Thank you for your patience as this site sat neglected for a few months.  Soon after setting it up, I realized that I hated the blogging software associated with it, but it took me awhile to get the time to reformat the site to ikiwiki (my new favorite!)

A lot has happened with our deer deterrents over the winter, which Mark and I will post about over the next few weeks.  For today, I'll just regale you with a brief anecdote.

In December, our power went out for two weeks, and our deer deterrents stopped running.  This was our first big test since our noise barrier began to repel the four-legged fiends from our garden over the summer.  By the middle of the first day, three deer were in the yard --- the first ones to set foot within the perimeter in months.  Luckily, most of the garden is asleep at the moment, and the deer seemed most interested in eating the green Japanese Honeysuckle leaves dangling from trees at the edge of our cleared space.  Still, I was very glad to get our electricity back and our deterrents back online!

Even though our deer deterrents work like a charm, this fall I decided I wanted to learn to hunt.  I figured that if I cut down on the population a bit, the deer wouldn't press quite so hard up against our boundaries.  Plus, I liked the thought of low cost, free range meat.

On the night before hunting season began, I turned off the deer deterrents, then woke at 5:51, dreaming of deer hunting.  At dawn, I opened the door --- and two deer fled up the hillside out of the yard.  Was that my one chance, gone?

Still, it was the perfect dusky morning, just the time when deer like to travel.  I leashed Lucy, made sure the safety was on the gun, and headed off for our morning walk.  In the powerline cut, I startled another set of deer, but these two only ran a few feet and stopped.  I crept forward and the deer watched me but stayed put.  My second chance!

I silently ordered Lucy to sit, then crouched down myself and took the safety off the gun.  Lucy is a good dog, but she's not used to hunting --- she tried to crawl into my lap with the gun, and the ensuing scuffle sent the deer running again.  But again they stopped and waited.  Again I crept forward.  This time, Lucy sat, I crouched, the deer watched. 

I'd been practicing to hit the heart, just behind the front leg.  But the deer in my sights was only visible from the neck up.  I could try for a head shot and risk missing entirely,  or guess where its heart might be and fire blindly into the weeds.  I chose the latter, checked one last time to make sure my aim was accurate, then pulled the trigger.

I can't even remember the gun going off.  Suddenly, the second deer was fleeing in huge bounds, her white tail a brilliant flag against the brown woods.  The deer I'd shot at was invisible.  Did I hit it?  Wound it?  Kill it?

I beat a path through the brambles to the spot where the deer had stood.  Nothing.  But I faintly smelled a hint of gunpowder and blood so I let Lucy off the leash, hoping she'd track down the wounded deer.  She set off like a shot and I raced behind her until she crossed the creek to the neighbor's hay field.  Was my deer really gone?



I circled back around toward home and nearly stumbled upon my deer.  It had fled about twenty feet, then died just outside the powerline cut.  Upon further inspection, I saw that my shot had been about five inches off, hitting the lungs instead of the heart --- still a pretty good hit.

I have to admit that at this point, my adrenaline was pumping so hard that I couldn't think what to do next.  So I made sure the safety was on the gun and ran home to my husband, waking him out of a sound sleep to come help me gut the deer, tie it to a board, and carry it home.

My very first deer!  I guess I shouldn't have felt so special since the newspaper is always full of photos of six year olds and their first kill at that time of year.  But I was oddly exhilarated, floating on air.  A deerslayer wannabe no longer, Mark has taken to calling me "Killer."

Here's a short updated video of how the latest mechanical deer deterrent is faring after the winter. I've got it timed to miss the target from time to time in an effort to make the interval between hits a bit more random.