13 May 2013
Deer have lived in the Okanagan before humans by millions of years coming and going with the glacial retreats. Their claim to it as a home far exceeds ours and the tax they demand is respect, dogs on short leashes and a tiny bit of natural space with a tomato or cedar bush thrown in now and then. Here is a lovely scene I captured this morning in front of the Grand Okanagan lakeshore Promenade.
Lovely urban doe feeding in Rotary Marsh, created for wildlife enjoyment. This lady whom I shall call Debbie the Doe, gave birth to two fawns last year and one of them, the yearling buck is with her today though she is weaning him by kicking him if he gets in her way. Her offspring are true city dwellers. They were born in the city and know no other home. This is adaptation and tolerance on the part of the deer. If you look closely you can see legs inside her belly now and she is looking for a safe place to drop her fawns this year too.
I saw this dog walker coming and warned him there was a pregnant doe to keep his Salmoid cross on a short leash. He did and held it firm. While he was taking the pic his dogs tail went up and it lunged at the deer who didn't blink. She has a kick harder than a mule and knows it and is prepared to use it. I have seen it applied to my researcher boss, Nels West at UBC in the vivarium. He got a nasty cut on his head for crossing a doe. However, statistically, you are 80X more likely to be killed by your doctor than a deer. In fact I could find no case of a person killed by a deer in the statistics of Canadian mortality.
This chap had his dog under control and no harmful exchange happened. Clearly we need good signage to warn of these rules for coexistence and also the wisdom to follow them. Here is proof we can coexist if these simple rules are applied. I do not advise this sort of close encounter. Give the deer its space and let it move off before continuing. If her fawn was nearby a close approach with a dog would be a very dangerous thing to do.
The Natives of America it is estimated killed 5,000,000 deer per year before contact, so these cattle of the forest have in fact sustained life for ages around the world. Deer also feed tigers, cougars, leopards, bears, wolves, coyotes, bobcat, lynx, eagles, ravens, magpies, crows, insects, and bacteria and a pile of hunters and subsistence fringe dwellers . They also recycle rotten trees by kicking them apart and bedding on them, and by browsing, help maintain parklands and by droppings, disperse seeds and spores vital for forest ecology and health. Deer are keystone ecosystem species vital for forest health.
Copyright 2013 Jorma Jyrkkanen. All rights reserved.
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