OPINION: No…a deer

“I was standing up by then and she came right up to me and she was on her back hind legs and the hoof of her front leg went on my cheek, so she…she was attacking me,” said Avon Lake, Ohio, resident Cathy Krajny, following her hospitalization and an attack on her back porch by a white tail deer at 7 a.m. on June 30, 2014.

I have an extremely vivid memory from my childhood of one of many family vacations to Jekyll Island. Sitting on our small side patio, I was witnessing a doe and her small offspring foraging for food in our side yard. Not long before that pre-dawn encounter with a real-life doe and fawn, I had witnessed the reel-life rendition of Walt Disney’s Bambi. The movie and its story also leave a lasting impression, and any child who has seen the film will have a hard time picturing a deer with a mean streak.

Which brings me to another place keen on legends and fairy tales. Georgia’s Golden Isles barrier islands were largely once the playground of America’s wealthy. A few islands remain in private hands, and Cumberland Island still is home to descendants of the Carnegie family. And on nearby Jekyll Island (now a state park), a highlight of any visit is the Jekyll Historic District, long the winter vacation season home of several of America’s wealthiest families.

Those Jekyll millionaires introduced many things to the island including golf, the Federal Reserve Bank and a number of non-native animal species for wild game and hunting stock, including European wild boar, European fallow deer and the more common white-tailed deer.  Of the 50 mammal species on the island identified in a 2007 study, only the potentially present coyote or bobcat are natural enemies to the deer population, and when the Millionaire’s Club left the island in the 1940s, so largely did hunting season. 

Deer are wild animals, and though generally docile around humans, attacks do occur. Ask a hunter about meeting the business end of the antlers of a wounded buck or a doe protecting her fawn, or more recently, chat with Ms. Cathy Krajny of Avon Lake, Ohio, while the stitches are still healing in her face. The city of Avon Lake, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, is considering an ordinance that will allow for the culling of white-tailed deer in the community.

During mating season, bucks often wander into populated areas and get into trouble. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty arrived early one morning for work at the state capitol to the sound of shattering glass and was nearly bowled over in the parking lot by a buck bounding away from two windows it had broken. Though deer mating season ends for most of the country in November (due to cold), it extends into January in south Georgia and Florida. 

Which brings me back to my beloved Jekyll Island where no progressive or land management deed goes unpunished, and where due to a growing number of deer sightings, concerns and complaints, the Jekyll Island Authority Board (JIA) voted on July 21 to reduce the island’s deer population by 100. White tail deer are far from being loggerhead turtles, and are nowhere near any danger of extinction.

The Citizens for Humane Animal Treatment are protesting and urging Georgia citizens to contact Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to express their anger and block the thinning of the deer herd on Jekyll. The group is essentially demanding that Gov. Deal urge the JIA board to cancel the planned “massacre of the state park’s deer.”

There are essentially two ways to reduce deer population. Hunting or tranquilizing, trapping and transferring elsewhere. The latter option is quite expensive and not without risk for the humans doing the transplanting. 

Deer frequently are hosts to a wide variety of ticks and mites. The number of tick-borne illness and diseases increasingly infecting humans via tick bites include Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease, and the more recent Southern tick-associated rash illness (STARI) as well as anaplasmosis, babesiosis, erlichiosis, relapsing fever and tularemia.  Google any of these and then sit back for a fun read. Tularemia is a bit rarer, but also transmitted via the deer fly, and proliferates a bacteria that may also be converted into a weapon of bioterror.

Bambi obviously has a bit more bite these days. The residents of Jekyll Island, as well as the hopefully returning and increasing visitor population to the island, deserve protection. Bring on the hunt!

Bill Crane also serves as a political analyst and commentator for Channel 2’s Action News, WSB-AM News/Talk 750 and now 95.5 FM, as well as a columnist for The Champion, Champion Free Press and Georgia Trend. Crane is a DeKalb native and business owner, living in Scottdale.

You can reach him or comment on a column at billcrane@earthlink.net.