Oh Deer Jesus

by dusty on Nov.17, 2009 , under Uncategorized

Wisconsin is an outdoorsman’s paradise, and many outdoorsmen will tell you there’s nothing more majestic, more awe-inspiring, more naturally beautiful than the sight of a big buck in rut, bounding out into the open through the frosty November underbrush.

Bullcrap.

Now I’m as outdoorsy as the next guy. I’ve hiked, camped and ridden all over this beautiful state of ours, and if I had a little more time and money on my hands, I think I’d even be a hunter. I abhor urban sprawl, I idolize Aldo Leopold and it’s my personal belief that there is no more deeply spiritual experience than cutting one’s self off completely from the civilized world, lying on one’s back and staring up at the stars on a cloudless night.

That much said, when it comes to the majesty of bounding deer, I’m afraid I just don’t have the natural wherewithal to appreciate it anymore. Chalk it up to some kind of post-traumatic reaction to the literal dozens of deer I’ve witnessed “bounding” in front of my car–or worse, my motorcycle–late at night on rural country roads, but I have no love for the whitetail deer, nature’s D-minus student athlete.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the whitetail is one of nature’s big winners in Wisconsin. They’re incredibly fast, create babies even faster and have next to no natural predators left in the ecosystem, courtesy of overzealous farmers early in the state’s history. The population is in fact so overabundant, the DNR is weighing whether to double the length of gun-deer season. But it’s certainly not by virtue of its intelligence that the whitetail is as prolific as it is. No species that leaves two percent of its estimated population dead along the roadside in a given year can be said to possess an overabundance of smarts.

While there’s plenty in nature to inspire awe, the only thing about whitetail deer that strikes me dumb any more is their stunning stupidity. Case in point–a seven-point buck that was killed near Viroqua when it tried to headbutt a 640-pound concrete statue of an elk.

Outdoors enthusiasts and Wisconsin drivers alike know that when the fall rut gets heavy in the air, the typical whitetail buck’s peanut-sized brain shuts down completely, leaving it with the basest urges to rush from place to place, screw anything that smells like a doe and, apparently, fight anything that looks remotely like competition. The whole process is eerily reminiscent of bartime at Wando’s.

Now if there’s one thing about nature I detest more than deer, it’s statues of deer and other deerlike creatures. Ever since two of the guys in the band moved out into rural Dunn, I’ve been swerving at least once a week as I come upon the concrete statue of a Moose some wiseass thought would be a good idea to put next to his mailbox along County MM — just a half mile or so down the road from the road’s deer crossing sign.

I’ve had half a mind to take a sledge hammer to that angina-inducing piece of sadistic roadside craftsmanship, and in the event that I actually drive off the road in a panic one night and total my car, I’ve similar plans involving the art patron’s automobile.

Along a dark, treacherous road is not the place for a statue shaped like a jumping deer. But with this new information that said concrete likeness could be an effective tool in thinning out some of the dumber bucks from the state’s herd, I’m beginning to think a couple thousand of them ought to be distributed throughout the Wisconsin wilderness as a means of population control.

How’s that for a practical use of taxpayer-sponsored art? And as far as controlling the deer population goes, anything’s got to be more popular than the now-defunct Earn-a-Buck program.

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