“There Are No Deer Here”

When we first started coming here 15 years ago, we were told there are no deer here in Haines. That’s why the official Alaska Hunting Regulations do not allow us to hunt deer in this area—they officially don’t exist north of Sullivan Island, to our south.

And yet . . . .

Dare I say it? The buck stopped here!

Sitka Black Tailed Deer

A one-antlered buck visits the homestead beach (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

The “manual” the people who built our homestead wrote for the next to come (us) mentions seeing deer ever since the family first moved to this location. They describe seeing sign consistently through the seasons. Deer (and moose) can and will swim great distances, and it didn’t take us long to see where they commonly make landfall on the peninsula, and disperse into the woods from there.

Monday, mid-morning, Aly glanced out the front window and said, “There’s a deer on the beach.” Unlike the does we’ve seen, either indigenous Sitka black tailed does (see Deer in the Compound!) or the “rogue” white tail doe that still appears to be somewhere nearby (mentioned in the January edition of A Place at the Table), this was a genuine Sitka black tailed deer buck! It even had one of its antlers intact. Apparently the other one dropped for the winter recently.

Sitka Black Tailed Deer

He spent about half an hour taking in the sights (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

It hung around on the beach for about an hour, then waded through the snow up to the forest edge and disappeared.

Sitka Black Tailed Deer

Eventually, he went down to the water, probably looking for seaweed, which they often eat at this time of year (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

Later that afternoon, he returned, with two other deer in tow. It appeared to be a doe and a fawn. They scraped around in the snow in the yard for a bit, then left.

Sitka Black Tailed Deer

The whole “family,” browses around the rope swing. Looks like a doe and older fawn (Photo: Regina Johanos).

We’re fine with them coming here, for now. They’re not as alarming as the moose we’ve dealt with recently (see Moose Encounter Season) and, once that second antler drops, even the male will be mostly harmless to us. We don’t have any garden plants for them to browse, thanks to the moose, and, for now anyway, we don’t fear Lyme disease from ticks. Still, they are wild animals, and we’ll treat them carefully. Even after he drops that antler, the male could head butt one of us and cause a nasty injury. But, better them running around the compound than the moose.

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