Hello everyone,
I was walking when I noticed four white-tailed deer were standing in somebody’s front yard. I thought it was cool so I took pictures of them. But then, the guy who lives in the house came outside and started tossing them English muffins. He kept tossing them bread and the deer ate it. It wasn’t just one piece either, it was a lot.
Feeding deer bread is not only illegal in my state (NY) but can also kill deer. I’m afraid that the amount they ate might’ve been lethal.
I wanted to say something but I was alone and I didn’t want to put myself in a potentially dangerous situation by talking to this stranger.
But I still feel bad and I’m scared for the deer’s health. What do I do in this situation?
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This sounds like a job for the New York State Environmental Conservation Officers.
You did the right thing, I think, in not confronting the man directly. People can get weird about being called out for rule-breaking (especially when they know they’re doing it). I’ve heard of several instances in which people were feeding deer to make poaching easier, in which case you should absolutely not be the one addressng the issue. Even if the person just thinks that he’s helping them get through the winter, as you pointed out, human food often harms wildlife. (Heck, human food often doesn’t do us any favors, either.)
Handing this off to the wildlife officers protects both the deer and you. They won’t connect you to the complaint when they go talk to him—in fact, if you’re a minor, they would be legally required to protect your anonymity. (Most wildlife officers are pretty good about that, anyway.) They may keep an eye on the place to try and catch him bread-handed, but without you, they wouldn’t know where to look.
If the deer were there waiting for the handout, then it’s obvious that the man has been doing this for a while, and it may have gotten to the point that the deer are in danger of being declared Nuisance Wildlife. Find your closest office in the list at the link, give them a call, and they can 1) assess any behavioral issues in the local deer, and 2) set this bozo to rights. It may not even be the ECO’s first contact with the guy, in which case he need to be shut down hard.
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Did you get a picture of the guy tossing muffins at the deer? That’s evidence.
Jelenovi pivo ne lej.
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Yes, agree with above. Take a pic (preferably with timestamp and location) if you can do so without attracting attention, and send the info and it to NY DEC:
https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/report-a-problem
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I didn’t get a picture of the guy feeding them but I got several live photos of the deer eating them. Here’s my observation of two of them:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/340678067#activity_identification_d2d0fd3e-beaa-4bcb-ac08-59409b120d08
The deer on the right is eating the bread and I’m not sure what the one on the left is doing, maybe smelling it or something?
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An older relative of mine in New York State used to feed outdoor cats in her backyard. The number of cats kept increasing, and she put out more and more cat food. Turkey Vultures eventually figured out that there was a ton of food available in her yard all the time, and pretty soon she had vultures all over the roof, the trees, the neighbors’ roofs. If I remember correctly, the neighbors made a nuisance complaint and she was forced to stop putting out cat food.
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In Cleveland, deer are now considered a nuisance species. It’s still illegal to feed them in most circumstances, but people do it all the time, which causes them to become nearly domesticated. They barely run away from humans, and one even walked up to me yesterday!
They’re a big problem since they act as disease vectors, encourage the spread of ticks and Lyme disease, and they destroy my fruit trees. I’ve had to replace or wrap many trees because the deer have scraped their antlers on them or just completely destroyed them. They are relentless.
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To stay on topic, here is the relevant legislation:
https://dec.ny.gov/nature/animals-fish-plants/white-tailed-deer/deer-management-conflict-avoidance/deer-moose-feeding-prohibited?
But:
White-tailed Deer are an edge species. They didn’t do well in what used to be, historically, dense forest in the northeastern US, which is more suitable for things like moose. Today, thanks to humans changing the habitat, everything is edge habitat, so White-tailed Deer are thriving (also due to elimination of predators, reduced hunting pressure, etc.).
This happens around the world: humans turn everything into edge habitat, and a formerly sparse edge species becomes widespread. It’s an interesting discussion topic, but it needs its own thread.
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iirc, deer blood actually eliminates Lyme disease from ticks. If an infected tick feeds on a deer, the tick becomes an uninfected tick. there’s probably other stuff like Alpha-Gal you can get from ticks that feed on deer, but not Lyme Disease
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Oh, interesting. Thanks :)
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Another point against feeding deer, specifically in winter. It can actually cause them to starve because the extra activity will bring their metabolism up, when it would typically be very low during the winter. Since the don’t have access to enough natural food sources to maintain this higher metabolism, they burn far more calories than they consumed from the intermittent feeding.
I don’t know if this applies to this species. I read about it in “The Inner Life of Animals” by Peter Wohlleben, and it was in reference to German poachers putting out feed for Red Deer in winter to try to keep deer populations from declining. It was both counter productive and illegal.
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