Oh dear (deer)...

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by KC911

At least in NC, I'm not sure that's part of the problem as deer season is pretty long (mid-Oct-Dec 31) depending upon which area, and I don't think there are "any" limits whatsoever. It's simply that surbubia has taken over and there aren't enough predators (other than cars).



My uncle is an expert hunter (that I'm sure Higgens could relate too ), and I bet he passes on 50 deer for each one he opts to harvest. He always donates some (or all) of the meat to a local rural church for distribution, and they are more than thankful! Here, turkeys have tag limits (2) but they are getting pretty visible also (unseen 30 years ago)....Uncle had his limit on the 3rd day this year . I live in the middle of what used to be my rural boy scout camp...I suspect virtually NO one hunts in this county anymore and the estimate is 40 deer per square mile in this county. Methinks we need to put a "bounty" on them and let the REAL hunters (like my uncle) do their thing

ps: I do believe the old saying is true...10% of the hunters/fishermen take 90% of the game....I am NOT one of them but I do release my fish

A couple of things to consider here. The season may be long, but what are the stipulations? Around here the bow season is significantly longer than the rifle season, but far more people seem to hunt deer with rifles. Your uncle may pass up a lot of deer, but that's probably because he has a limited number of tags and doesn't want to waste them. I honestly don't know, I know a lot of hunters but rarely do any myself.

[Rickysa]

KC, as you know, I'm about an hour south of you...my wife continually comments on the number of dead we see on the side of the road. It is beyond belief.

I have a dog that must go on a ride around the country every weekend morning (great excuse to go for a cruise ) and this past Saturday had one damn near jump over the car.

While I don't hunt (fishing is for me!), I'd much rather see the herd thinned humanely than to see them die crushed in the ditch.

[KFC911]

You're correct Matt, the bow and black powder seasons are longer, but the rifle season is at least 6 weeks. Years ago (when I did hunt), does were off limits and now have a shorter season, but after just checking the NC regs, I don't see any "limits" listed. In uncle's case, it's not a "sport" except for getting the crafty old bucks than a novice doesn't probably even see DURING the hunting season. I'm a novice but I did have a nice 10 pointer at my back fence last September (along with another nicely racked one and at least 3 does). They were munching on the greenery. They don't like the trees in my front yard however....I saw one munching from tree to tree as he went down the buffet line one night .

[VillaRicaGA911]

I don't hunt currently which will be changing soon and I do like deer meat. How many deer do we have here in Villa Rica GA you may ask? Enough that my wife with our 6 year old in the back seat had a huge 10 point buck RUN IN TO HER CAR on Main Street downtown Villa Rica at 630PM the week before Thanksgiving. The rut had started here a week or two prior. Thankfully no one hurt as the speed limit on Main Street is 35. I don't know how many deer are too many but when your wife's car gets RUN INTO BY A BUCK CHASING A DOE, it would seem to me a massive thinking of the heard is in order.

[Crowbob]

Current Michigan harvest stats:

Deer kill down in 2013 because of snow, disease | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

[futuresoptions]

Been seeing a lot more deer and hog "road kills" this year than in previous years...

[livi]

Who killed Bambi!??!

[PorscheGAL]

Not too far from you, KC, this guy is taking advantage of all the deer that are killed on the roadway. I never knew this Tiger Rescue existed until the N&O article.

PITTSBORO: Shaffer: Cary’s Deer Man feeds the beasts, striped and carnivorous | Josh Shaffer | NewsObserver.com

PITTSBORO — I’m riding down U.S. 64 in a Ford pickup driven by Ken McEntire, better known as “The Deer Man,” who’s carting two dead does and an expired buck on a flatbed trailer.

“We’re hauling Bambi,” he jokes.

Our load is a gift for a pack of tigers who love raw venison – bones and all. In a few minutes, I’ll be watching a volunteer at Carolina Tiger Rescue cut this roadkill into meal-sized pieces with a watermelon knife, and maybe even make a chew toy out of the ears.

