It was a rainy day and I noticed a deer sitting near where my truck is parked, by the driveway. That is not normal behavior in my area. We don't have tame deer here that do that, the deer here pretty much stay away from people. Later I saw it again, same place. I got some deer feed and even though I knew I couldn't get too close, I tried. It tried to get away, but just fell over, obviously scared. I knew then it couldn't walk at all. I tried calling the wildlife rescue organization, but the guy said they don't try to bring in adult deer who are injured like that. Said they die when they're captured and taken in. Dang! They recommended that I call the sheriff's office so it could be put down. I felt kind of sick...not good at dealing with stuff like that. The next day I decided maybe it would be better. But before I could get anyone to do it, the deer disappeared. That was yesterday. I finally spotted the deer's body today after looking around. It must have crawled across to where the creek goes under the road. It was in the large pipes there under the road.

Yuck...
Sounds sick....

If it was injured, I'd totally have put it in the freezer.... Sick downed critters aren't safe to eat...

I don't know about Texas, but in these parts.... Deer populations have skyrocketed due to cutovers and constant urban expansion....

It's sad, but they're pests, and nothing is thinning the herds...

I used to garden in a neighborhood where I'd stop and count the numbers in the herd.... 30 or so.... There was even a 3 legged deer!

Do you know what you can grow in that kind of situation?

Hint... Dig out anything with bite marks...

Since I've lived here (about 16 years), we haven't had any real overpopulation of deer. Then during the drought, their numbers dropped drastically, I suppose because the drought hit this little area so especially hard. After a while, we saw deer mostly only in the summer, and few of them even then. I hear people from other areas of Texas complain about there being way too many deer, and I understand why that can be a really bad thing. I could be wrong, but I think that the deer I saw was injured, and any sickness was mainly because of that. One of its legs appeared completely unusable, and it seemed like it was barely able to move one other leg. Could have been hit by a car or shot. We have a fence around the part of my place that I call a yard, so deer munching only affects the rest of the place. Actually, I think wild hogs do more damage than anything else for the parts that the hogs can reach. They root around at night and leave quite a mess!

They are not pests. We are. We have invaded and cut down their habitat. We must change our way of thinking that any animal that invades our space is a pest. WE ARE the invaders.

While I agree with the sentiment, you might want to do a bit of self educating re:deer.

If we were suddenly removed from the equation, the eastern half of the Uninted states would revert to climax forest, and the deer would starve.

Us cutting all the trees down and killing all the predators is why there are so many deer.

They dont live in the forest. They prefer a fresh clearcut...

And a suburban neighborhood is also a very nice place to live if you are a deer... All those tasty landscape plants....

When I say cut down their habitat I don't mean only forests. And destroying the predators is just as harmful for the deer. Predators are important in promoting health in prey populations. I don't agree with deer starving in forests...they are a common sight in the West Virginia mountains and state forests of Pennsylvania...no clear cutting areas for thousands and thousands of acres and plenty of well fed deer.

Deer were pretty plentiful in the forested east coast before the Europeans arrived from what some experts write, and for many years also afterward. Native American tribes depended on them for a large percent of their food, clothing, tents, etc. And the early European settlers later also found no big scarcity of deer. The deer population in the U.S. started plummeting in the 1800's. Unlimited hunting, bad agricultural practices, etc., from what I read. But with more limitations on hunting, less predators and the deer candy gardens people provide them, the population soared again. Now there's more than ever. I guess they adjusted. My area just isn't a very attractive deer area, even before the drought.

The forested east... Wasn't actually as forested as many are led to believe.

Europeans came in and saw beautiful fields ripe for the taking.

Smallpox killed 90% of the native Americans.... An even larger amount than the black death!

So land grabbing was relatively easy...

The eastern natives... Lived in log cabins... Takes a lot of trees to build a log cabin...

The crops were mostly grown in the rich bottom lands... Same as today.

The deer haven't adjusted...
We are creating habitat...

They love those clearcuts.