When herself and I went for our short walk yesterday four deer skittered away from us hardly 100 yards from the gaff, fallow I think, the dark above light below jobs not the spotty ones.
They didn't go very far though but stopped among pine trees about 50 yards away and stood looking back at us. The smallest one was a pricket, an adolescent male with spiky little horns, Bambi in fact. He stopped furthest away, the nearest being the biggest of the does. The mother perhaps of the others.
There was something very charming about the alert, slightly insolent way they stared at us. We had disturbed their feeding after all, on some shoots of some sort I suppose. They were just about out of shotgun range, of course illegal now for deer however big the shot. But I don't think I could have shot one anyway unless very hungry. One get soppier with age in some ways.
|
There are increasing numbers of them about - various sorts up here: muntjack, fallow, and roe.
I had to drive around a crippled one the other week at the side of the road with a solitary plod keeping an eye things until the vet arrived.
See them out of the window at work too during quiet times, but not seen the boar which others claim are hereabouts.
|
The plus point is the muntjack eat the fallen apples but,
the minus point is they eat the privet hedge and make holes thro it to get to the apples!
I am told that they eat roses, but in20 years I have never seen a rose in the garden, so it maybe (or maybe NOT) true:)
|
We have a little summer shack in Lodz accessed by a mile-long unmade road just slightly wider than the car and flanked with bushes and long grass.
Last year as we were driving along, Bambi bounded across our bows just a few metres in front of us. He came out of nowhere, crossed the road in one leap without touching it and disappeared again. A real "wow" moment.
|
>> He came out of nowhere, crossed the road in one
>> leap without touching it and disappeared again. A real "wow" moment.
>>
My Bambi wasn't so lucky. Came tearing out of the bush and straight in front of the car - bang.
Had to go back and throw rocks at his head to kill him.
The buck stops here.
|
A good number of Deer wandering around Corby Northants area, unfortunately many are killed on the roads as massive woodland areas have been bulldozed to make way for....nothing in many cases, presumably the recession halted the greed plans, good, but it doesn't replace their habitat.
Early hours and late evening the herds can be seen around Corby's oustkirts, lost and wondering where their homes went.
|
Lots around in West Sussex and regularly see dead ones on the roadside in the nearby forest.
I too have had the 'wow' moment when a deer leapt over the hedge in front of me as I came round a bend having just overtaken a car at speed on the only safe stretch to overtake in 15 miles.....
I jammed on the anchors and sat there sweating , deer had disappeared by the time the car I had just overtaken came round the bend and nearly went up the back of me.... he must have wondered what on earth I was playing at .
On Boxing Day four years ago four of us went on a walk on the south downs to clear away the Christmas cobwebs and spotted a herd of deer on the edge of frost covered woodland . We got to within 50 yards of them before they disappeared like magic....a lovely sight .
|
>>>> He came out of nowhere, crossed the road in one
>> leap without touching it and disappeared again. A real "wow" moment.<<
Round here they do that - but the one leap ends on your car bonnet.
I really am becoming a country curmudgeon...
|
I was walking through a National Trust woodland in Northumberland when I startled a young deer.
They are well camouflaged in that environment, and the first thing I knew of the deer's presence was when it brushed past me as it scampered away.
|
|
Had venison steak Saturday night.
|
>> Had venison steak Saturday night.
>>
Bit Deer for me.
|
>> The plus point is the muntjack eat the fallen apples but,
All deer eat fallen apples. The building work has trashed some of the apple trees behind this house but groups of deer are regularly to be seen scooping up windfalls in normal times.
They also nibble the bark off the trees which is destructive of them. That indeed is one of the reasons for classifying them as vermin and shooting them whenever you like.
Groups of up to fifteen or twenty sometimes come through here. Fallow deer are commonest, roe sometimes seen, muntjac quite rare although not unknown. I even thought I saw a red deer once but perhaps I was hallucinating. Muntjac may be so small that one doesn't see them easily in the undergrowth (very profuse so far this year like everything else).
