Deer Diary

By Thomas Lee Boles

Deer Diary is a story of friendship between humans and deer and critical examination of the myths and misunderstandings which keep the species apart. The reader will meet adult mule deer, hand raise a fawn, attend Game Commission meetings and discover who really causes deer over-populationand why. Along the way, there will be love, laughter, tears, exasperation, outrageand some deservedly clasted icons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 29, 2002
• ISBN: 9781462803057

Thomas Lee Boles

The author is semi-retired and lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, within day-trip distance of his deer friends. He has written Deer Diary, about mule deer he knew in New Mexico, which was also published by Xlibris.

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Copyright © 2002 by Thomas Lee Boles.

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Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

GUN OWNERS MUST BE RESPONSIBLE

Poem sums up feelings of true animal lovers

A Prayer for Animals

Few believed man’s threats against girlfriend’s children.

Powerful market forces encourage moral depravity

A Disturber of the Peace

Las Cruces BLM to conduct burn

Gila Forest plans burn to improve forage

Hunter Education

Animal People, June 1999, p. 15

Alamogordo Daily News,

El Paso Times, Sunday, February 13, 2000, p. IIB, col. 1

You Snuff ‘Em, We Stuff ‘Em

THE MORE PEOPLE I MEET

THE MORE I LIKE MY DOG

Liberty and Limitations

Colin Campbell, Leadership,

ENDNOTES

DEDICATION

To my parents, Millard Martin Boles and Gayle Salley Boles, who first took me to see Bambi; to my aunt, Kathryn Boles, who bought the soundtrack record for me; and to John Muir, who was a Bambi lover before Bambi.

missing image file

Faline

Deer Diary will introduce the reader to real animals and debunk all the myths about them. Whoever reads this story with an open mind will come to know deer as friends and realize that sport hunting is not only an ecological disaster but morally and ethically bankrupt as well. You will share a mystical experience at the gates of death, the raising of a very special baby, the grief of parting and loss, and the hope of return. Come and meet some beautiful beings as they really are.

On page 262 of Lewis Perdue’s Daughter of God (Tom Doherty Associates, New York; 2000), there is a suggestion that putting limits on God or creating God in one’s own image is blasphemy. Worse yet, I submit, such a belief is trivial. What use is a God no bigger than His (or Her) disciples?

Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, whose troubles began with a senseless assault on a wild creature, needed an unusual tale to justify bothering the Wedding Guest. At least one element of this story is, to the best of my knowledge, unique in human experience. All of it is well outside the common run of events.

Deer are large, powerful animals; hooves and antlers can be deadly. Without a dividing fence, the discipline presented here is not safe without study, understanding, and immense patience. Even with a fence these qualities are necessary to gain the animals’ trust. I would advocate the assistance of an experienced person, but they are so few one might as well forget it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Photograph of Bambi reprinted by permission of the photographer, Cecil Simpson, Lubbock, Texas.

Photograph of Faline by the author.

Cover photograph of the author feeding a fawn reprinted by permission of the photographer, Kathy Sinatra and the Alameda Park Zoo, Alamogordo, New Mexico.

The Pacifist, by Arthur C. Clarke, winning wars without actually fighting, published by the Ballantine Publishing Group, quoted by permission of Random House.

Gun owners must be responsible, by Laura Pulfer, published by the Cincinnati Enquirer. Used with permission from The Cincinnati Enquirer/Laura Pulfer.

The Science of Overabundance: Deer, Ecology, and Population Management edited by William J. McShea, H. Brian Underwood, and John H. Rappole, published by Smithsonian Institution Press, quoted by permission of the publisher.

Sierra, pp. 62-63, July/August 1998, quoting a farmer on profit from destruction. Reprinted by permission from the July/ August 1998 issue of Sierra.

Few believed man’s threats against girlfriend’s children, by Jeff Gammage of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Reprinted with permission from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Powerful market forces encourage moral depravity, by Sean Gonsalves, reprinted by permission of the author.

