Postcards from the Rogue Valley

A good friend of mine here in Ashland made the headlines last summer when she was attacked by one of the town’s resident deer. She was walking her rescue dog, Terra, when the deer with her fawn saw the pair and charged.

“My dog was smart enough to run home,” Marilyn Hawkins told the Ashland News. “The doe decided to shove me into the bushes and kick me as hard as she could.”

As the story of the attack spread, Ashland’s Police Chief suggested that the deer might face “lethal removal.” 

Hawkins, for her part, said “I have pain medication and I’ll be OK.”

When we met for lunch two weeks later, Hawkins was sore, bruised, but forgiving. She did not blame the deer. As a mother with little fawns, Hawkins said, the doe was simply “doing her job.” (She might have said “overdoing her job.”)

Hawkins urged Ashland residents walking dogs to be vigilant and respectful of wildlife during fawn season — June and July — as mama deer see dogs as a threat. Normally she would give wildlife a respectful berth, and in 17 years as an Ashland resident has never had a problem with the deer. But in this case the doe saw her first. In a statement, she wrote:

I have always loved the deer and I will continue to love them. However, as many Ashlanders have noted: We don’t let humans jump out of the bushes, attack someone, throw them to the concrete, stomp on them and walk away without any consequence. Admittedly, I don’t know the perfect solution, but ignoring a growing problem isn’t it.”

“They don’t even flinch”

Nonetheless, at a recent Ashland City Council meeting, aggressive deer was a hot topic for public discussion. The Rogue District’s wildlife biologist, Matthew Vargas, presented a city-by-city chart showing the incidence of deer conflicts across Southern Oregon, to which Mayor Tonya Graham said, “we have a much bigger problem than what the data shows.”

She explained that in the last five years, there have been deer that simply do not care that somebody doesn’t want them where they are.

“They don’t even flinch,” she said. She shared that during fawn season, she walks through her neighborhood, “overrun with deer,” with a piece of rebar for protection.

The conversation turned to the culling (aka lethal removal) option, which some in the audience seemed to favor.

Wildlife biologist Vargas offered a different solution: reinforcing a negative experience with deer. He said residents should stop treating deer like tame neighborhood animals: they should stop feeding deer entirely and use hazing tactics to restore deer’s wariness, including hoses, sprinklers, or even tossing small stones to startle animals away.

Harassing deer to scare them away will not result in people being cited for an Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife violation, Vargas added.

A longstanding problem

Deer, it turns out, have been haunting Ashland for years.

In 2012, the local NBC affiliate ran a story about one Ashland resident’s proposal to have an “urban hunt” that would allow experienced bow hunters to kill deer in secluded wooded areas inside city limits. 

“It would be a safe practice because hunters would be shooting down from a platform,” the hunting enthusiast said. “That way if they miss, the arrow would go straight into the ground. Using a bow and arrow would mean hunters would have to be in close proximity, lessening the likelihood of missing.”

“As for the meat,” he said, “hunters would either use it themselves or give it to a food pantry.”

The proposal did not fly. Nor did a call by Ashland’s Urban Wildlife Committee to update the previous year’s deer count, which came in at 200. Some feared it would provide ammunition to the town’s bow hunting wing.

 Meanwhile, Ashland’s deer continued to upset the peace. 

Three years later, in 2015, Ashland’s Mayor John Stromberg organized a televised “Deer Summit.” It drew a standing-room only crowd.

“They wait three feet outside of my car door. And the horn doesn’t drive them away. The car doesn’t drive them away. I have sat in my car 20 minutes, feeling intimidated and not wanting to get out of the car,” Ashland resident Leslie Gore testified at the summit.

“I’ve been attacked four times…my husband was attacked twice,” said another. “I speak to them gently, I tell them how wonderful they are but they still attack me,” Delsi Howard explained.

The stories of deer-induced injuries were substantial, from deep wounds to hip fractures.

Several participants called, again, for some form of deer culling. Reportedly one, via email, wrote, ““Shoot the deer you f***ing pansy.” “The deer in my part of town are not wild life, but vermin with hooves deserving to be shot,” said another.

