Albuquerque in 2006!!

I might add that I have never collided with a sheep or a cow. If I had, I would have made an effort to contact the rancher in question and work out payment of some sort. Sheep and cows tend to be slow moving and one encounters them more often on back country jeep trails where one is already only going 20mph if that, so there's plenty of time to stop for them.

The first time I hit an elk, I came to consciousness briefly in the ER and then my heart stopped, and by time I got out of intensive care, the Colorado Wildlife division didn't seem too interested in my "crime."

The second time I hit a deer, it put out one of my front head lamps and bounded off in the darkness. I have no idea what the deer's fate was. Mine was to pull off the road since I was on a stretch of highway where nothing was open until 8:00am the next morning for 70 miles or so. I slept in a farmer's hayfield, and limped my car into Nucla, Colorado to have my right headlamp repaired the next morning. The third time I hit a deer, I did a complete 360 on the pavement from the skid, narrowly evaded death from an on coming coal truck headed for the 4 corners power plant at 80 mph and the deer again bounded off into the hills to meet whatever fate may have awaited it.

The Western slope of Colorado seems to be suffering from a massive over population of deer, and it is pure terror to drive the stretch of road that leads from Telluride through Naturita and on to Grand Junction after 3:00pm in the afternoon. That road is full of sharp curves, and the deer seem to enjoy playing a game of chicken with anybody fool-hardy enough to dare to use the highway. You'll round a curve and there will be three or four of them by the side of the road. They'll wait until you are almost even with them and then one will bound out into the road and front of you and just stand there, apparantly hoping that you will go into a ditch to avoid it.

I don't know who gets to keep any dead cows in Colorado. Since the law is that you have to pay the rancher for his cow, it seems to me that you should be able to keep what you paid for, but I don't know.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Uneeda.....

What's that?

I did get a pair of these and the deer do seem to clear out of the way now:

[wolf]

Cowcatcher.

The whistles don't work for long. They easily become misaligned or clogged with goo and stop making the magic noise.

[Tonchi]

Oh yeah, that reminds me, Bruce. The trains have those things on them for a reason. Fortunately, a cow will not walk across something with slats, like a RR track (cattle gates are designed just that way), but sheep are likely to park themselves anywhere and deer or elk have a habit of jumping right at a moving vehicle. In the Plumas River Canyon in CA that can happen a lot in winter. The "cow catchers" will at least clear the tracks, with a resulting feast for the scavengers. Navajos are very careful of their sheep and would keep them far away from tracks or roads because sheep represent their wealth, but many ranchers just let their stock wander, especially in the high country during the summer. And like Mari says, there seems to be a population explosion of deer every few years. I'm told that Maine has a terrible problem with moose right now, they are everywhere. I'm sure the Game and Fish Department does not avocate culling by auto.

As for the open range concept, Tonchi is correct.

When it comes to deer, the Colorado Wildlife Division has actually placed a moratorium on cougar hunting in the Uncomphaghre Plateau area because the deer population has gotten so out of hand. They issue tons of hunting permits every fall, and the little towns on the Western Slope actually have as a public service barrels where you can dump your deer hides. When I was living in Nucla a couple of years back, my next door neighbors bagged two stags and shared some of the venison with me.

Despite all this, there are still too many deer and they browse the grass down to the point that all that's left is the tasty forage growing along side the highways. Everyone thinks of deer as cute little bambi's, but I don't anymore. When I lived in Nucla, in addition to my own deer encounters, a friend was in a very serious car accident that involved a deer coming through her windshield, and a local woman was killed in an accident with a deer.

I like cougars - a lot! Cougars don't congregate in groups by the side of the road and dash out into the way of on-coming cars. Cougars eat deer which have become the vermin of the Western slope. Deer kill far more people than ever cougars have. I camped alone in lion country for three months and had no problems with them. I just used common sense by not running around at dusk or dawn near cougar habitat. They left me alone and I left them alone. Not so the deer!

Now what's not to love about such a wonderful animal? Here, kitty, kitty!

[Tonchi]

Mari's point about the cougers is valid in the context of this post because it is precisely because the protected species laws in many states are what CAUSE animals to die needlessly. In ALL environments, deer, elk, moose, and buffalo will explode in population the minute you restrict the preditors which feed off them in nature. Remove the wolves, cougers, coyotes, and even hunters and you will be up to your neck in deer or their cousins before you know it. In this country we have actually OVER-protected wildlife, usually at the same time we have encroached too far into their habitats. Deer in your front yard are not cute, they are dangerous. Besides totally destroying rose bushes, young trees, and gardens, a deer can easily kill you with one head butt to the chest, antlers or none. A deer landing on your hood at 50 mph pretty much totals your transportation and maybe your life. Plastic surgery will be the least of your problems if they come throught the windshield. Overcrowded populations of deer or their cousins quickly become diseased too, and with organisms which can harm both you and your livestock. It's easy for people to blame the deer, but it's the humans' lifestyle which is causing the problem.

But humans are softies, and they want to have it both ways. They want to live in areas like the mountains of New Mexico or Colorado which can't support them in the food chain, yet they don't want anybody to shoot or remove the cute little wild things which were there first, other than just sweeping them aside. They don't want their pets to be confined, yet they scream when one of the natural preditors does what comes naturally upon finding one of them. They don't want deer or other varmits to invade their property, yet they refuse to manage trash or secure the homes or yards and remember to close the gate. Too many outsiders get involved in the public sentiment of things, they don't want deer or mustangs or wild burros killed but they have no idea what to do about the fact that they are destroying the land, inbreeding, and dying of diseases because nothing is checking their growth.