When deer hunting will truly be a sport, cartoon by Mike Thompson, distributed by Copley News Service, reprinted by permission of Copley News Service.

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, by Adam Hochschild, published by Houghton Mifflin, quoted by permission of the publisher.

The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Puzzle, by Amotz and Avishag Zahavi, published by Oxford University Press, quoted by permission of Oxford University Press.

A History of Russia, by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, published by Oxford University Press, Quoted by permission of Oxford University Press.

Las Cruces BLM to conduct burn, Gila Forest plans burn to improve forage, published by the El Paso Times, reprinted with permission from the El Paso Times.

Missing the link in Georgia-and Wisconsin, and Washington, too, published by Animal People, P.O. Box 960, Clinton, WA 98236-0960, reprinted by permission of Animal People.

Quotation from Malcolm Smith used by permission of the author.

The Zoo That Never Was, by R.D. Lawrence, published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, quoted by permission of the publisher.

Albuquerque Mayor says wolves could help N.M. tourist economy, published by the Alamogordo Daily News, reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Timber flanking river to be cleared, published by the El Paso Times, reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Frank and Ernest, cartoon by Bob Thaves. (pigeons and hidden agenda). Copyright © 2000 Bob Thaves, reprinted by permission of Bob Thaves.

Dominion over the Earth, by Gabriel Moran, originally published in Commonweal Magazine, reprinted in Animal Rights and Welfare (Jeanne Williams, ed., H.W. Wilson, publisher), reprinted with permission of Commonweal Magazine.

Are Animals People Too? by Robert Wright, published by The New Republic. Reprinted by permission of The New Republic.

Cleveland Amory’s proposal for a Hunt the Hunters Hunt Club, reprinted by permission of The Fund for Animals, New York, New York.

El Paso Times, Tuesday, April 18, 2000, p. 3D, discussion of live animals as Easter gifts, quoted by permission of the El Paso Times.

White-Tailed Deer Ecology and Management, published by Stackpole Books, quoted by permission of the Wildlife Management Institute, Washington, D.C.

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside, by Edward Abbey, published by Henry Holt, quoted by permission of the publisher.

In Remembrance, by Mark Blankenship, copyright © LifeWay Christian Resources. Used by permission.

Liberty and Limitations, by Colin Campbell, published in Leadership, vol. 17, no. 1, reprinted by permission.

Special thanks to Steve Diehl, Director, and the entire staff of the Alameda Park Zoo, Alamogordo, New Mexico. I was treated to a very special and wonderful experience.

Thanks to my long-time friend, Larry North, for proofreading.

Notes and references appear at the end of the book.

It is true that deer hunting would not be such a hot button issue if they weren’t so blasted beautiful; but that should tell us something also. The Creator meant their face and form to appeal to us. He put the question we see in their eyes at the end of a gun. How shall we answer Him?

Maybe I cannot hold all the territory claimed in that paragraph. I guarantee I don’t have to concede all of it to the hunters either. They think people like me are all just warm, fuzzy emotionalizers; they need to know we also think. And maybe they aren’t always as rational as they claim, either.

In New Mexico, where I live, there is currently (February 1998) a proposal to increase the kill limit on cougars (mountain lions, pumas, whatever you call them). It is hard to imagine any purpose except to put more deer-and, possibly, other cougar prey-before the hunters’ rifles. Don’t tell me about cougar attacks on humans or domestic stock in Colorado or California. That isn’t happening, or about to happen, here.

I lived in Southern California when that happened. My horse, whom I loved with a passion, was stabled in the Santa Ana Mountains, right in the middle of all the trouble. Another horse in the same stable was attacked in his stall. I bought a big old .44 magnum revolver, put dumdum bullets in it, and practiced with it. At that point I didn’t give a damn for the Endangered Species Act.

But that was then; this is now. And I object to fixing something that isn’t broken.

