Since we have this cool, new YouTube button in the messages bar, I thought I'd start a new thread that features just wild animal videos from YouTube.

Post any cool finds here. We can also do a music youtube thread and whatever else people want.

I'll start with this youtube video:

Honey Badger doesn't give a shit! :-B

Talk about contempt for the hippo. Heh.

While I do not have a YouTube Video I do have a wild animal story.

It seems that for the past week the local deer population has been out to get me. (Yes, I do have my tinfoil beany on) Every time I or a member of my family have driven anywhere, we had to stop for deer crossing the road. Mostly it's single deer (that we can see). Couple of times it was mini herd of 5 or so. On two separate occasions we had a doe with a very recently born fawn cross right in front of us. The doe was moving rather slowly as if still recovering from giving birth, and the fawn was wobbly, still getting used to walking.

I do live in a rural area so deer sightings and encounters are not at all rare but most of them occur at night or in the early morning, not in the middle of the day. During this past seven days we must have seen 20-30 deer, whereas usually we see 2 or three in a couple of weeks. Twice I even had to stop for deer in the middle of the main drag inb the middle of town. I wonder what has driven the deer out of the woods in such numbers. Or maybe it is just a statistical anomaly.

We have a lot of trouble with deer in PA as do those in NJ. Building and roads change their habitats and they have to find new places to go. Those new places tend to be near roadsides where they feed. Perhaps all the black bears roaming around has also caused them to move.

Even though I live in the sticks, there hasn't been any development in quite a few years so the deer habitat has not been disturbed. Black bear sightings are usually big news around here but I haven't heard of any since last year when there were a couple on the sidewalks of Northern NJ. Scared the crap out of everybody over there. (nod)

The deer did a real number on our boxwood hedges over the winter. Nearly killed them.

What are their natural predators near you, other than man? If anything like in a lot of places, the treeehuggers and Bambi lovers have made it nearly impossible for nature to occur, so for the deer the biggest predator for them is an automobile or an 18 wheeler. Hunting is only secondary maybe even tertiary. Disease might get a lot of them due to starvation, boxwood hedges aside.

Fox, wolves and coyotes would get some, but I'd suspect a lot of them have been run off or kilt because they are a threat. Those are my ideas anyway.

I know around here, other than in select areas, there are few predators so the population gets to big for the food supply. Then a lot of deer get hit by cars, the politicos and Fish and Game decide something has to be done so they authorize hunts in normally off limit areas. While it may seem to work for a while, all it does is manage to kill a few and the rest run to another area.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I like the impractical suggestions coming from that crowd. Every time I hear somebody mention population control, in my minds eye I picture rangers traipsing through the woods trying to out prophylactics on the bucks.

Surprisingly we have as many coyote sightings as deer sightings in our county. But I think the coyotes find it easier to raid garbage cans than go after the deer.

We are used to seeing deer in our area but the number that we saw this past week is highly unusual. With the hard winter that we had, one would expect the deer numbers to be down, not up.

I think if they are going to suggest anything, they should have things suggested to them. One such suggestion is to limit population growth by going out to the bucks and performing a manual service so as to waste the buck's seed, tiring him so he has lost the desire to mate.

Population control should occur as it always has by nature. If predators can't do it or aren't around any more, then hunters should be allowed to do it. Otherwise the automobile becomes a predator and deer become destructive to us whilst searching for food or else become diseased and die which you know already.

Have a lot of rain up there this spring? Could that have anything to do with what you are seeing? Maybe your local Extension Service can provide some insight.

To tell you the truth, I don't particularly care what the reasons are just as long nobody in my family hits a deer. I believe in live and let live. The plants that I value are protected. If the deer destroy the others, oh, well. Stuff happens.