Preditors like the couger and the wolves are vital to places like Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. And yet at this time the suburbs and vacation homes and roads keep spreading out of control. Somebody sees a couger and there is a huge outcry to "protect" the people by getting rid of it. That means that at least 20 more deer will live and breed over the next years when they could have been cleanly recycled back into nature. The people who end up on the wrong side of a deer never see the connection.

I have gotten into huge arguments with Bambi lovers. They'll say stuff like "Well, the deer were here first." Indeed they were, and so were the cougars and wolves. Man has all but eliminated the wolf from the lower 48 except a few places like Michigan's UP.

The deer out there eating your rosebush may look cuter than hell, but do you really want to sacrifice your life for it? I don't know of any Bambi-lover who has sold their home and moved back to Europe or something because "the deer were here first."

We are destroying habitat left and right in the West with our ranchette style subdivisions and the growing populations of Denver, Salt Lake, and Albuquerque. We need to accept the fact that Bambi is going to be a casualty of this or else become a casualty of Bambi.

Again, it all really goes back to the cattlemen's groups. They want to get rid of the predators because a predator will take down the occasional sheep or calf. They don't stop to think how many deer and rabbits the predators take down, as well. Every deer that a courgar eats leaves that much more forage for the rancher's herds. But ranchers want to eliminate all predators, completely. Unfortunately, the number of deer culled by the hunting crowd just isn't enough in the collision between the urban and the wild in today's West.

We've wandered around in this thread, but I think Fallen Fairy will also get a good idea of some of the issues that are important out here in the western states if she is still reading all this.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by wolf

The whistles don't work for long. They easily become misaligned or clogged with goo and stop making the magic noise.

If you do some research you'll find the whistles don't work at all, according to Consumer's Union (Consumer Reports).
The early ads claimed, "Tested by the Ohio State Police", which they were, and found to be useless.
The theory is by making noise the deer will hear you coming before they can see you. They can already hear you coming.... cars make a lot of noise..... and they still stand there and wait for you to arrive before deciding whether to jump out in the road or not.

[ferret88]

Blue - Acome and Onate are in "The NE Heights"

[Elspode]

You needn't got to the Wild West to find a deer problem. Collisions with deer are the #1 cause of accidents in many non-rural parts of Missouri. I don't go a day without seeing several, and I live in a pretty typical suburban area. A couple of years ago, there was a picture in our paper of a young buck stuck in a fence in *downtown* Kansas City.

Local suburban municipalities are starting to open up bowhunting within their city limits around the KC area to try and cull some of the population.

Given what I and my friend have endured personally at the hooves of Bambi, I have absolutely zero sympathy for the deer.

A recent study indicates that from 1991-2003 calculated traffic accidents involving deer in the US kill 150 people annually and cause $1.1 billion in property damage, and injure some 10,000 people.

The cattlemen's groups who want to eradicate the cougar are being incredibly selfish and gaining some imagined well being at the expense of the many when you look at the stats.

In the same time period (1991-2003), reports show that cougars attacked human beings in the US and Canada BOTH an average of 5.6 times a year and were responsible for .8 fatalities a year.

If you are going to be terrified of a wild animal, Bambi wins hands down.

As for me, I'm putting out catnip. I LOVE kitties!

[Tonchi]

Involved in those statistics is the massive difference in brain power between deer and couger. You won't find any record of people being hurt or killed by running into cougers with a motor vehicle. They have the sense to avoid us.

I recently I read a report of a person being gored and killed by a moose, in downtown Anchorage. When people can't even walk to work without being cornered and killed by a moose, something has to be done

Agreed. I have a biologist friend who calls deer "nature's snack food." That's pretty much what they are - plentiful, tasty treats for other species which have evolved with even an ounce of common sense.

Yesterday afternoon I went out for a walk with my companion in crime, Miz Belle Starr. There is a hiking trail which skirts the boundary of the city and the National Forest about 3 blocks from my home. Starr and I have walked that trail before. Yesterday, I became curious about a ravine that cuts into the trail, so I went up it to explore with my little 4-footed companion. There were some great rock formations and surprisingly old pinon trees. We followed a deer path that had many fresh droppings on it to Starr's delight. At one point I paused to look back over the scenery, bemused by this interface of the wild and the city. I could see the traffic on a major road perhaps 5 miles away across the canyon.

I felt a sudden frisson of terror as I realized that I was out on this game path at dusk, breaking one of my own most steadfast rules. Cougars have been sighted often at the edges of my town and gobbled down wayward poodles and daring domestic cats who strayed a bit too far from home.

Then I shrugged my shoulders philosophically. I have already survived 3 encounters with deer, one of which actually caused me to die for a few moments in an ER. If a cougar got me, at least it would be swift and painless. Cougars lie in wait and go straight for their prey's neck, snapping it and killing them almost instantly. When I go, I wouldn't mind going at the paws of a cougar. It seems a nobler ending then having a collision with that idiot, Bambi, out on the highway. Starr and I resumed our ramble and returned home unharmed for me to write this post the next day.

[wolf]

Isn't that like the fourth time you've renamed the dog?