My Fairmindedness, Rudely Mocked

Oh Deer!

Thanks for reading False Choices. I live in a rural, agricultural part of Michigan where the deer population is out of control. We are right in the middle of deer season, and I’m not optimistic about this issue. I try to be evenhanded about all matters because life if complex and difficult, but the deer pressure on my orchard has led to 1000’s of dollars in losses and the State has no answers. Driving anywhere has become an exercise fraught with risk from deer collisions. Here’s my report and if you enjoy this story please subscribe to support my work:

This morning I received an email from Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources with the heading: DNR seeks broad input on deer management.

“Now management, there’s a helluva an idea, deer management,” I let out, jumping from my chair. “Why didn’t they think of this sooner?”

“What are you crying about,” my wife asked me, perturbed by my sudden outburst.

“They’re finally going to manage the deer population,” I exclaimed, overwhelmed with gratitude and enthusiasm for the project.

“They’ll manage to make it worse,” was her short reply, a bitter pill to swallow so soon after the glorious news.

I eyed the little devil and gave the following rebuttal: “You know it’s people like you, cynics through and through, who do nothing but throw ice water on all the good works of government, you slander and tear up and knock down every damn thing, it’s no wonder nothing works.”

“Oh, open up your eyes, you old fool. I knock down, tear up and throw ice, I’m a human tornado, but you’re a fool. To think the ones who created the problem are going to fix it is a fool’s errand always.” she countered.

“What are you talking about? The ones who created the problem, they didn’t create any problem, the deer are just being pushed out of their habitat by development!” I told her, straight.

“I’m amazed to hear it. The population of the state decreased by over 2 million in the last 20 years and there’s so much development the deer have to live in the middle of every town square? They overwhelm every farm and orchard, including ours. C’mon, you know as well as I the deer population went off the charts when the DNR decided hunters were a nuisance, not a blessing, and the deer are a blessing, not a nuisance!” she countered again.

I was speechless, without speech. She had a point and it was up to me to give it a good working over to find some little opening I could wedge into; she might be right but I’m not letting her win that easy!

“The wolves did a good job of keeping the deer population in check,” I muttered. Where I found that little tidbit I don’t know, maybe not check, and certainly not checkmate, but now she had to defend, and I had another moment to regroup.

“Hahaha, that’s what you came up with, you limp noodle, the wolves?” she turned red with laughter. “You’re too much first thing in the morning dear,” and she planted an unwanted smooch on the top of my head as she walked away chuckling, “wolves.”

Soundly beaten and bruised, I returned to the email. Ah, yes, there was more to it than I first noticed. There’s a survey¹, put together by a ‘social scientist’, an expert, not some twit with nothing better to do, but a veritable social scientist. I have no idea what a social scientist is. Check that thought, they must be something special because the DNR made a double, nay triple effort, to make sure we know the fellow’s a social scientist. And they’re probably a friend of the governor! Ok, let’s take a look at this survey, I’ve got a rising feeling this will be my redemption, my rebirth into the esteem of my fellow man, or at least that of my wife; a second chance at respectability after botching ‘the wolves’.

Over the last 5 years, do I think the deer population in my area has - and there are five possible answers, from greatly decreased to greatly increased. That’s a no brainer - greatly increased of course. DNR says we should have a herd of about 8,000 in our county, but they counted a herd of 57,000. I would have thought they knew this since they did the counting. Hmmm…

And where would I like to see the deer population 5 years from now? Again five possible answers, but really it’s got to be ‘greatly decreased’! Are you mad! Anyone for doubling it to 114,000? Well, there have been any number of city people who’ve moved into the county after the pandemic. A lot of them might still harbor the thought that the deer are just beautiful creatures, feeding their cute fawns, darting gracefully across an idyllic landscape; this idea lasts until they run into one, or one runs into them. That’s when they learn the size of the herd is out of control; that’s what it takes for man to meet reality nowadays.

Ok, there are more questions:

Ok, now I see what they’re getting at - they want to understand who’s doing the survey, so they can match their ‘characteristics’ to their attitudes about the deer. Very clever.

This question is unfortunate. I don’t mind having some deer as I hunt and appreciate a good venison steak, medium rare, with a little garlic and rosemary, or with a mushroom sauce…but I’m getting waylaid. The point is that a herd the size of ours is a nuisance, a tragic nuisance for gosh sakes. Our most recent statistics tell us that 11 people died and 1600 were injured in over 59,000 motor vehicle accidents in one year in Michigan, one state! C’mon, 59,000 is the population of a small city. And the strangest thing is that most of those accidents happened in urban or near urban areas - Kent County in Grand Rapids and Oakland County near Detroit were 1 and 2, with 2250 and 2009 accidents respectively. You’d think people in these areas would wake up and smell the coffee, but you’d be wrong my friends.

And now the kicker, this must be the question that required a ‘social scientist’:

Select one option? Why not two, or three, or all of them?

What have I got myself into here? I can feel the blood and embarrassment rushing up my neck, I’m sweating for gosh sakes. The whole point of this ‘survey’ is to discover what political donors think about the deer population and then tailor the policy of the DNR to this very special group, which, frankly, is how we got to where we are now, with a herd 7 or 8 times what it should be. We bad mouth hunters and hunting to help the donor class feel superior, and we add rules, regulations and new laws to the point where you need to be a member of ‘The Bar’ in order to hunt and not be prosecuted, then we kick the dirt and wonder why we keep running into deer, those 60,000 innocent animals we kill on the road each year. God forbid they might meet instead a quick death by bullet or arrow from some knuckle dragger who owns a ‘weapon’!

I hear my wife coming back to the kitchen. I need to get moving. I’ll finish up the pruning today in the orchard and see what kind of damage the deer did over the weekend. The buds are starting to push and there’s nothing the deer love more than to eat every bud off of an apple tree.

1 The survey was not fiction - if you are from Michigan you could take the survey online. It is no longer available.