This is in West Sussex, just a couple of miles north of the South Downs. The local Elizabethan palace used to have a deer park but when we went for a stroll near it the other day no deer were to be seen. They may all have escaped or been set free. Illegal-immigrant wild boar are sometimes alleged to have got here from Kent after coming over on day shopping trips from Calais and doing runners, but no one I know has seen one here.
|
Late one evening a few weeks ago, I was filling one of the cars at a local Tesco Express in urban Reading, when there was an almighty scrambling/clattering noise behind me, which soon maifested itself in the form of a muntjac deer trying to make its way across the forecout at break neck speed. I awaited some fearsome predator which I assumed to be pursuing it, but none arrived. I expect the deer was merely trying to escape some malignant human presence or other.
Very much a Bambi on ice moment. The children missed it as they were asleep in the back after a long journey down the M4.
|
|
Much deer, of all sorts, skittered away from Black 5 as it thundered through Hampshire. Along with horses and cattle all shocked and surprised by the strange fiery beast that invaded their territory.
|
My son-in-law had a meeting with a youngish deer with his car.
Result - one dented car & one dead deer: further result - a freezer full of venison.
Very tasty!
|
Well I have to come clean here, the Bangernomics Primera the lad bought, (the one that was in the bangernomics challenge) met a sticky end two months ago when he met a deer on the road in Bracknell and crashed it into a stone wall.
I will update the bangernomics thread.
|
>> I have to come clean here, the Bangernomics Primera the lad bought, (the one that was in the bangernomics
Sorry to hear that Zeddo. I hope he was decently contrite.
It did occur to me that perhaps he is the one who should come clean. That perhaps it was some other slim-legged, elegant creature who had distracted his attention from the road.
|
|
His GF, (who always grasses him up) confirms the Bambi tale.
|
>> who always grasses him up
Poor boy. You've got him surrounded with your network of spies and informers.
'Information gained by torture (including waterboarding) will be deemed inadmissible as evidence'
:o}
|
"he met a deer on the road in Bracknell and crashed it into a stone wall"
Yeah, sure that's what happened.
He was feeding the pony and he lost control. That's what happened.
|
...He was feeding the pony...
While there is no excuse for not paying attention while driving, I'm pleased to hear the young man has been brought up to be kind to animals.
|
>> I'm pleased to hear the young man has been brought up to be kind to animals.
Quite. Another sort of chap might have been spanking the monkey.
|
>> Along with horses and cattle all shocked and surprised by the strange fiery beast that
>> invaded their territory.
>>
And how did they react to the steam engine? ;-)
|
Oddest place I used to see deer regularly was outside my former employer's site in Basingstoke, a very small patch of woodland hemmed in by an industrial estate, a shopping centre and a housing estate:-
maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=basingstoke&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Basingstoke,+United+Kingdom&gl=uk&ll=51.279783,-1.05752&spn=0.006174,0.01929&t=h&z=16
never could work out how they ended up there.
|
|
There are some deer in a small cemetery in the middle of Edinburgh
|
>> There are some deer in a small cemetery in the middle of Edinburgh
Glasgow's got some too, the necropolis is surrounded by "City" (motorway, hospital, old housing, busy streets), nothing really suitable for a fair distance around there to hide / shelter deer on the way there.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Y4b1Sm7I0
|
>Oddest place I used to see deer regularly was outside my former employer's site in Basingstoke..
The number of deer in and around Basingstoke is becoming a real PITA.
Collisions between cars and deer have increased quite substantially over the last few years. They used to stick to a few traditional crossing points when meeting a road but don't seem to bother now.
|
>> They used to stick to a few traditional crossing points when meeting a road
So someone needs to run a course for these deer to cross in a safe location :-)
|
"The number of deer in and around Basingstoke is becoming a real PITA."
I suspect the growth in the number of people and cars in the area has been greater than any growth in the deer population.
|
Stacks of them around Yateley / Eversley way as well. If you walk over the heath in the evening, you are almost guaranteed to see at least one.