Hunters claim to be part of the ecosystem like other predators. For subsistence hunters, as some Native Americans still are, the claim is tenable. When the goal is a place in the Boone and Crockett record book, the claim is bunk. The animal who has a lot of record points is needed in the herd’s gene pool. Even when he is past reproductive age the herd benefits by his leadership; Richard Nelson (Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America, Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), an apologist for hunting, admits this.

Trophy hunting is not ecological; it simply comes from too much testosterone. The animal needs his head far more than the hunter does; so does the animal’s species. It looks better on him than on some wall, too.

The average hunter hunts once a year; that’s all the season there is. For this annual outing, he spends hundreds or even thousands of dollars on equipment and supplies that have no other use. Dividing this sum by the weight of his kill yields a price per pound of meat that makes the cost of caviar indistinguishable from that of hamburger. This, surely the highest priced food on Earth, is supposed to be environmental and a good ole boy, common man-type thing.

Having spent such sums for stuff whose sole purpose is killing, the hunter would have us believe his expedition is not primarily about killing. He is engaged in nature study. Never mind that all the gear, except possibly binoculars or a telescope, is useless for that purpose.

From one viewpoint, it does not matter whether death is the main purpose or merely a byproduct. It does happen-and the victim is just as dead either way.

Nelson writes of witnessing the birth of a fawn in the wild. Somehow, I doubt he saw that over the sights of a gun-any more than one would carry a weapon into a human delivery room.

In his novel Imperial Earth, the great British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke comments on the unwisdom of giving some jobs to those who want them. He was talking about politics; but I submit the same rule should apply to hunting for population control. I know there are times when the best we can do for an animal is a swift and merciful death. I made that decision for my horse, Brigitte, and saw it carried out. But it should never be made by, or under the influence of, people who enjoy killing animals. The decision-maker should hurt as I did for Brigitte.

All the above is what John Muir would call dense factiness; it does not really get at the heart of the matter. So far I have only attacked the enemy’s outworks. Now I come to the citadel.

I don’t know whether I can put a sound, logical philosophical foundation under my feelings. Only two kinds of arguments suggest themselves. One is to cite exemplars-great people who shared my opinion; Muir is one. His example is especially telling because he was a reformed ex-hunter. It also creates problems for people who claim anti-hunters are out of touch with the earth. So also does St. Francis of Assisi, who called the birds and beasts brothers and sisters and lived much of his life by farming. Several hundred million Hindu and Buddhist farmers who practice respect for life do not quite fit the picture either.

I think all these people have found they could not deal with some creatures in one way and some in another. It is a known fact that cruelty to animals is a warning sign for domestic violence.

Some years ago a deer hunter in Maine shot and killed a woman in her own back yard as she hung her laundry out to dry. A jury of his peers exonerated the hunter with the improbably thin excuse that the victim had failed to identify herself as human and not a deer. In a state big on property rights, a person in her own home was required to prove identity, on pain of death. George Orwell would love it.

It is idle to say, That’s the slobs, not us. In any activity the slobs will be there. The more an activity lends itself to abuse, the worse the consequences of abuse-the more they are drawn to it. Consider what proportion of slobs in the population is necessary to give a reasonable chance of selecting a whole jury like that.

I wonder whether it mattered to the hunter or the jury whether the victim was a human or a deer. It doesn’t to me; that shouldn’t happen to either.

In 1983, a Soviet fighter plane shot down a Korean airliner suspected of being a CIA plane on a spy mission. About ten years later a U.S. Navy ship shot down an Iranian airliner that seemed to be making a bombing run on the Persian Gulf Fleet. Both the fighter and the ship made the same error as the hunter in Maine-failure to properly identify the target. In both cases those responsible were punished by their respective services and castigated around the world. Considerations of self-defense, defending one’s buddies, keeping the peace, and defending one’s homeland could not excuse this error. But in Maine the simple desire to kill something did.

