we can find common ground in solving this growing problem. The problem can be solved by bringing together hunters, community governments and concern citizens.
