Discussion: Do the deer get a vote?

We used to go from almost a tulip to zero tulips overnight...

Deer are unusual in the neighborhood. Very late one night last fall, I saw the only deer I have ever seen in the neighborhood: a buck mule deer, walking down the middle of the street. Ironically, it turned out to be the largest buck I saw all of last fall by far; it would have left hunters salivating.

I do sometimes see small hoof prints in my yard and, more usually, on the sidewalks in winter snow. I'm pretty sure they are from antelope and not deer, though.

At any rate, so far--knock on wood--I've never had anything nibbling on my tulips.

Count yourself lucky! I find it quite interesting your deer are so respectful in their roaming. Boulder (location of aforementioned deer and tulips) were not so much, at least 25 years ago, anyway.

I would see deer from time to time in my neighborhood during the four years when I lived in Boulder, in what I considered a pretty urban location. They had to negotiate a mile or two of city streets to get to where I lived. Now I live in a very rural area, such that I've seen a moose deep in the woods across the street. But in the dozen or so years that I've been here, I've seen deer exactly once, a long time ago. Pretty weird.

It's also true that there are a lot of things you'll see in Boulder that you might not see elsewhere. But it probably has more to do with there being forest that comes right down to the edge of Boulder, whereas Laramie is surrounded by a lot of completely open land. And mule deer dominate locally, and it may be they are much less inclined to wander into town than white tails would be.

Around here, the herds just wander through town constantly. I suspect that many rarely leave town (what forest? plenty of good grub here). I'll sometimes see a dozen in my yard, with four or five of them around the lilac bush, face stuffed overfull with leaves. But most days smaller numbers, at least at any one time. I do expect to see little ones soon though. Almost stepped on one last year. Birthing seems to be the one purpose that the deer will head to the forest for.

Except for the one crazy doe our neighbors named Mathilda, who always showed up pregnant in their back yard (only about 5 mins from Green Belt area near Devil's Thimb)....as she got on in years, they took up feeding her.

Probably something to do with our tulip problem, now that I think of it!

That is more properly a neighbor problem, not a deer problem. ; )

Most of our neighbors are deer, anyway. Or at least the ones who aren't bears or bobcats or turkeys.