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Living in harmony with urban deer is violent and destructive
Letter to the Editor
The following is a letter sent to both the CBC and the City of Cranbrook.
CBC is my favorite media. CBC also, often, fails to provide balanced journalism.
This morning, Feb. 18, at 6:40 a.m. Mountain time, I listened to an interview with a representative of the anti- deer cull group in Cranbrook.
I wish to provide another perspective. And I invite you to read this on air at the same time on your Daybreak show.
Urban deer are not “Bambi” that we can haze out of town. Our family has been subjected to the violence and damage done by deer in our city.
On your show, you mentioned the YouTube video that went viral after it was posted in early June 2010. It now has almost 4.4 million views. (The lead image is a still peeled from the video.)
The dog you see so viciously attacked was our family border collie. Our dog, Star, was out for walk late one afternoon with my wife close to our home in Cranbrook. They walked around a corner and their beautiful day turned horrific. While Star had been a trained bear hazing dog earlier in his life, he did not expect a deer to so viciously attack him and once it started, it took him too long to get back on his feet. Star was badly injured and months later our family had to put him down. Deer hooves do significant damage! We have never blamed the deer. She had just given birth to two fawns and saw Star and my wife as a threat. Those fawns were on both sides of the residential street and were over 100′ away from the attack. You will see how far the doe runs to attack on the video.
Our Cranbrook home is a heritage home right downtown- not on the outskirts. Even before the deer attack, we worked hard to protect our yard from the constant invasion of the urban deer. Each year we lose several hundreds of dollars in bushes, plants and young trees. We have sprayed those all with deer repellent. We have placed the little devices that shock a deer if they touch it. All of these have been trampled and broken by the deer. And, we have placed multi-layers of fencing and barriers to the deer entering our yard. Across our front yard, we have a small cement wall, a 70-year-old six ‘ high hedge and then a six’ cloth mesh fence. All of this covers the first six ‘ of our front yard. Elsewhere we have high wood fencing. There is another area in our side yard where we have the same size hedge, a five’ high mesh fence and more obstruction.
Additionally, when we find the deer in our yard, we haze them in any way we can. We yell, wave brooms, throw snowballs, small stones; they ignore us mostly… And they still come back several times a week. Hazing several times a week, multi-layer barriers and more has not stopped the urban deer from getting into our yard, challenging our safety and destroying our landscaping.
Even with our war zone appearance to our home yard perimeter to keep urban deer out, we often have three to seven deer in our yard several times a week.
Isn’t a home yard supposed to be a place of retreat and safety? Not for us and many in Cranbrook.
On streets in Cranbrook, drivers honk and yell at deer to try to get them off the road. Too often, deer are hit by vehicles and then must be put down. The deer are killed and the driver then has a repair bill.
In local media and otherwise, in the past year there are reports of cougars in our Cranbrook community forest and on the outskirts of our city. They come for the easy food sources – urban deer and other animals.
The point of all this is to invite another perspective on the issue of urban deer from a family that has direct and very negative interactions with “Bambi.”
I respect the right of the anti deer cull voices in Cranbrook. They are well meaning and looking to find solutions to a real problem.
My direct experience is that living in harmony with urban deer has been violent and destructive. The woman you interviewed this morning on Daybreak said we need to simply haze the deer and they will leave town. We and many in Cranbrook have been doing our own hazing of the deer in our city for years- it doesn’t work!
Thank you for reading this and reading this to your audience so the pro-deer cull voices may also be heard. There are many who are on the pro-cull side of this difficult issue.
David B. Savage,
Cranbrook
