Unforgettable moments with white-tailed deer… and 1 that shook me

September 12, 2024 9:28 pm

Deer Oh Dear Oh Amazing Deer! please get unethical hunters out of parks.

Most parks in The Greater Toronto Area will be a home to deer.

Here is a link to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.
Many parks can be found there.

As long as there are a few requisites like food and shelter, Mule deer and Whitetails find parks an easy place to escape most of the human-made perils that they have to endure.

Being herbivores, farmers and property owners will have some distain finding these animals eating the plants and succulents that they can only find attractive when food shortages occur around their base.

Their diet may consist of berries and reachable fruit, nuts, new sprouting plant growth, bark, leaves and grass. A farmer’s crop would be so enticing, as would a raid on someone’s fruit ‘n veg patch…. [not mine, but my neighbors are tastier]!

bonjour Mademoiselle

I have been fortunate enough to have found several groups of Whitetails in the parks that I have trailed during my nature and photography excursions.

One group of seven members revealed their presence as I sat on a fallen tree in a semi-secluded wooded area about 100 meters off a narrow walking trail.

This became a favorite place to sit in peace and quiet, to wait for nature to come out of hiding. You can walk around with eyes peeled and hardly see anything. But sit still for an hour or more and you may witness another world in which you belong to.

On this occasion the group walked slowly and silently off the walking trail, and on their own path through the woods just 30-40 feet away from me.

Was I seen?
Absolutely!

I might have been occupying one of their temporary resting areas, for all I knew. But their heads all turned to acknowledge my presence as they appeared one by one, from left-behind me, around the front, to right- behind me.

At one point, a young doe broke rank and came close to investigate further.
I grunted in low soft tones and spoke.

‘You know, you should not be doing this.
I mean, that I’m ok, but there are others that may want to harm you.’

With that, the doe leapt right over my head as I was seated!
I did not even have time to flinch.
Then she jumped back over me from behind.

I said ‘No no nooo, don’t do that, I love it, but don’t play with us humans.

white tail

The doe walked back to the group after that display, leaving me in a heightened state of excited joy.
I think that I must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time for them. That was a resting place for the group.

One deer was brave enough to tell me!

-Spoiler Alert-

The last part of this entry [below the following photograph] tells the death of one of the group.

big mama

A few days after the above doe jumping event, I walked through the park, on an ‘off-trail’ after a day’s monitoring and photographing nesting Barn Swallows.
A truck was parked in a very secluded corner spot, it would have been hidden from view from the main paved pathway that meanders through the park.

I thought at first it may have been a township vehicle doing maintenance work.
When closer, I found no township emblem, nor any markings that would signify a township vehicle. So assumed it to be an entitled person doing their.. I can do whatever I want, like parking illegally!
But I was suspicious!

The vehicle truck type was GMC/Ford, wide double wheeled rear axle, with wooden side slats.

The next morning, I chose the same route to go back to the nesting Barn Swallows.
The truck was not there.
Within 20 feet of where it was parked, I found the body of a young deer completely de skinned, just thrown onto the trail edge.
Thats not nature and has no place in recreational parks!

My worst fears!

That truck was a hunter’s vehicle.
I don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out!
A really low point of human nature.

You be the judge of that!!

I would love to see your comments below.

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