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Comment by chasingthewind | Hacker News Reader

Here’s a random deer population anecdote. When I was a kid we never ever saw deer near our house. But when we went out to the countryside we would see them and it felt like a fun treat. It felt like seeing an unusual wild animal. Now the deer population in the suburb where I live has exploded and we see deer multiple times per week in our backyard. It’s an odd contrast.

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My anecdote: I go hunting every year and rarely see anything, but almost without fail I get back to the suburbs and see one or more eligible bucks wandering around in people's yards. A superstitious person might think they're getting selected for that behavior somehow.

My dad (a genuine West Virginia hillbilly) likes to tell the story that one year through the summer and early fall, he would watch a large white tail out his kitchen window every morning while drinking his coffee. Easily a 10-12 point buck. Around mid fall, he started tracking it to find where it went during the day with plans harvest it at Thanksgiving.

He saw that buck every morning for 8 months and tracked it for two or three weeks. For two weeks he never saw it once. The first day after hunting season, he was drinking coffee and watched the buck peacefully grazing in the yard.

Funny, a few years ago a friend of my dad's was drinking his morning coffee and saw a beautiful elk on his lawn just munching away happily. It was a couple days into the season, and he owned a large piece of rural land. So he filled his elk tag from his patio, in his bathrobe.

I believe it.

> harvest it at Thanksgiving.

That’s s such a weird way to describe the killing of a wild animal, as if it was a pumpkin you were growing in your back yard. Not that I’m saying that there something inherently about hunting in general.

IMO - killing animals for the purpose of eating them is wildly different than trophy hunting. I'm fine with calling hunting to eat "harvesting", I would not buy that nomenclature for trophy hunting.

Yea, my family is big into deer hunting, and they use the "harvest" euphemism, too, mostly when talking to non-hunters. It makes the deed sound more pleasant, but it really is not the correct word. You "harvest" crops that you have previously "planted" and "cultivated." In most states that I know of that allow deer hunting, it is illegal to breed the deer or feed them, so there's no concept of planting or cultivation that would support using "harvest."

Harvesting implies he killed and ate it. Whether you see that as a euphemism or more graphic probably depends on your dietary philosophy.

Why? It has nothing to do with my dietary “philosophy” harvest just seems like very silly word to use in this case for no straightforward reason.

It not like anybody would say that they “harvest” farm animals (I hope)?

Ah, gotcha. I think you're just not accustomed to this use of the word. It's in the dictionary and people use it that way. In this case, probably used for effect in the story, but it's legitimate.

Curious why you hope it's not used for farm animals?

A pumpkin is also alive.

If you're going to kill something, call a spade a spade. Don't disrespect the life by pretending otherwise.

I think it's because harvest implies you're getting use out of the animal outside of killing it. Hunters like to make the distinction that they are also hunting for food as well as sport. Because, as a hunter, if you're hunting solely for some weird joy of killing things, you're a sociopath.

> Because, as a hunter, if you're hunting solely for some weird joy of killing things, you're a sociopath.

Or honest both to others and yourself.

Do you kill the carrots in your salad?

By the time I shit them out, they are definitely dead.

At least one would hope so...

Is a deer a plant?

Maybe?

There’s a state park near us that permits hunting, but only in half of it. Won’t see a deer for miles on the drive in, until you hit the invisible line… and then they’re everywhere. They definitely know the rules.

I swear they know when hunting season starts and is over.

They simply disappear from our area during hunting season, only to return in huge numbers as soon as the sounds of gunshots stop being heard.

They definitely do. Gun shots are an obvious sign for them, but deer aren't stupid and they pick up on so many other signs of predators. The biggest one being people sneaking through the woods every day, and that those people are now in more camouflaged "skin", stopped smelling like modern deodorants and detergents and may switch to oil smells that are used on guns and bows, those humans freeze and hide in their presence like predator, and they come around every year in a seasonal pattern.

Just the people who sees deer come in their yards every day being fed or munching on garden plants and flowers and such would themselves immediately notice their extra skittish nature or outright absence when hunting season starts eve if they didn't know what date it was on.

That smell thing is probably huge. When yon get out into the wild, deodorant smells super strong. Humans have so many strong artificial smells on them (clothes, deodorant, hair stuff, sunscreen, bug spray not to mention all the other stuff around a campsite)… we must stand out for miles.

Take all that away on a seasonal basis and damn right something must be up. Animals aren’t stupid. They know you are there well before you know they are there.

Reminds me of this:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/12/22/1139781...

There have been some cities (can't recall which and too lazy to look, but it was in Utah) that were allowing bow hunters to hunt in the city limits.

Now I live in the middle of nowhere and people can hunt on the land next to me. There are deer everywhere, but come hunting season they seem to know where the public and private land is!

I live in Lansing, NY, a few miles north of Ithaca, near Cayuga Lake. Hunting with guns is prohibited in the town. Bow hunting is allowed. We have lots of deer. There were two fawns zooming around on our lawn yesterday (with their mom watching.) I've seen as many as eight deer in the backyard at one time.

We have to be careful what we plant in the garden, and deer ticks are everywhere, but otherwise the wildlife is welcome.

They extended the bow hunting season this last year to try to keep the population down.

I’ve a few hundred acres of forest next door to me, see deer every day. Until I have a valid tag.

They eat my garden... but I can't shoot 'em because they're bound to end up bleeding out in some poor kid's sandbox.

Where we are, our county conducts yearly deer population control in the off-season in the local parks (usually weekends in January/Feb, right after the public hunting season)

Same here, and yet ticks everywhere, freezer empty...

Opossums eat ticks like mad and are immune to rabies. Maybe trap some and release around the garden?

> Opossums eat ticks like mad

They do not eat lots of ticks - but will eat them if they have to.

I'v heard chickens are quite effective though.

Chickens do absolutely love to eat bugs.

I mean, you're literally selecting for that behavior by hunting the ones in the hunting grounds and not the ones in the suburbs.

Every freaking day at my house they eat all my decorative plants and the food from my garden. If shooting them was legal I'd never have to buy meat at the grocery store again.

I love literally on the border of a state forest where there is deer hunting. I have driven around in that forest hundreds of times, and I never see deer up there. But down on the road I live on, near the houses, in people's yards, you will see deer everywhere.

But the state forest is also crawling with hunters driving around endlessly when the season opens. Like in the last couple years, I have run into traffic out in the woods. Not to mention there are tons of people out on loud ass dirt bikes with no mufflers on them, people shooting at gravel pits constantly, even blowing up tannerite and shit... It's no wonder the deer stay out of the woods. It's so peaceful down here in the rural neighborhood.

When I was first driving (nearly 20 years ago..woof), one of the roads the went to my parent’s house was absolutely treacherous with deer - way worse than any other road in the area. You had to be on guard and I had two incidents where deer ran into my fully stopped car.

Now? There are still plenty of deer there, but they no longer spook at all. I don’t slow down one bit, and they often just keep eating on the side of the road. I guess all of the spook-genes died out in that area as cars were a bigger danger than coyotes and hunters.

I know it's hunting season when the deer flood my neighborhood

Same here. In the 1950s and 1960s, I never saw any deer near where I live. Now they are a nuisance animal.

They are the pigeons of the suburbs and forests.

I always thought of mourning doves as the pigeon of the suburbs, but I may be biased from seeing them at bird feeders

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