Deer, Dogs, and Humans

Citizens for a Livable Cranbrook has a monthly column in the Daily Townsman. This month Norma Blissett wrote an eye opening piece on our ongoing issues with the deer in and around Cranbrook.

Yesterday morning I took my two dogs for their daily walk through the Community Forest. We walk in the Community Forest regularly for a number of reasons, the first being that one of my dogs is a car chaser. Walking on the roads is difficult, as she wants to hunt down every car that passes by. The second is that both dogs are border collie /shepherd and only God knows what else mixes, and need to run to help calm them down. The third is that one of my dogs has, shall we say, dominance issues. He believes he is the top dog in Cranbrook, if not the East Kootenay, and feels the need to notify every other dog of this fact. As you can imagine, not every other dog’s owner wants to be informed so as a result we tend to walk at less common dog-walking times and off in the bush so that we meet as few people and dogs as possible. (Both of my dogs are rescue dogs, which means they love me dearly and follow direction most of the time as they have a healthy fear of abandonment. However, it is clear to anyone watching that I am not the dog whisperer.) I give this preamble to set the stage for my story.


Yesterday as we entered the field, which leads to the Community Forest, where I normally release my hounds, I saw three young, spotted fawns. The fawns were under the shelter of the trees and Mom was in the open field adjacent to the path I was about to follow. Luckily I saw the deer before releasing my dogs. My dogs will chase deer, squirrels, birds flying over-head and basically anything that moves. If this mother deer had any survival sense she should be fearful and therefore possibly aggressive towards us. These descendants of wolves given the chance would go after her offspring. Anyways, mother deer saw us and moved to be closer to her fawns. We continued walking down the path and NOTHING happened. Once we passed I released the dogs they ran around and found a squirrel to chase up a tree and all was good. As previously mentioned, we walk in the forest daily and have never experienced any deer aggression.

Later that day, I was driving up 27TH Avenue, a busy thoroughfare to our neighborhood, and saw a female deer walking along the side of the street down near the golf course. I slowed down so as not to hit her if she ventured on to the road. As I continued I saw her fawn further up the street and a woman walking down the street towards the fawn. The fawn being separated from its mother was just standing on a lawn waiting for Mom. The woman then began behaving aggressively toward the fawn. She yelled, shook her hat and then chased the fawn across the lawn. If that fawn had been my baby, I think I would have gone after the woman; but fortunately the mother deer wasn’t close enough to witness this human aggression towards her fawn and so the woman walked off unscathed and I trust that mother deer was able to reunite with her traumatized baby.

My point in telling this story is that yes there are some aggressive deer in town, but there are also some aggressive people. There was no reason for this woman to chase the fawn. She could have just kept on walking and enjoying the beautiful day, but instead she chose to, basically, attack a baby deer!!

I enjoy living in close proximity to the woods; it is one of the benefits of living in Cranbrook. I like seeing wildlife and I don’t mind sharing some of my garden with them. If we look at what is actually a threat to our safety, aggressive car drivers and aggressive dogs are statistically more likely to hurt us than deer. For the most part if we take a more “live and let live” attitude, use some common sense and keep control of our pets and dare I say our own aggression then everyone will be better off.

Norma Blissett for Citizens for a Livable Cranbrook.