Beautiful creatures, but they do make a hell of a mess of a car if they jump out in front of one. A former colleague's 6 hour old Mondeo Ghia was written off by a deer in the New Forest, and he had a week of hospital food to go with it.
|
>>"The number of deer in and around Basingstoke is becoming a real PITA."
>>
Who, what, why: Why do deer cause more car crashes in autumn?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15334624
Deer could be responsible for as many as 74,000 car accidents in the UK each year
....the population is now in the region of two million, a number not seen since the Norman Conquest.
|
|
Yes indeed, a drive through Richmond park at this time of the year can show how dangerous the Rut can be!
|
|
Who was tasked with counting deer in 1065 then ?
|
Doomsday book, init
S'all in there
|
"Deer could be responsible for as many as 74,000 car accidents in the UK each year"
Or perhaps
"Cars drivers are responsible for colliding with and injuring or killing 74,000 deer in the UK each year."
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Mon 17 Oct 11 at 17:53
|
|
My deal with the deer is they can stay off the roads and I won't go into their habtat.
|
|
There was a thing on the news at lunchtime today about a Hartebeest and a mountain biker. Caught him a right purler.
|
Here ya go
www.youtube.com/watch?v=txuKW7T47QE
Yes GO bambi!
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 17 Oct 11 at 20:18
|
>Yes GO bambi!
What a magnificent, intelligent animal.
|
"My deal with the deer is they can stay off the roads and I won't go into their habitat"
Whilst some collisions with deer are unavoidable most are due to:
1 Driving too fast
2 Ignoring warning signs
If you see one deer there are certainly more about an you need to slow down.
|
>Whilst some collisions with deer are unavoidable most are due to:
>1 Driving too fast
>2 Ignoring warning signs
Fact or opinion?
|
>"Cars drivers are responsible for colliding with and injuring or killing 74,000 deer in the UK each year."
The only problem with that statement is the word "responsible".
Deer have the unfortunate habit of leaping straight out of cover. Drivers often don't even have time to react before the poor critter is doing a two-step on the bonnet.
Popular belief where we lived in Namibia, which has a similar problem with antelope, was that they are spooked by their own shadow. Running away from their shadow takes them straight towards the source of light. Many folks used to drive at night with the interior light on in the hope that when they jumped behind the lights they would land behind the cabin instead of through the windscreen.
|
|
Bambi road-kill is a bonus in these hard times!
|
Of course, it has nothing to do with the driver, in general. They come from nowhere - it just depends on luck, really.
Sweden takes accidents with wildlife very seriously. Not just because of the deaths and injury to drivers, but also the damage to the animals. Many thousands of miles of motorway and main roads are lined with 6' pig net fence, which cut the number drastically, but hasn't cured the problem. Once 'roadside' of the fence, there is nowhere for the animal to go. The biggest problem has been the moose, as they cause the most deaths and damage. They just appear from the forest by the side of the road, and stand there. They're very hard to see, and their eyes don't reflect. They're usually pretty big, and have long spindly legs that snap when hit, then the body carries on through the windscreen. Drive past any crash repair place and there' always a wreck outside with all the screen and roof caved in. At least with deer and pigs, assuming you don't swerve off the road and hit a tree, most of the damage is only to the car.
All accidents with wolves, bear, moose, deer, wild boar, hawks, otters, reindeer (and a few others) have to be reported to the police straight away from the scene, and the area marked. The police can then visit and call in an hunter to shoot, or search for injured animals. The hunter gets paid for this, and the meat goes to the owner of the hunting rights for that area. All accidents then get entered into a database here: www.viltolycka.se/hem.aspx
If you hit a wolf, bear or wildboar, you're advised not to get out of the car, but just wait at the scene until the police and hiunter get there. The penalties for not reporting a hit are pretty severe, and some people have been fined many thousands of pounds when caught.
I came back from a friends the other night and someone had hit a moose. Unfortunately it wasn't dead and was sat in the middle of the road. As no-one had a gun, we had no choice but to wait for the hunter.
|
Bambi - AnotherJohnH
