The Hidden Life of Deer

by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

  When my land is added to the Wapack Wildlife Reserve to the east, land that was donated by my father, about two thousand acres will be preserved. Adjoining these acres to north and south are other large conserved areas contributing to a corridor of conservation from Temple Mountain in the south, which was heroically saved by John and Connie Kieley, to Crochet Mountain in the north, where the Crochet Mountain Rehabilitation Center maintains a haven of undisturbed forest. Wonderful as this is, much of the land is upland, and many life-forms need lowland with water. Mine is lowland, and with any luck, the lowland will remain in good condition after I am gone. The deer will rut in the fall and have their fawns in the spring, a bobcat will do the best he can to keep other bobcats off his territory, and the black gum trees will drink from their wetland, raise up their leaves to catch the sun, and live another century or longer.

  Someday I’ll be part of it too. As its custodian for all these years, I’d like to stay with it. And when my husband’s ashes are mixed with mine and with those of our dogs and are scattered at the edge of the field where the deer come out, we will be part of it. The rain will wash us into the soil and we will have eternal life, not of the conscious mind, I’m sure, but definitely of the body. My father told me so at the time he told me about blood and chlorophyll. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, he said. In the brook in the woods, beside which we were standing when we had this conversation, atoms that once were in the dinosaurs were floating by, he told me. So we’ll become part of the oaks, the mice, the deer, and the bobcats. We won’t be part of the black gums, sadly, because we’ll be on the wrong side of the road. But no matter where we are, or which life-forms our atoms may join, we will still go on, not in some cosmic afterlife, but as a regular part of our planet. Perhaps our planet isn’t much in the general scheme of things—just a mote of interstellar dust on the far edge of the Milky Way, circling a tiny star that must be smaller than a pinprick in the eyes of god—but it’s our mother.

  Epilogue

  On the first of October, soon after we mowed the field, the Deltas stepped out of the woods. First came the mother, then the two grown daughters, then the fawn, all gray in their winter hair. In their calm, everyday manner, they spaced themselves at a normal deer-distance and ate a little grass. Then they walked back to the woods. The once frantic young doe, the smaller daughter, was reunited with her family, and the fawn, for all the doubts surrounding his existence, was large and healthy, as ready to start a winter as a fawn can be, as if there had been no questions as to his well-being. Obviously, from the point of view of the Deltas, there had been no questions. I have seldom seen anything more normal than the brief appearance of these deer.

  A few nights later as I came up the driveway, my headlights shone into many pairs of eyes—many deer, far more than three. I quickly tried to count them, but the deer were moving around and not all of them were looking at me, so I couldn’t be sure. But at last I recognized them. They were the Deltas and also the Betas, back from wherever they had spent the summer. I couldn’t tell if all the Betas were present, or if there was a fawn, but I knew it was them, right there where they belonged. Soon after that I noticed a few deer droppings near our oak trees. I would have liked to look more closely at the droppings, but a dog ran past and ate them. However, their presence meant that the deer knew about the acorns, and knew there were plenty.

  This raised an important issue. I had put out corn the year before because the acorns had failed so completely. An abundance of acorns raised the question of whether or not I should put corn out again. I experienced a twinge of conscience. In addition to all the discouraging information put out by Fish and Game as to why people should not feed deer, they had yet another reason, again in the New Hampshire Hunting Digest. It is as follows: “Over the years, those who feed deer begin to feel as though the deer they are feeding are ‘their deer.’ ”

  This is true, and it has consequences. The deer-feeders become protective and post their land, and the more land that is posted, the fewer places there are to hunt and the fewer legitimate hunters there are to support the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, already underfinanced. One hates to think what would happen to the deer and indeed, to all wildlife, without this Department, without the game wardens, without the field biologists.

  If someone from Fish and Game were to ask me who owned the deer on my property, I’d say they belonged to the state. This would be the correct answer, but not a completely honest one, because in my heart the deer do seem to be somewhat mine, and not only them, but all the local deer who need a little help in winter. For all I know, they might need corn even if acorns are available. I think of the magnificent, ten-point buck whose corpse was found on neighboring land after he had been shot by a trespassing poacher. He was no longer contributing his superior genetic material. Young deer fathered by lesser bucks might lack his survival ability. Some of them might need assistance.

  However, I know that Fish and Game has a point about deer-feeding. I kept tossing the issue around in my mind until November 20, 2008, when something happened that erased my doubts.

  The autumn had been mild. But before dawn that day, the temperature plummeted—down to 11˚F with windchill, the coldest day of the year by far and a record low for that time in November. As the sun went down, the air grew even colder and the wind picked up. On the short walk from the house to my office late that afternoon, I felt my fingers freezing. Even my office was colder than usual, but I went back to work anyway. Just then the flock of turkeys at the edge of the woods began to walk across the field. Night was coming, and they seemed to be heading for the place near the pond where they usually gathered in their pear-shaped flock before flying one by one into the trees. But instead of going there directly, they took a detour that brought them in front of my office. There, they stopped, facing my window. They could see me through the glass. I realized that their purpose was to look at me. They did this for a while, then went to poke around at the places where during the past winter I had put their corn.

