Outdoors - The eagle is back

   During the year, we have an eagle or two stop by and fish but they never seem to stay very long, except toward the end of November. From the end of November through the first couple of weeks of December, there is at least one, and sometimes two eagles hanging around. They seem to know, the first gun season for deer is the first weekend of December. They arrive early and wait for any snacks we might leave for them while deer hunting.

   I feel a certain responsibility to the deer that reside on my place. I enjoy watching the deer through the seasons from the fawns being born to the bucks developing fine sets of antlers. I also enjoy hunting them and eating steak or deer jerky. Mostly, I want to maintain a healthy herd. Most problems with deer occur when there is overpopulation. Too many deer in an area leads to deer/vehicle accidents, starvation, or disease. There is not much traffic around my place, and there is plenty of food so even a large population would not starve. My biggest concern is disease.

   Several years ago, we had an outbreak of a hemorrhagic disease that killed large numbers of mature deer. The bacteria that caused it is always present but does not cause problems until large numbers of deer are concentrated into small areas by drought. Under these conditions, the disease can spread like wildfire causing the deer to die slow painful deaths. I do not ever want to see this happen again. Due to several factors, our deer herd has grown to large numbers again. This past weekend, we set out to do some population control.

   As a landowner, I can get two either sex tags and I am unsure how many doe tags can be purchased. I bought six. Damon bought one either sex and also six doe tags. Zane had one of each. We had most of the doe tags filled by early Saturday afternoon. Sunday, we finished filling the doe tags and got one buck we did not want to remain in the herd as a breeder. We did enjoy the weekend of hunting and camaraderie and even better, we found people that wanted all the deer we got. That is a lot of meat, and several families will enjoy some really good eating in the coming months.

   By Sunday afternoon, we were stiff, sore, and tired. One of us more so than others. Sitting behind a computer for most of the year does not get a person into shape for two solid days of hiking. We collapsed in our chairs in the garage, reliving some of the drives and relaxing. I glanced out of the window to see two does walking across the driveway as though nothing had been happening for two days. None of us had enough energy to get up and try to fill one more tag. We felt we had done all we could do for population control for one year. Though we did harvest a lot of deer, I am confident we did not take out ten percent of the herd. I hope our thinning helps to promote a healthy deer population.

   I know, there are a couple of fat and happy eagles, sitting at the top of the cottonwood tree, with full bellies. They enjoy cleaning up after us during the deer season.