I fed about 110 deer during this last winter. I wanted to put something reflective on them and the senior game warden said no. There is very little I am permitted to do for them. I am not even permitted to protect them from predators. I can not put a sign next to the highway to watch for them, only the department of transportation can. I kept them off the highway all winter but mid spring they go their own way, mostly into the mountains but about 4 or 5 packs cross the highway. People think they are dumb but they just have incredibly poor depth perception and cars are much quieter these days. Noisy trucks and motorcycles will make them run back to me. EV's will need a sound system that makes them sound like a big-rig with jake-brakes and straight pipes. Let's make it happen.
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Doesn't feeding them contribute to even more deer overpopulation and human habituation?
It does increase mating as I pull together many packs and teach them to get along with one another. I break up their sparring when it gets too aggressive to preserve their eyes. I even know what music will increase mating when the females are in heat but I can not explain why they like it. We lost a great deal of deer in the last few years and especially two years ago due to incredible snowfall. If anything I have restored some of the population. If it gets out of hand the game department will issue more tags or move some of them to other parts of the state that most of the deer died from starvation. I have also kept them off the highway for the most part. When I first started there are on average 20 dead deer just along my stretch of highway. Now there is 1 every other year.
They are still very much afraid of humans with myself being the exception. If someone gets near their feeding area other than me they will scatter. They all come to me and then go back to the mountains far away from all humans except the hunters. Some of the older bucks even know to get up to 10,000+ feet where there is no food but also mostly no hunters whereas the rest of them go to 9500 feet and get picked off first by bow hunters then firearm and also by predatory animals mostly mountain lions.
Something else that often comes up is the increased rate of getting CWD. This is true however they would all be exposed regardless as they all end up on shared paths eventually as the prions are highly resilient to break-down in nature. It was detected in a town near me and I expect a portion of one of the sub-genome to get it and one of the sub-genome to be immune. I am testing a theory on tightening cell junctions on what scientists mistakenly named the blood brain barrier by reducing inflammatory food intake and only time will tell if that reduces the impact at all.