The vast majority of the summit participants, however, argued that it was the humans who were responsible for the problem, pointing to the practice of feeding the deer, as if they were pets, and failing to learn how to be safe around deer. An article in the online LiveOutdoors wryly noted: “A retirement community of nature lovers has led to some unruly behavior,” adding, on the other hand, that “this is a town where the deer have been known to use the crosswalks.”

Dispatching wild turkeys

Eight miles to the north of Ashland, in the small town of Phoenix, it is wild turkeys, not unruly deer, that have recently inflamed the community. 

“About a dozen turkeys that have been terrorizing residents in Phoenix could soon end up in the freezer of a local food pantry if Phoenix City Council members approve an agreement with a Medford-based wildlife trapper at tonight’s public meeting at the city’s civic center,” began an article last week in the Rogue Valley Times.

Phoenix Mayor Al Muelhoefer pointed to a disturbing number accounts from local residents being terrorized by aggressive turkeys. A jogger who had been recently attacked had posted a photo of her bloody hand on social media; local parents had reported school children being chased by the birds; and the Rogue Valley Manor, a licensed continuing care community, said that an estimated 100-plus wild turkeys can be seen fighting, mating and chasing nearby residents.

The agenda for the city council meeting included a request for “trapping methods and removal of turkeys,” which by law must be “harvested and processed through a state licensed meat processor and meat to be donated to a non-profit program.”

The bid included the construction of “live capture, turkey walk-in funnel traps in active areas to target current population of wild turkeys,” for $685 per setup in addition to one week of pre-baiting to establish feeding pattern in chosen areas, for an added cost of $485 per area. The quote for processing the “up to 100 turkeys” trapped was $2,000.

As in Ashland, not all citizens attending last week’s Phoenix City Council meeting were up for trapping and processing the town’s resident wildlife. The following day, the Mayor said that he had tasked the city manager with evaluating non-lethal methods for removing the birds and would “report back to the council.”

Prowling bears in the night

A few weeks after we moved to Ashland, after a lifetime living in the urban Northeast, I was on the way to pick up my spouse from a late-night flight at the Medford International Airport when a black bear crossed the street in front of our house. I was both aghast and thrilled.

On several occasions since, we’ve awoken to find the hummingbird feeder (filled with sugared water) outside our living room window lying on the ground, along with large paw prints on the window or a poop pile on our grass. I have not begrudged these large omnivores their midnight sweet tooth.

Unlike deer and turkeys, bears in these parts are night creatures, most often captured on motion-activated cameras for night surveillance. One sees their dark bodies, sometimes  a mama bear with cubs, overturning garbage containers, dislodging patio furniture, or rough exploring in their search for food scraps. 

Black bears, I have learned, account for the most conflict with humans of any species in the state, and, as far as having a high density area for black bear-human conflict, Ashland ranks number one in Oregon (Ashland News, July 2, 2022). 

“Be bear aware, but attacks in Oregon are very, very slim,” wildlife conflict biologist Vargas underscored at a talk at Medford’s REI aimed at those living on the fringes of the forest, which is the case for many Ashland citizens. Following his and other’s advice, roughly ten percent of the town’s residences sport bear-resistant garbage containers, which have a heavy, steel lid. 

Vargas, who for the past fifteen years has testified at just about every public hearing in the region where urban-wildlife conflict is at stake, has this longstanding advice: develop a balance.

A postscript

As I write this, a citizen’s “Initiative Petition,” known as the “PEACE Act,” is collecting signatures that would ban hunting, fishing, livestock, and wildlife slaughter by redefining animal cruelty laws. 

Neither side in the campaign battle believes most Oregon voters will approve the ballot measure, which they consider more of an attempt to change public perception than state law. 

What is confounding, however, is that the Oregon Hunters Association (OHA), calling for a “clear stand against these out-of-state extremists hell-bent on destroying our way of life forever,” presents itself as the state’s premiere wildlife conservation organization in the state. 

“We will battle like there is no tomorrow to guarantee our wildlife management remains in the hands of agency professionals and dedicated conservationists, not carpet-bagging ideologues trying to change who and what we are,” OHA’s president said.

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