Wildlife official says deer have become ‘severely habituated’ to people with feedings, no hazing
By Shaun Hall, Rogue Valley Times
Ashland has a problem with aggressive deer, as Barbara Jarvis and her little 7-pound pet poodle, Pippa, found out the hard way.
Jarvis, who is a retired municipal court judge, and Pippa were out in their yard early Wednesday evening at Emma and Elkader streets, near the Ashland southern city limits south of the Southern Oregon University campus, when the attack came.
“I always go out with her,” Jarvis said Thursday in a phone interview. “She’s a little dog. She never goes out of the yard except with me.
“We were walking around the west side of the house. And as we got there — I always go first — I looked and there were no deer there. And I turned around to see where she was and the deer came from a different direction.”
The doe came from a neighbor’s property and headed for Pippa.
“It was horrible,” Jarvis said. “She kicked the dog in the side.
“I was screaming at her and throwing things at her.”
After the attack ceased, Jarvis tended to her pet, which suffered a cut about 7 inches long in its body, perforating its diaphragm. Jarvis wrapped the injured dog in an Ace bandage and managed to finally get hold of a neighbor, who drove her and Pippa to an animal emergency care facility.
What to know: Be cautious around deer
Deer are naturally afraid of people and will avoid them, but they sometimes approach people or attack them, according to the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife. Often, these have been fed by people and treated like pets.
A female deer can become aggressive if she perceives her young are threatened.
According to the agency:
• Don’t feed deer.
• Don’t approach a deer. Observe them from a distance.
• Be especially cautious of deer with their young. Female deer with fawns have been aggressive with pets, particularly small dogs.
• Invest in a fence to keep deer out of your yard.
• Use extra caution when walking or hiking in city parks or municipal trails.
Source: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, dfw.state.or.us/wildlife/living_with/deer_elk.asp
At Southern Oregon Veterinary Specialty Center in Central Point, staffers stabilized the dog and prepared her for surgery.
“She made it up until surgery,” Jarvis said. “She just didn’t make it through surgery.”
The next day, on Thursday, Jarvis retrieved the dog’s body from the center.
“I buried her in the back yard in her favorite spot,” she said.
Two other neighbors had close encounters with deer in recent days, including one woman who yelled to scare away a deer as it approached her and her dog from behind, according to Jarvis, who figures that the deer in her neighborhood was protecting its young.
“I have a feeling the fawn was somewhere around here,” she said. “She was just doing what she’s developed to do, taking care of her kid.”
“These deer are not Bambi,” she said. “These are serious animals.”
“You may think you’re safe in your own yard, but you may not be.”
A veterinarian at the animal facility said that deer have been very aggressive this year, according to Jarvis. A person who answered the phone at the center on Friday said any comment would have to come from management, but that no one was available.
Mathew Vargas of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said there were 13 reports in each of the past two years of aggressive deer in Ashland, but only one so far this year. In 2020, a dog was killed by a doe in east Medford, and last year, a dog was killed by a doe in Gold Hill, according to agency reports.
Encounters in Ashland have occurred north of Ashland High School, at Southern Oregon University and near Ashland Community Hospital, according to Vargas, who said deer have wandered into town for decades, but that there’s been a rise in reports of aggressive deer in the past few years.
“This problem is a result of these deer becoming severely habituated” to people, he said, adding that people feed them, take pictures with them and sit and watch them instead of hazing them away.
“All that is making them lose fear” of people, he said. “We get zero reports of this outside of populated areas. This is purely an in-town situation.”
Fawns typically are born by late May or early June, and by mid-July, they are sturdy enough to walk away from danger, so their mothers don’t have to protect an area where they’re hunkered down.
“By mid-July, these calls pretty much stop,” Vargas said. “The does aren’t as protective.”
One neighbor can spoil it for the neighborhood by feeding deer, even if other neighbors shun the animals.
“It’s real important for all these neighbors to get on the same page,” Vargas said. “It’s easy for one to ruin it.”
“If you see them, chase them out of your yard. You don’t want to be taming them down.”
Turning a hose on a deer is one way to haze them. Avoiding an area used by deer is a good strategy.
Vargas said the deer that Jarvis and Pippa encountered might have been protecting its fawn, even though no one in the neighborhood saw a fawn.
“Usually the fawns are tucked away,” he said. “They could be 50 yards away.”
Reach Rogue Valley Times outdoors and environmental reporter Shaun Hall at 458-225-7179 or shall@rv-times.com. This story first appeared in the Rogue Valley Times.
