Showing posts with label Deer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deer. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Who's Been Eating Our Lilies? -- An Update on Deer in Princeton


What's been eating our lilies on busy Harrison Street?! Buds on the lilies lining our front walk had generated considerable anticipation in the household, until they disappeared overnight. We arrived in Princeton a few years after deer began being professionally culled in 2000. Back then, we'd see herds of deer wandering down Murray Ave, or even main roads like Harrison Street.

Though Mayor Marchand took a lot of heat for culling deer, she and township council stuck to their principles, and the result has been dramatically reduced carnage on the roadways, venison for food kitchens, and a rebound of the native flora in local nature preserves. The remaining deer are better fed, finding in the wild a greater abundance of their preferred foods.

Another benefit has been reduced damage to gardens. Our garden had prospered deer-free for years, until one showed up in the backyard over the winter. Evidence suggests there have been visits since then, and now our front yard's centralized setting along Harrison Street is proving no guarantee of safety from their unsolicited landscape services.

All of which prompted an inquiry into how the town's deer culling has been going lately. The temporary lack of an animal control officer and the increasingly quirky climate contributed to a relatively unsuccessful deer cull in the winter of 2016-17. This past winter, however, they were very successful with the culling. According to this update from council member Heather Howard:
"Deer hunt was much more successful this year - in part because of colder weather. This year, 196 deer were harvested, as compared to 63 last year. Also, initial analysis of traffic data shows that deer-related motor vehicle accidents were down. 
Looking ahead to next year's hunt, we are looking for new areas to expand the hunt. There have been an increase in deer complaints in the Riverside neighborhood, which is a hard neighborhood to find suitable areas for hunting, because there are no public properties and private lots tend to be smaller.  
Looking ahead to next year's hunt, we hope to have our annual contract for bow hunting on the Council's agenda by the end of the summer, so they can start with the hunting season in September."
It's important to emphasize that bow hunting is not adequate to control deer numbers. To restore the ecological balance lost when we extirpated the natural predators of deer long ago, it's necessary to have professional hunters who can operate safely in our preserves, to augment what the bow hunters are able to do. One comforting thought is that the deer have lived quality, free-range lives, unlike so many of the animals we eat.

How this relates to the lost lilies in the front yard? Heather's mention of increasing deer complaints in the Riverside neighborhood, along with the surprising appearance of deer in our yard despite deer culling, might suggest that the deer that are eluding the culling are those that spend more time in the densely populated neighborhoods. It's a theory that will be tested by time, and lilies all over town.

Saturday, December 02, 2017

A Deer's Landscape Services


Funny. I didn't remember requesting landscape services. Deer hadn't shown up in our backyard since around 2005, when the birth control experiment was still underway and the females were looking elegant and very Princetonian with those identification cards hanging from their ears. Maybe it was taking refuge from hunters, or had had enough of rutting season.

Deer are expert landscapers, trained from birth in the art of pruning. They wouldn't think of driving around town in those giant fossil fuel-consuming trucks that deploy gangs of mowers to quash nature's vertical ambitions.



Deer are too considerate to make a racket with leaf blowers. And instead of releasing a cloud of fumes to sting your nose, they leave behind discrete contributions of fertilizer. They do the landscaping for free, but have a strong independent streak, refusing to adjust their methods to an owner's wishes.

Deer are very sensitive. Even though I stood ten feet back from my bay window, I still had to freeze several times so as not to spook my subject. It's impressive how they are so observant and "in the moment"--a state of mind we too might more easily attain if we were further down the food chain.


When I stepped outside to shoo it away, it didn't flee back over the fence but instead ducked behind some shrubbery in a back corner, waiting for my next move.


Once it realized I was not a threat, but instead just another among Princeton's backyard paparazzi, it regarded me with what appeared to be disdain.

No longer feared, I went back inside without finding out from where it came into the yard.


It was interesting, though, to watch it at work, browsing maybe ten leaves of our oak-leafed hydrangia before moving on to munch some grass. Though I've heard stories of deer wiping out a gardener's favorite plants overnight, my experience is that animals generally lack a thoroughness, whether it be browsers or predators.

My theory with deer is that their alertness to the potential for attack makes a patient devouring of one shrub less adaptive than a few nibbles here and there. And if much of what they eat has some level of toxicity, browsing can help reduce the risk of consuming too much of any particular toxin at any one time. Light browsing also promotes quick recover by the plants, as long as there aren't too many deer visiting the same plant. This suggests that deer could actually be good stewards, if their population was in balance with the landscape.