A deer surprise today

[Bob Rufener]

We live in a rural area of Wisconsin about 30 miles NW of Milwaukee. I was really surprised when I drove in the driveway and saw a small deer lying next to our garage at the entrance. It didn't even move when I opened the door and drove in. My wife came home about 10 minutes later just as I was on the front porch trying to take a picture. Again, the deer just stayed put. Picture is not the best as I didn't want to spook it. Winter here has been really tough so far. There is about a foot or more of snow on the ground and it has been really difficult for the animals to travel about and find food. I think it found a place where it wasn't difficult to walk and just decided to make its bed there. It is supposed to warm up to about 40 on sunday so, hopefully, the snow level will diminish.

[David G Baker]

Bob,
Neat experience isn't it? Once in a while one will come up near our sliding glass door and look in at us. Our cat attacks the glass and will scare them away.
As far as I know none of our nightly visitors have bedded down near the house but many have left bedding marks under some of my low hanging pine boughs.
The Department of Natural Resources in Michigan has placed a ban on feeding deer this year due to chronic wasting disease. In my area of Michigan there is around 20 inches of snow on the ground which is too deep for the deer to get at food that is under the snow like in a normal Michigan Winter in my area. It is predicted that if the snow doesn't melt down to a level that will allow the deer to feed there will be a large decrease in the deer population in this area.
We still get between 7 and 20 deer visiting our front yard every night depending on the weather. They are feeding on the apples that didn't fall off of the trees and cleaning up any bird feed that the birds dropped out of our bird feeders. They still look like they are doing well and not starving yet. They are starting to nibble on my lilac bushes and cherry tree bark.

[Jude Tuliszewski]

A foot of snow it was close to 80 a day ago here in the Tampa area. It is too bad the deer population here has been cut down so much because of development. It would be nice to see deer wandering around like you have up there.

[David G Baker]

Jude,
I will take snow any day over humidity, floods and hurricanes. We have the snow in the Winter, humidity in the Summer and tornadoes when ever the weather is right. Guess where ever a person lives there is always something.

[Hal Taft]

Some of the critters wandering around in my back yard.

Hal

[David G Baker]

Hal,
I have been back in Michigan going on 8 years and I have yet to see a living deer with a rack. We have a spike that shows up every few days. So far he has made it through rifle and part of the way through black powder season. Maybe he will come back next year and show me a rack.

[Hal Taft]

Dave,

That's the biggest buck we've seen around here for a while (a ten pointer). I live in an area in transition from rural to suburban, in a very large cul de sac of woodland likely to be left alone for the near future. I often have 10-12 deer wandering my yard mornings and late afternoons. There is a streak of albinism running in the local gene pool, as you can see, and many of the does have twins, so most years we have a couple of fawns that look like Jersey cows.

Hal

[Bob Rufener]

Some sad news this morning. The little fawn outside our garage died during the night. I was hoping it would make it but was either sick or died from malnutrition. It was really tiny.

[Jim Becker]

That is sad, Bob.

[Brian Effinger]

That's too bad. When I was looking at the picture I thought that it probably wouldn't make it throught the winter because it was so tiny.