Last Wednesday, a young buck crashed my garden party. I am exaggerating this a bit, for there was no party happening at the time. In fact, my mind was deeply concentrated on thoughts of a long distant time, as my hands sifted through the lettuce leaves searching for blemishes, then submerged them into the multiple washing bins on the back porch. Not much of a party there, but normally peaceful, nonetheless.
And then the young buck appeared. By “young buck”, I am not using a slang term for a teenage boy, but more succinctly, a male deer with small antlers to reveal its not yet mature age. As was mentioned, at the time I was washing the salad mix, when down below the hill from the back porch, a commotion arose that was completely out of place. Indeed what I witnessed should not have happened, but it did.
In order to describe this, some of the farm layout needs to be portrayed. Deer can enter the farm from all sides. The property is surrounded by either woods, hay fields or the public dirt road at the front of the property. While fences have been erected to keep the deer off the vegetable fields, there are large tracts of land exposed to their travel. The deer that meander the land are also a rather impudent bunch. They seem to think that they own that land! If anything is left unprotected from the fencing… dinner time! One day, ONE DAY that entire property will be protected from those voracious beasts. But, alas, deer fencing is expensive. So, as it currently stands, deer have plenty of room to move about on the property, as on the day of this focus, even in bright daylight.
What must have happened was that the young buck was meandering from the southwest corner of the property towards the east. The fields in that area are protected by a fence, so it ended up walking across a mowed grass section just below the house, all the while not realizing that there was a human up the hill from him washing lettuce. Now, in the direction he was heading, the deer fence juts out to enclose another field area where a gate to enter is secured. Actually, “secured” is a bad term, for deer fences find ways to fall apart and that one was in significant disrepair as the young deer approached. A month or so ago, a heavy downpour of rain saturated the land, then pooled up and formed a river that flowed through Field 3… again. The post that the gate latches to was actually pushed by the torrent so that instead of the gate and post being flush, there is now a two foot gap at the top, which tapers down to where it was intended to be at the bottom. Beyond that, the post that actually held the gate had sunk into the softened soil, so that the hinges no longer held onto the gate. In fact the only thing keeping it upright was the chicken wire on the bottom that supposedly keeps out groundhogs and rabbits, supposedly. I was very aware that the fence needed to be repaired, but it was late in the season, and there was only a remote chance something would attempt to violate the fields, or so I thought.
Around 4pm, my attention was first drawn to the area of the young buck by the noise. Apparently, the youthful deer noticed me up on the porch and panicked. As it was heading toward the enclosed field, it became startled, and instead of running around the fence, it noticed the foot and a half gap in the gate that was eyelevel. In a desperate attempt to flee, he jumped right into/onto/through the gate.
I watched incredulously, and helplessly from about one hundred feet away. The intruder got tangled in the seven foot by seven foot gate, kicked, leaped and did whatever it could do to break free. After a minute or so, it was free, and the severly bent gate lay uselessly on the ground.
As I watched the spectacle, I knew that no good could arise from the situation. The scene was beyond my control. What I did have at my disposal, however, was a knowledge of how deer act, and I knew that the worst part was yet to come, for after all, a deer was now on the inside of the deer fence! If, by some smile of fortune, the deer would not pause to dine on the remainder of the fall crops so readily available to it, that deer would need to find a way out of the deer fence. Deer have an annoying tendency not to go out from the way they came. No, they have to make another exit. (I read a farming book once that mentioned, if a deer ever gets inside a deer fence, it needs to be turned into venison. There was no such possibility that day.)
Luckily, the startled buck was not hungry at that moment. It jogged, if deer can jog, up the length of Field 3, then crossed the streambed to Field 4 and entered the thick brush next to the snow peas. As it paused there for a moment, I did not know what to expect from the creature. Would it bed down there? Probably not. The smartest thing to do would be for it to find a way out of the enclosure. Within seconds, a new commotion arose that was quickly realized to be its escape. The young buck could not be seen from my viewpoint, but it was quite obvious what was occurring. A minute or so of jostling with the plastic mesh barrier, and it was on the other side sprinting up the neighbor’s hayfield out of view.
That was around 4pm. I still had more harvest to do and there was little more than two hours of sunlight left. There is nothing like watching such a sturdy structure for crop protection be destroyed in seconds. Nonetheless, the reality sunk in that something needed to be done. Luckily, I was able to twist the fence back into a form that would at least stand up. Much like a disheveled school boy on picture day, the fence at least needed to have the “appearance” of being a barrier. After accomplishing that, the exit area was investigated. It actually happened in a very thick area, both inside and outside the fence. The thought arose that something would need to be looking for the damaged area in order to find it.
And so, the matter was dropped. With only a few weeks left in the season, hopefully the makeshift repairs will work, until more secure repairs can be made. The hope did not last long. This evening as I walked to the greenhouse, a commotion was heard down by the exit area the deer previously made in the fence. At first, nothing could be discerned, that is, until that young buck was seen leaping out of the brush and into the neighbor’s hayfield. For some reason, it had returned. Is this why the book suggested a venison approach? Is that creature going to continue to break into the fields? I would advise him to rethink his actions. He may only have a small rack of antlers, but it is a rack nonetheless. It does not seem to be a smart idea to break into an enclosure… three weeks from the opening of deer season!