Opus 2025-170: Discerning Deer

Looking out over my yard in the Texas hill country I noticed that there are several places where the grass has staged an early recovery from the frost in anticipation of spring.  In some places it’s growing well.  Most places are still totally dead.  Every once in a while, I will see deer grazing on the grass and I always wonder why they choose what they do and ignore others.  Now the big question I have with deer or that I’ve heard other people ask is why do they all seem to disappear when deer season opens?  I have a few suggestions:

It could just be some mystical force radiated by the deer gods telling them to go hide.  Never rule out the possibility of the supernatural.

It could be much simpler.  Maybe they hear gunshots over the next ridge and then put 22 and 22 together.  I used to see this kind of behavior at middle school.  Everyone was minding their own business doing whatever it is that middle school students do when no one tells them what they should be doing.  Suddenly someone yells “Fight”.  If it’s a real fight they sense it and they all rush toward it from all over campus.  If it’s just somebody trying to start a stampede, they sense that also and just stay where they are doing what they’re doing.  Reverse that with a deer, it takes about the same amount of intelligence.

It could be that they hear the sound of pop tops from the beer cans being opened on the back of the pick ups along with the raucous laughter of drunk hunters telling dirty jokes.  Again, it doesn’t take a lot of brain power to know they need to be somewhere else.

It could be the Daniel Boones of the twenty-first century sneaking through the forest and making enough noise to wake the dead.

It could be that the national weather service put out a warning about flash, floods, high winds, and hunter’s over the internet, which the deer picked up on their Fitbits.

Anyway, you look at it they’re not eating my grass today.

homo unius libri