Deer are a favorite subject of mine to draw and sculpt, partly just because they’re beautiful. But they’re also sort of mystical; they appear and disappear right in front of your eyes. My land is a “deer yard” so I see them often: deer sleep in the grass, and graze on the plants, shrubs and trees. I have apple trees and arborvitae, both favorites of deer. In the morning, there are often deer beds of flattened grass out in the field grass, where they have curled up to sleep. Deer are both my neighbors and houseguests. Each spring I see who has survived the winter. In the fall, I try to protect the deer from hunters with “No Hunting” signs. But there are hundreds of acres of unbuilt land surrounding and connecting to mine, some of which is used for hunting. The deer have trails through the woods and often travel the same path down to the lake and back. There is also a small pond nearby beloved by wildlife, where I saw a rare badger very early on a foggy morning.
Last spring, almost every morning on the five-minute walk
from my house to my studio, I encountered an odd yearling buck in a different place on my land every
day. He barely interrupted his
browsing and either glared at me as if to say, “what are you doing here?” or
kept munching, completely unbothered. I decided to clap my hands or turn on my cellphone to teach him that he should
be running away, not socializing. By the
fall, he had fuzzy antlers, but still not much caution. I haven’t seen him this year so close to the house or studio and I wonder
whether he survived hunting season and then the winter. I wonder whether he was the one eating my
asparagus, blast him!
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