One should remember that both airliners were off course. The Korean airliner was deep in Soviet airspace, in an area known to have highly sensitive secret military bases. In Maine the shooter was off course; he had no business firing a shot so close to houses. Still, he was the one who got off scot-free.

In German there is this word: Schadenfreude. Like many German words, it is a compound. Schaden means damage; Freude means „joy. The combination means „malicious joy or gloating. Both definitions fit „sport" hunting. Joy in destroying innocence and beauty must be malicious; the hunter gloats over his prey and less successful colleagues.

The British have a phrase for a similar attitude: sheer bloodymindedness. Somewhere in the vicinity of these expressions is the true meaning of all blood sports, including hunting.

I wish devotees of blood sport would give their own blood rather than that of others.

It has been said that, of all Man’s creations, the one he loves best is his guns. Now we know why.

Hunting is a little like going to the toilet-always nasty, sometimes necessary; but anyone who does it too much is sick.

Friday, February 27, 1998. I sympathize with people who are plagued with too many deer. Pigeons are like that in Alamogordo; they crap all over everything. For years I have longed for an invasion of owls. But I still maintain the decision to kill should not in any way be influenced by people who simply enjoy killing.

Some Native Americans preserve their traditional appreciation of what hunting costs the prey. They ask its forgiveness-and use every bit of it for the necessities of life. Somehow that is less objectionable than a desire for a record or a head on the wall.

Nelson says, For deer, tameness is a tender, innocent lie. His own experiences on Channel Island, in Alaska’s Inside Passage, argue otherwise. Would he hunt those deer? He sympathized with and aided the biologists’ efforts to relocate them away from other hunters. He enjoyed the company of the deer. I would like to think it would bother him to kill and eat an animal he had petted and known by name, who had licked his hand.

If the most beautiful animal on Earth (except possibly for Lipizzan horses) would come to my hand that way, I would think I was in Heaven. I could not, without severe provocation, seek the life of another animal of the same species. I would always be hoping any deer I met would do what the first one had done.

By contrast, Nelson seems to like the idea of some deer at least out there waiting for him to come after them with a gun. I don’t know how to bridge the gulf between those attitudes; I doubt that either is founded on, or amenable to, logic and reason. Only art can address this issue in any meaningful way. I do think Nelson’s attitude colors his opinion on the untameability of deer, just as mine affects my response.

After having had my horse for a while, I began to read authorities who proclaimed that horses will not bond emotionally with humans. I am enormously grateful that Brigitte and I did not know that until we had already bonded; I would have missed one of the grandest experiences of my life. And yet I am sure the experts were making just as true a report of their experience as I am of mine.

The nineteenth century humorist Josh Billings wrote, It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so (Josh Billings’s Encyclopedia of Wit and Wisdom, 1874, p.286). Sometimes knowing what ain’t so even blinds us when the exact opposite happens right in front of us.

Sunday, February 22, 1998. Hunting has as many euphemisms as war. Prey is taken, harvested, or captured-but never killed. Dead deer are field dressed, not gutted, disemboweled or eviscerated. The proportion of deaths to attempts made is called the success rate, with little or no mention of what the hunters succeeded in doing. The death toll is called the harvest. I am reminded irresistibly of the circumlocutions at the Wannsee Conference, where the Nazis planned the Holocaust.

As I write, an agreement has recently been signed that may avert war between the United States and Iraq over the latter’s weapons of mass destruction. In one newspaper story, U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf describe themselves as all jazzed up to do something-and disappointed they may not get to do it. How very like this is to hunters increasing the kill limit on cougars so they can have more deer to blow away. Imagine what would happen to someone who made birth control for deer work. That’s like the old conspiracy theory that the military- industrial complex assassinated President Kennedy for plotting peace in Viet Nam-not to defend the nation, but to keep business (groan) booming.

