Southern Musings: Deer in the floodlights

I have never killed a deer. Heck, I’ve never stared at one through the scope of a Remington or from a top a deer stand.

No, for most of my life I’ve only seen deer from a heated seat of a Hyundai Tucson or Kia Sorento. It’s happened while slowly driving through Cades Cove in Tennessee or motoring down Alabama 119 to a high school football game.

I now see them all the time.

We live on a piece of property in Trussville that backs up to some deep woods, where the hum of traffic fades and the tap-tap-tap of squirrels trampling the fallen leaves is intensified. I pray these woods are never destroyed by yellow excavators, because the deer have little natural space left to access without running into the pavement of another subdivision. We see them almost daily here, and from every direction. I’ve seen eight-point bucks carefully ease down the hillside, spotted tiny fawns stumble across the back yard and watched trusting does barely look up when they set off the motion floodlights in our front yard.

Upon moving here, I quickly realized that we were surrounded by wildlife. An owl perched atop our fence greeted me as I took the trash out one night. Hawks soar overhead, and I once watched a dozen black crows chase one through the sky. Pileated woodpeckers have shown up on several occasions and more cardinals hang out here than at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. We’ve seen steely coyotes, pesky raccoons, yard-destroying armadillos, nervous turkeys and, of course, dozens of deer. I bought a gravity feeder that straps around a tree and holds 40 pounds of corn. The deer emptied it daily. I upgraded to a tripod feeder that holds 30 gallons, which I may appreciate as much as the deer.

The tripod stands in our back yard and sprays corn in all directions five times per day. This setup gives me a perfect view of the visiting deer from my bedroom window. Does mostly come with their fawns in the morning around 7:15 a.m. Sometimes they show up in the middle of the afternoon. The bucks come in the black of night, and share the space with the raccoons.

I have several friends who have requested to bolt their tree stands back there. They promise to be quiet, and to contribute deer meat to my freezer. I even have a high school football coach friend who, minutes before kickoff of a playoff game, talked to me on the sideline not about the game, but about the deer in my back yard. One of my uncles often says that I must be buying “that good corn.”

To every request to hunt these woods, I answer succinctly: No. I have no desire to kill a deer or have one on my property killed. That’s not a political statement, I’m just not a hunter. I’d love to go hunting for the quiet and for the camouflaged camaraderie with buddies. But to kill one? It’s just not in me. I much more enjoy watching the fawns grow and scamper across our yard, studying the cautiousness of the young bucks and scrolling through hundreds of game camera photos, some of which are downright hilarious.

Now that hunting season is wrapping up and spring is on the horizon, I hope the deer emerge from the woods more often. I’ll be sure to leave the floodlights on for them.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and is a contributing writer for the Cahaba Sun.