McEntire makes a retirement hobby out of collecting roadkill deer, fielding daily calls from police in Apex or Morrisville or Cary. He gets rousted at midnight, out to fetch another buck that wandered into traffic chasing a doe’s scented charms. At age 75, he often finds himself scrambling to the bottom of a ditch, fixing ropes around a hoof, hauling a fresh carcass up a hill.

“When you get deer out of the woods, you don’t pull straight,” he explains. “You’ve got to zigzag around trees.”

McEntire’s work kept 97 deer bodies out of the landfill so far this year, and it put a sizable dent in the Tiger Rescue’s chicken budget, which can run to $80,000 a year. Big cats favor red meat, and as we pull into their Pittsboro driveway, you can hear them purring through 6-inch fangs.

Later, we meet Kaela – a 9-year-old tiger who was found wandering a highway outside Charlotte. She chuffles a hello and drops a leg bone, all that remains of the last luckless deer McEntire delivered. Around her on the 55-acre property, 60 other rescued lions, cougars and caracals look at McEntire as though he’s the Good Humor Man.

“We can take the ears and use them for tiger toys,” says Laura Cox, their keeper. “We can use the hoofs. They eat the bones. They eat the ribs. We can take their Boomer Balls and wrap them in deer pelts.”

I knew The Deer Man by reputation long before we met. I imagined him in mythical terms, thinking that it must take a centaur or a unicorn-man to look after the graceful creatures cut down by cruel hunks of plastic and steel, to give life with dead flesh.

Then I pulled into his Cary driveway, spied the three deer bodies waiting in his trailer and pictured an altogether different man, this one wearing bloody overalls and carrying an ax.

But that’s not who stepped out and shook my hand.

McEntire is a retired electrical engineer who worked for ITT and Alcatel, logging 175,000 miles a year on an airplane, traveling to Germany and Australia for work. When he’s not hoisting dead animals off the highway, he’s playing country and bluegrass in nursing homes on guitar or dobro. He does all of this for free, fronting his own money for gas.


“I don’t know why you’d think I’m interesting,” he told me humbly, over the squawking of the family parrot perched in his living room.

He didn’t choose deer extraction so much as it came crashing into him. When a car hit a deer outside his house one night, he asked the officer, “Can I keep it?”

Once he explained the tiger rescue idea, the officer asked, “Can we call you next time?”

Now McEntire carries a signed permission slip from Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison and from the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, which requires that he record the date, time and location of every deer he picks up. He’s listed with police in Apex, Cary, Morrisville and Raleigh, plus the sheriff’s department and the N.C. Highway Patrol. On Thursday, he delivered his 97th deer to the tigers.

“I’ll make it to 100 if I don’t drop dead or something,” he said.

He won’t take a deer if he doesn’t know when it died, and in the winter, each carcass only has a shelf life of 24 hours. Once, somebody dropped one at his house. “Fresh,” he said. “It was bleeding. I know it didn’t get hit there because there was no blood on the sidewalk.”

We make a funny picture driving through spotless Cary with a trio of furry corpses, but if anybody notices, they manage to keep their lunches down.

Along the way, somebody notices the big red sign on the back of McEntire’s truck – Deer for Tiger Rescue – and calls him up while driving right behind. He’s going hunting on N.C. 751, and if he should happen to shoot anything, would McEntire come get it?

Sure, he says. As long as you take it legally.

At the rescue, I watch a poor deer who smacked the front end of a fire truck get transformed into Tiger Chow. One leg, Cox tells me, equals 10 chickens. The rescue keeps a donation box out front, where fresh deer can be deposited anytime. But McEntire is their main donor, the only one to come every day.

Later that night, when the temperature hovered around freezing, McEntire called me at home to invite me out on his latest deer run. It was 10 p.m., and by that time I’d shed my shoes and sunk deep into a sofa cushion. I decided to leave the night and all its terrors, its headlights and screeching tires, its scurrying hooves and broken antlers, in the care of The Deer Man.


Carolina Tiger Rescue - Home Page

[KFC911]

Thanks for posting that PGal! That's great to see someone making "something out of a bad situation"