I’ve borne with Richard Nelson as he described deer population problems and failed attempts to solve them by nonlethal means. But I don’t know whether I can stand it when he takes me, the reader, hunting-and tells me how pleasant it is to terrorize and kill the most beautiful animal on Earth. What’s next- praise for that nut who took a sledgehammer to Michaelangelo’s David?

Contrast that with an experience Nelson had on New York’s Fire Island. Inadvertently he put a hand on the back of a white- tail buck. Since the rut was in full swing, the deer took that as a dominance signal-and lightly raked his antlers across Nelson’s stomach, just to deliver a warning. He didn’t even tear cloth, much less skin-but Nelson admits the deer could as easily have disemboweled him.

The deer forbore, though severely provoked by cervine rules. Now the man he spared wants to tell me what fun it is to kill deer. Tell me again about Homo sap, the pinnacle of creation. I think the message is a little garbled.

There was some concept of restraint in the brain under those antlers. How many humans can say as much for themselves, even in dealing with their own kind-much less other creatures?

Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh gets rich by denying animal rights and calling anyone who disagrees a wacko. But every train watcher knows the empty cars are noisiest.

It is politically correct-insofar as that oxymoronic term has any meaning-to care about animal populations; but concern for individuals is beyond the pale. However, we treat our own species from exactly the opposite viewpoint. To implement this new approach to each other, the United States, over a period of two hundred years, laboriously invented, built, refined, defended, and proselytized a whole new system of governance, like nothing ever seen on earth before-at an enormous cost in blood and treasure. Confronted with the Soviet Union, which only saw humans en masse-and with each side able to blow up the world many times over-we invented a whole new kind of conflict management, which Arthur Clarke once called winning wars without actually fighting-and won.

Then we said that new idea only applies to humans. I don’t think that distinction can last, anymore than it did when we drew that line within our species, between races. But that time, the United States fought its bloodiest, bitterest war just to start erasing that boundary.

Friday, February 27, 1998. In his autobiography, the great Canadian naturalist Farley Mowat describes an instance of hunters manipulating populations-and the public media-to maximize their kill. As a boy, Mowat wrote a nature column for a local newspaper in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where his family lived. One day he wrote a piece defending birds of prey, explaining they prey mostly on species regarded as pests, not on domestic stock. The local goose and duck hunters descended on Mowat and his editor in wrath, and the editor warned him to avoid subjects in any way related to hunting in future articles. Evidently the benefit to farmers of having pests controlled naturally did not matter as much as sport. The hunters, like contemporaries of the prophet Isaiah, wanted themselves and the public told smooth things (Isaiah’s words-30:10)-not things that needed changinNelson complains at length that Disney’s classic movie Bambi is full of distortions and falsehoods. For all the ecological, biological, and anatomical errors, something tells me that hunting, for the prey, is just about as Disney depicted it. The animals don’t actually talk, of course, but Disney’s words give a fair picture of their experience.

Nelson’s attitude is pure nonsense to me. He regards deer as food; he says hunting and killing them is fun. In contradiction of his own experience he denies the possibility of any other relation to them. And yet he doesn’t understand why a deer’s eye view of him is less than rosy. That’s one of those things that, if one doesn’t already understand it, no amount of explanation will help.

Nelson says hunters love pets more than other people do. He further claims a special relationship to deer by preying on them. I cannot imagine a greater passion for an animal than I had for Tip, my dog, or Brigitte, my horse. And my memories of them urge me to relate to deer as Nelson did on Channel Island.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, that is illegal in every state in the Union, except for government officials in performance of their duty-as on Channel Island. It is legal, in certain seasons, to destroy life-but not to remove a living animal from the range. One act controls population as well as the other. But „sportsmen" fear, rightly, the contrast of fear, blood, and broken bodies with a companion‘s joyous welcome.

As public property, they are my deer as much as the hunter’s. But only the hunter is allowed to deal with them in his own chosen way. (In situations like this I fall back on Charles Dickens: If the law says that, then the law is an ass.) Then those who make such laws against mercy, in favor of killing, say they don’t understand why their pontifications about values are not taken seriously.