  Then the Deltas stepped out of the woods—the mother and both her grown daughters. This time the fawn was not with them. The rut had started—perhaps he was in the woods with other males. His mother and sisters nosed around in the grass for a minute. That seemed normal enough, but then they too came toward my office, stopped about thirty feet away, and also looked at me through the window. They looked and looked, as if searching my face. Then the mother turned and went to investigate the places where I had put corn. Her daughters followed. The turkeys were by then on their way towards the pond, but when they noticed the deer at the corn area, they came back, perhaps to see if they had been mistaken and some corn was there after all. There wasn’t, so all together, the three deer with the turkeys surrounding their legs like three people walking amid a pack of hounds, they went off toward the woods.

  I hadn’t thought to put out corn so early. It was hunting season, and I didn’t want to lure deer into the open at that time. Besides, the acorns and the other natural foods that were still present in the woods and fields were surely more nutritious than corn, and better for the deer and turkeys. But evidently these awesome creatures knew who had fed them the previous winter and wondered if she remembered them.

  Then, at the edge of the woods, two more deer appeared. One was tall, very dark, and in beautiful condition. The other was smaller. They looked toward my office but didn’t come forward, and instead began to graze. But every now and then they would look in my direction, so I got my field glasses and to my amazement, I saw they were the Taus, the mother and one daughter who looked like one of last year’s twins. I hadn’t seen these deer since March. Although three members of this family had been missing since winter and perhaps were long dead of hypothermia and starvation, here were the survivors, possibly now as residents, on the day that their nonwinter vanished and winter as they knew it reappeared.

  The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has famous
ly said that if a lion could talk we wouldn’t understand him, meaning that the minds of animals are beyond our reach. This was probably true for Wittgenstein, but it isn’t true for me. As far as I’m concerned, compared to many other life-forms, deer and people are practically the same thing. Wouldn’t the approach of winter, as expressed by the sudden, dramatic drop in temperature, rather than by shorter days or some other factor, remind these animals of what they were soon to experience, of what hunger and snow and biting wind would soon be doing to them, and make them think of life-giving corn? No deer had been in the field the day before, or the day before that, nor did they appear for days thereafter. Nor had they ever approached my office, not as they did on November 20, to search my face for information. And as for the turkeys, except for that one visit when they came to look at me, they had spent the summer and fall in or near the woods. But all of them came on that first day of intense cold—all but the Delta fawn, who didn’t yet know about winter or hunger or corn—and all came at the same time, as they had at the start of the previous winter. I knew why they came, without a doubt. The following day I bought two hundred pounds of what they were thinking about, the first such purchase of the season.

  If the Old Way still prevailed, as it did for hundreds of millions of years without our meddling, things would level out eventually and I wouldn’t need to worry about the deer. But we meddled. And we continue to meddle constantly, in almost every way imaginable. However, we do get to choose how we meddle. I don’t believe that the deer are my property, any more than other people are my property. Only my dogs are my property, but dogs are slaves, god bless them. The deer belong to themselves, or they belong to Gaia, and in the winter of 2007–2008 I chose to meddle with them because they were starving. But Fish and Game makes a good point in saying that people who feed deer soon wish to protect them. That obviously happened to me, and every winter from now on, for as long as I can carry a bucket of corn, I will try to protect the deer who live where I live, not because I think they are mine but because I know who they are. My husband will do this for me when I’m no longer living, and when our ashes are scattered at the edge of the field, maybe Jasper will do it.

  I am indebted to the deer. I am also deeply indebted to the turkeys, but I managed to learn more from the deer. I learned how they protect themselves and how they feel about one another. I learned that they, far better than ourselves, understand the power of winter. And I learned that as I own my piece of land, so do many other life-forms, including deer. Our ownership is secured by different laws, but it’s the same land. As the deer know me with deer knowledge, so I know them with human knowledge. To gain that knowledge I broke some rules, but these were rules of human invention. By the rules of the deer, I probably did quite well. As it was with the alliance of chital deer and langur monkeys in Central India—the langurs who dropped leaves and the chitals who ate them—we benefit from each other. The deer get food and the primate gets information, also recognition, to say nothing of the joy of knowing they’re alive.

  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted to many people for this book. Our wonderful neighbor, Bob Metcalfe, took the photo of a doe licking the ear of her daughter, and let us use it for the cover. Sy Montgomery has reviewed the manuscript time and again with encouragement and splendid suggestions. I am very grateful for her help and for her friendship. I am also very grateful to Howard Nelson for the use of “Camping Alone,” one of his many splendid poems. For valuable information included in the book, I would like to thank Anne McBride, Ilisa Barbash, Hunt Dowse, Castle McLaughlin, Don Schrock, and Jasper Thomas. If there are mistakes in the book they are mine, needless to say, and certainly not theirs.

