Hacker News Reader

Comment by fifilura | Hacker News Reader

Title should be changed to reindeer, not deer. As those are domesticated by the Sami people. Then it makes more sense and should not be a major task, since they are regularly caught to be ear-marked for example. In general a good idea IMO.

For deer it would be trickier, but I imagine you could somehow do it by setting up feeding stations (pretty common with hunters) and spray them when they approach it. But it would be messy. Now my imagination is wandering, please stop me.

View on HN

It's not possible at all to do this for white-tailed deer. The does and fawns don't grow antlers. My state, NJ, has a population of over 100,000 deer and average densities over 100 individuals per square mile (with some areas over double that).

You could snare the does and put high-vis reflective vests on them.

Do they need a hard hat too?

At 100 animals/sq-mile if they could snare them, they'd probably just shoot them at that point.

I fed about 110 deer during this last winter. I wanted to put something reflective on them and the senior game warden said no. There is very little I am permitted to do for them. I am not even permitted to protect them from predators. I can not put a sign next to the highway to watch for them, only the department of transportation can. I kept them off the highway all winter but mid spring they go their own way, mostly into the mountains but about 4 or 5 packs cross the highway. People think they are dumb but they just have incredibly poor depth perception and cars are much quieter these days. Noisy trucks and motorcycles will make them run back to me. EV's will need a sound system that makes them sound like a big-rig with jake-brakes and straight pipes. Let's make it happen.

Doesn't feeding them contribute to even more deer overpopulation and human habituation?

It does increase mating as I pull together many packs and teach them to get along with one another. I break up their sparring when it gets too aggressive to preserve their eyes. I even know what music will increase mating when the females are in heat but I can not explain why they like it. We lost a great deal of deer in the last few years and especially two years ago due to incredible snowfall. If anything I have restored some of the population. If it gets out of hand the game department will issue more tags or move some of them to other parts of the state that most of the deer died from starvation. I have also kept them off the highway for the most part. When I first started there are on average 20 dead deer just along my stretch of highway. Now there is 1 every other year.

They are still very much afraid of humans with myself being the exception. If someone gets near their feeding area other than me they will scatter. They all come to me and then go back to the mountains far away from all humans except the hunters. Some of the older bucks even know to get up to 10,000+ feet where there is no food but also mostly no hunters whereas the rest of them go to 9500 feet and get picked off first by bow hunters then firearm and also by predatory animals mostly mountain lions.

Something else that often comes up is the increased rate of getting CWD. This is true however they would all be exposed regardless as they all end up on shared paths eventually as the prions are highly resilient to break-down in nature. It was detected in a town near me and I expect a portion of one of the sub-genome to get it and one of the sub-genome to be immune. I am testing a theory on tightening cell junctions on what scientists mistakenly named the blood brain barrier by reducing inflammatory food intake and only time will tell if that reduces the impact at all.

Indeed. You might as well try to paint all the squirrels or pigeons.

Squirrels and pigeons don't regularly weigh 120 lbs, don't like to eat the grass on road shoulders at dawn and dusk, and as a result they don't total nearly as many cars.

But all of these are far less dangerous than a 500 lbs reindeer, 600 lbs elk, or 1400 lbs moose!

I'm not talking about reasons why we'd like them to be painted, just the feasibility of actually accomplishing it.

Sounds like you need wolves

There was an old lady who swallowed a ...

Except here the "old lady" had a lifetime of swallowing spiders. And came from 10,000 generations of women who swallowed spiders.

The old lady isn't the wolves. It's Finland. The wolves are the spider.

The coyotes are evolving up in size to fill that niche, it's becoming a problem.

wolfotes?

Wouldn’t that be a death sentence by making them super easy for predators to spot?

Luckily most predators don't use headlights.

No, but their antlers are now white and likely reflect more light in general than uncoated.

Reflective != white.

In fact, the color has nothing to do with it. The greens and reds and yellows on US roadway signs are reflective.

Are deer relying on hiding from predators or are they just relying on being able to escape predators? Deer are fairly large animals so they're kinda conspicuous already. I think they also don't get white coats during winter, so they stick out from the snow.

Bingo!

Antlers are weapons. Most predators will avoid the food with knives on its head. From a darwinian perspective, it is also probably better that the wolves pay attention to the well-armed male deer rather than the productive females that do not have antlers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com