I have seen a deer greet a man as a friend, right here in Alamogordo at the zoo. I would rather be that man than the engineer of Union Pacific’s Challenger. Perhaps only another train nut can fully appreciate that statement.

To avoid being a deer hunter I would gladly sign up to chase tornadoes. Only a Midwesterner who has lived in terror of them may know what that choice means. At least a tornado hunter has a chance of saving life.

I do have to thank Richard Nelson for one thing. He has made me think more about my opinion of hunting and animals, and its basis, than I ever have before.

He calls people like me Bambi-huggers. I embrace the title gladly; hugging beats the socks off killing any day. When one side takes as a compliment what the other meant as an insult, then there is a serious difference of opinion.

I think this choice, whichever alternative one accepts, is beyond reason. It’s just hardwired in, that’s all.

Nelson’s chapter on commercial deer farming, ranching, and slaughtering made me feel like a Puritan touring a whorehouse. At least a whorehouse is about life. That operation impresses me in the same way as those wonderful people who buy horses by the pound.

Nelson, and some of the people in that chapter, get all misty- eyed about the joy of killing deer in the company of family and friends. A person who won’t call me friend unless I join him in that activity is as bad as a friend who tries to get me drunk, knowing I have a long drive home. I don’t lack friends; none of them wants me to end a life.

If violence is a unifier, why don’t I feel close to Saddam Hussein? Maybe our troops should have eaten the Republican Guard. The trouble with that is that it is all one way; it does nothing for the victim. Unlike Nelson, I understand why Bambi regards me with the same enthusiasm I feel for Hussein’s nerve gases, biological agents, and nuclear weapons. I wish Bambi could greet me as Brigitte did, with cries of joy heard half a mile away. But he (or she. Nelson omitted to mention one of Disney‘s errors. In Felix Salten‘s original story Bambi was a doe.) cannot afford that; he must assume every Homo sap he meets is bent on cervicide.

Thursday, March 5, 1998. I just got a book from the library-Mule Deer: Behavior, Ecology, Conservation, by Erwin and Peggy Bauer. Right at the back is one of the two most spectacular photographs I have ever seen-a full-face, two-page, close up head and shoulders portrait of a mule deer doe. (My other favorite is a two-page twilight panorama from Yosemite‘s Glacier Point.) When I gaze into those huge, dark, softly glowing eyes, I know that if I regarded killing that as fun, I would be bound straight for Hell.

Nelson is wrong; Bambi is not the most effective anti-hunting propaganda ever made. Unlike his complaints against Disney, no one drew this; she really did look like that. According to the Smokey Bear Museum in Capitan, New Mexico,

Bambi also spoke out against forest fires. Does Nelson object to that also? Or is he only unhappy with a speaking animal when he doesn’t like the message?

Rights had better come from God. Anyone else can revoke what he grants, as hunters do to thousands of deer every year. This has happened to millions of humans throughout history; in some places it is happening now. Only the Almighty is constant forever.

We want to say to deer, Control your population. If they could speak they should answer, Look who’s talking! I wonder how many people would have it in for Bambi if he said that.

Note to trophy hunters: The animal and his species need his head-and his genes-more than you do. It looks better there, too.

The Bauers say the mule deer population is declining over many large sections of its range. Overall it is, at best, barely holding its own. For that species, those statements challenge the notion that deer population control is a big worry. I think the problem is not too many deer but too many humans. I do hope to be safely dead of old age before there are no more like that impossibly beautiful doe.

One problem is that mule deer are too trustful of Man. I wish they could read; a glance at my daily newspaper would cure them of that.

I repeat what I said at the beginning. God made the deer so heartbreakingly beautiful to tell us to love, honor, respect, and care for His creatures. Nelson’s complaints not withstanding, this idea is far older than Bambi. Hear the prophet Isaiah (11:6-9):

The wolf also shall dwell with