Dear Deer!

A White Tailed Deer
Picture credit: Clay Heaton

As a dedicated animal protector and especially a Deer lover, you had to know that this story would be here!
The only thing that I find more despicable than those who harm animals, are those who hunt them with bows and most especially with cross bows, as our new neighbors across the street from us do.
The reason for the repugnance in the use of this heinous weapon, is the long-term suffering it causes the victim.
This new weekend visiting idiot, who looks about twenty or so, stands alongside a fence with another person who appears to be an adult, ( and seems to approve of this act) with cars driving by, here on our road leading into a well populated neighborhood.
He has been doing this practicing for several weekends, now that it is deer killing season, and he/they are practicing on a telephone pole, right in front of our house and right next to a busy road.
Cars going by, are within a foot or two of these two, who could  accidentally end them at any moment.
What on Earth is in his/their heads, it cannot be a brain?
These people are new in the RV Park across from us out here in the woods and hopefully they will go back to where they came from, very soon.
And hopefully no one will be killed before they do.
You must know how hard it is to live out here surrounded by these lunatics, who stand on their cars/trucks, shooting into the open fields, with cars driving right along the road that they are parked on.
Coming to live in rural Florida from Los Angeles was expected to be culture shock, but this is ridiculous.
Sometimes it feels like we have left the United States and gone to live in the twilight zone.
Some of the things that happen out here, defy explanation to the rational mind.
During hunting season, whenever we need to go into civilization, no matter which way we choose, there is a sickening sight to be seen, in one direction are those standing on their vehicles shooting into open fields and the other way has a weighing station where there is always a line of hunters, with their kill to be weighed!
Most of these “great white hunters” use dogs and they way that many of them are treated, is next to criminal.
Many of them are wearing radio collars, so that they can be easily found.
But this is not always the case.
Some end up dead on the roads, hit by cars, others sit for hours waiting on the sides of the roads to be picked up by their owners and occasionally,  they wander into our local post office, or up on my mom’s front porch, starving, scared and just wanting to be loved.
My views about deer and if it is ethical or humane to hunt them, are my own, and do not follow the norm of society, I accept that.
I know that I am in an extreme minority here.
I have often looked into their faces, when I am lucky enough to see them and think that there are few creatures on the Earth with more gentle, kinder or sweeter eyes and gazes.
Trying to survive out here among the “duck dynasty type people” is hard, but nothing will drive me out of here.
There is in this beautiful place, as far as can be seen, nothing but pure wild Nature and stunning wildlife and the Hunters are for me, an ugly part of life here, that simply must be dealt with, like it or not.
Thankfully, the deer killing season will be ending soon and those who presently are running amuck up and down the roads here, killing at will, with IQ’s perhaps smaller than my shoe size, must find something else to hurt.
In the meantime, you may find this story as mildly vindicating as I did.
Can you say KARMA?
Oh dear!
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