I killed my first deer a couple of weeks ago and he tasted great!

Got all excited that it was a buck although I would have prefered a doe for obvious population reasons. I'm pretty sure it was the same one I had cornered in the chicken pasture about a month ago. The little guy didn't learn and jumped right back into the pasture like it was some kind of weird rerun of a TV show, but this time I was ready and regular deer season was in full swing.

It took my wife and I a lot less time dressing this one out compared to her first kill a couple of years ago.

Wouldn't you know she killed her second deer the very next day smack dab in the middle of our main garden. Yes....her buck was bigger than mine and hers went down with an almost grace compared to my sloppy job.

We spent the next few days stewing up the bones and feasting on sweet potato fed venison.

It's a good feeling to have an extra 50 pounds of pasture fed meat in the freezer and the local population thinned out, but I'm under no illusions that we really put a dent in the huge number of deer around here. We see the tracks every day and could no doubt kill several more if we put some time into it, but why bother when they come literally to your front door.

There are several digital predator gadgets out there that will simulate just about any sound you can imagine so that hunters can lure a choice prey into their view.

The problem is price. Most of the high end units can cost anywhere from 400 to 800 dollars! That's why I'm posting about the device above. It's only 20 dollars plus shipping and has a setting called "coyote serenade".

I know it would take some tinkering, but it seems possible to maybe hack one of those driveway alert systems to trigger the coyote sound when the motion sensor is activated.

The above contraption is a Clover trap, named after the guy who dreamed it up.

It's basically a frame just big enough for a deer with heavy nylon meshing stretched on all three sides and the top. I would imagine some scrap chain link fence material might also do the job, but make it harder to move.

One of the tricks is to bait the trap for several days without setting it. This way your deer get comfortable with walking all the way in. The trap gets triggered when the deer hit a stretch of fishing line that activates the door.

I know it's not very sportsman like, but it might be a good way to bring down exploding population numbers while at the same time providing several people with some good quality meat.

Image credit goes to the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Canada.

In the spirit of full disclosure I'd like to say that I have not actually used the above motion activated deer deterrent. The only reason I'm posting about it is because I have such a huge issue with their atrocious product description that in my opinion is bordering on being deceptive.

The first red flag was the part where they make use of "proprietary technology, developed and field tested by a Ph.D. and author of several books". Why not list a few of these books or even the man or woman with the so called Ph.D.? The word "proprietary" gets built upon a bit more in the next paragraph when they state how the device when triggered issues a "user-adjustable radio frequency noise and a bright L.E.D. light". It only takes a few minutes of reading the reviews on Amazon to realize the "proprietary, user-adjustable radio frequency noise" is nothing more then a simple FM radio that can be tuned to whatever station is available in your area.

I think this product could be effective if all you need to do is protect a small area, but it also might not work at all, or your deer might figure out the sound of a radio isn't all that deadly or even un-natural in an urban setting. One of the first things we tried was an old radio being left on a talk station out in the garden and it didn't seem to scare anything. A few years ago one of our neighbors tried the same thing on a pumpkin patch and ended up losing most of the crop. Insert joke about deer not liking a certain type of talk radio here.