NURTURE THEM OR A SHOT TO THE HEART?

  A RANGE OF SENTIMENT

     I'd heard that packs of wild bucks had been rampaging through open spaces and through gardens on this side of the Pacific Coast Highway.

      This morning Lana spotted a pack working on the green space just north of our place on the ridge.

             As you view these inhabitants of Cambria please understand they evoke a wild swing of reaction from their two legged neighbors.

            There are some who feed the deer, a practice generally frowned upon by most, including wild life experts.

         There are others who fantasize about deer steaks and other cuts.  

                  If only we could "thin" the herds, some say.  Bring in hunters they clamor.  Too dangerous in a village others will counter.  Then bring in bow hunters is a response.

                 Listen carefully in the grocery, coffee shop or on the street and you'll hear people recount how their gardens have been trashed and what can or should be done about it.  In the meantime the herd is growing and we've seen larger packs than in years past.

              So far our deer fence has worked.  Were it not for the fence, this pack of bucks would have been all over the blooms Lana is, this year, being able to enjoy.  
         In the meantime we co-habitate, sharing roadways and green spaces, natural and cultivated.  And the discussions
continue. 
         This is the old west and there are ways of controlling an over population.  Ways that some would be eager to employ.
        I've enjoyed a dinner of deer on many occasions. The secret, a great bow hunter told me, is to fell a buck with a single shot to the heart, causing them to die rapidly without fright and without pumping adrenaline into the meat. 
         I suspect this last paragraph may earn me an upbraiding from some.  And a plaudit or two from others.  And likely I'll hear it at Lilly's Coffee Shop, or the Cookie Crock Supermarket, or on the tennis court.  Wherever, I will have had to drive carefully to get there.  Guys like the fellow below are all over the place and seem to love to dash into the road.  Does that say something about their intelligence?  

      Or is it just the verve and swagger of a young buck in the spring?

      See you down the trail.