Feeding Deer Can Be A Bad Thing

It’s done everywhere and people who insist they will feed the wild deer often say they don’t care if they are putting the deer at risk. There are several reasons given why it might not be such a good idea to feed the deer during winter or anytime of the year for that matter but convincing those who do continue to feed them is a difficult task.

Here’s a grocery list of some of the reasons it might be a bad idea. First, and maybe most important, feeding deer the wrong kind of food will kill them. If it is food they are unable to digest, they essentially fill up and die. Deer also have a difficult time making adjustments to a change in diet. With that in mind, some places that have been feeding deer continuously for years and years, could put the deer at some risk if they stopped.

Feeding deer draw them away from their yarding areas. To survive the winters, deer have limited food and gather in wooded areas called deer yards. Here they are protected, relatively speaking, from the harsh elements the weather throws at them. There is a certain amount of security in numbers and they expend less valuable energy by being able to stay in one location. If deer begin traveling to a feeding ground, they might expend more energy to get there than what the eating will replace.

This possible migration and feeding grounds in close proximity to highways, can lead to accidents and death as well.

Theory has it that deer feeding in concentrated areas all the time, can increase the risk of spreading disease. Chronic wasting disease is talked of mostly and some states have outlawed feeding deer for that one reason only.

But for all the reasons officials can come up with why people shouldn’t feed deer, they are determined to do it anyway. In Lincoln Plantation, Maine, a town with a population of people that is probably easily outnumbered by deer, have been feeding the deer in some capacity since the 1960s. What once started as a feeding effort paid for through donations, is now paid for with tax appropriated money.

According to a story in the Boston Globe today, the town clerk in Lincoln Plantation pretty much says they’ll keep feeding no matter what officials say.

“We really shouldn’t be feeding them; but the more they tell us not to, the more we do it,” said Muriel Potter, longtime town clerk. “You don’t fool around with Mother Nature . . . but we do.”

Maine tried passing a law to stop feeding deer but that wasn’t a very popular idea and so the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife have been relegated to an education program hoping to convince people that they might be doing more harm than good.

A resident in Nashua, New Hampshire feeds deer in his backyard and I don’t think anyone is going to convince him and his neighbors to stop. Kevin Fredette and his neighbor split the $300-$500 annual cost of feeding the deer.

The costs are well worth it, when a dozen or more deer are cavorting on his lawn, Fredette said. “It’s the alertness and cleverness,” he said of their appeal. “Everyone who comes to see them is in awe. It’s nature at its best, in the middle of Nashua.”

“It’s intriguing to help out Mother Nature, when Mother Nature needs a hand,”

And that is what wildlife officials are dealing with.

Tom Remington