  I am also grateful to my editor, Bruce Nichols, one of the best I’ve ever worked with, and to the copy editor, Shelly Perron, also one of the best I’ve ever worked with. And finally, as always, I am grateful to my agent, Ike Williams, and Hope Dennekamp.

  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted to many people for this book. Our wonderful neighbor, Bob Metcalfe, took the photo of a doe licking the ear of her daughter, and let us use it for the cover. Sy Montgomery has reviewed the manuscript time and again with encouragement and splendid suggestions. I am very grateful for her help and for her friendship. I am also very grateful to Howard Nelson for the use of “Camping Alone,” one of his many splendid poems. For valuable information included in the book, I would like to thank Anne McBride, Ilisa Barbash, Hunt Dowse, Castle McLaughlin, Don Schrock, and Jasper Thomas. If there are mistakes in the book they are mine, needless to say, and certainly not theirs.

  I am also grateful to my editor, Bruce Nichols, one of the best I’ve ever worked with, and to the copy editor, Shelly Perron, also one of the best I’ve ever worked with. And finally, as always, I am grateful to my agent, Ike Williams, and Hope Dennekamp.

  Index

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  A

  acorns, 2–3, 30, 69, 84, 191, 193–96, 218, 221

  adopted fawns, 44, 120

  Africa, 35–36, 85, 108, 133, 155

  savannah, 85–86, 89, 198, 226n.1

  African grey parrots, 205–206

  aggression, 43, 61–62

  sparring, 89–91

  Alex (parrot), 225

  Alpha Group, 29–42, 101

  antelopes, 119

  anthropomorphism, 177–78

  antlers, 24, 63, 95, 96, 99, 159, 172

  buds, 87–88

  casting, 101

  growth, 87–88, 169

  sparring, 89–91

  apples, 13, 69, 72

  Atlantic Coast, 187

  Audubon, James, 5, 203

  Audubon Society, 4, 5, 6

  B

  bacteria, intestinal, 68, 69

  Baffin Island, 16

  Barbash, Ilisa, 112–13

  bears, 3, 14, 71, 76, 81, 100, 127, 128–42, 183

  bird feeders and, 136–42

  dogs and, 141–42

  hit by cars, 129–33

  tracking, 131–32

  beavers, 101

  beds, 7, 8–9, 45, 103, 144–45

  beech trees, 196

  Beta Group, 42–46, 47, 48, 102, 103, 106, 109, 148, 217–18

  big-game industry, 154

  bird feeders, and bears, 136–42

  birds, 1, 3–6, 93, 191, 201, 205–206

  feeding, 3, 4–5, 6, 136

  birth, 103–117, 119

  black bears, 71, 76, 81, 127, 128–42

  black gum trees, 188–92, 215

  black walnut trees, 175

  Blue Ridge Mountains, 164

  bobcats, 70, 78–80, 100, 127, 175, 215

  bobolinks, 10

  Boone, Daniel, 154

  Boone and Crockett Club, 154

  brain size, 225

  broken legs, 148

  brown bats, 70

  brown rats, 208

  bucks. See male deer

  bullfrogs, 176

  butterflies, 10, 184, 185, 187–88

  C

  calls, 114–16

  camouflage, 172. See also hiding

  Canada, 166

  caribou, 16, 28, 166

  cars, 147–50

  bear hit by, 129–33

  deer hit by, 44, 84, 147–50

  caterpillars, 180–88

  cats, 11, 39, 197–98, 200, 202–205

  as mousers, 202–204, 208

  cattle, 106, 113–14, 119

  childbirth, 103–117, 119

  chital deer, 57–59, 61, 224

  chronic wasting disease, 75

 
cities, 213

  Clark, Grace Reasoner, 192

  colonial era, 165–66, 189

  color, 23–24, 26, 48, 120, 172

  conservation, 83–84, 214–15

  copulation, 96–99

  Cordyceps, 178–79, 194, 227n.2

  corn, 2, 59–60, 68, 75, 222

  clean plate system, 75

  fed to deer and turkeys, 19–23, 32, 50–56, 57–84, 218–22, 223

  coyotes, 12, 13, 53, 76–77, 100, 111, 115, 127, 203, 213

  hunting, 152

  scats, 70

  turkeys and, 76–78

  urine, 210–11

  cranes, 178

  Cretaceous period, 198, 200

  crickets, 176

  Crochet Mountain Rehabilitation Center, 214–15

  Crockett, Davy, 154

  Cusino Wildlife Experiment Station, Michigan, 173

  D

  Darwin, Charles, 31

  Delta Group, 46–48, 97, 101–103, 106, 109–110, 116, 124, 143–45, 217, 220, 222

  digestive system, 68–69

  disease, 74–75, 84

  dodos, 190

  does. See female deer

  dogs, 11–13, 70, 76, 77–78, 93, 104–105, 131, 141–42, 208, 209, 210, 223

  bears and, 141–42

  fawns killed by, 122–23, 127

  rats and, 210