Deerslayer Wannabe
When three of the deer deterrents
faltered during our honeymoon, the deer got bold. They danced in
our mule garden, kicking up their heels amid the summer squash and
ripping every last vestige of swiss chard out of the ground.
The really bad part, though, is that at least two individual deer
learned that the deterrents weren't scary. Since then, we've seen
them in or near the yard several times even though the deterrents are
running. It's clearly time to thin the herd.
On a rainy Halloween morning, I turned off the deterrents and settled
in with a cat on the sofa to wait for deer. Luckily, I'm the
exact opposite of a macho man --- I see nothing unsportsmanlike about
stalking the deer through the kitchen window as long as the end result
is venison in my freezer.
At 2 pm, I looked up from my forest gardening book...and into the eyes
of a doe ten feet from the kitchen window. I shoved the cartridge
thingummy into the base of our semi-automatic rifle, loaded a shell in
the chamber, and flicked off the safety.
The doe watched me but didn't retreat as I walked toward her across the
linoleum floor. My plan was to slide up the window pane and shoot
directly out the cat door
which just happened to be in a perfect spot. Unfortunately, the
sound of the window set my doe running, so our bellies will be
deer-free tonight. Stay tuned for further adventures of the
kitchen marksman!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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