Deer migration season is on in Sisters

It's the deer and elk migration season. We're going to see mule deer and elk wandering through our backyards. Cover your cabbage, harvest your carrots, but forget about mowing the lawn - the deer and elk will do it for you.

Securing your backyard will make the season safer for the migrants.

Make sure the summer hammock you loved to nap in under your favorite juniper tree is stored safely away in the garage; pick up all the kids' toys; also the screening you put up to protect the strawberries from the resident robins. Things like that are too tempting for a buck to pass up, and they play tug-of-war on his antlers.

A local resident reported a buck that had its antlers hung up in their backyard clothesline and didn't know how to get out of it. It wasn't until the neighbor's dog came over and started yapping at the buck that it ran off - with the clothesline trailing behind.

Larry and Cheryl Sears reported a buck wandering through their backyard wearing a mat of Christmas lights in its antlers.

If there's anything left in your backyard a mule deer can get its antlers stuck on, it will find it. On top of that, if a beautiful bull elk that escaped the hunting season comes plodding through your yard, it, too, will find a watering can, or canvas chair to stick its rack into.

In spite of the fact that the City of Sisters passed the ordinance against human residents knowingly feeding deer and elk, both creatures will find a kitchen garden and plunder it. That can be prevented with a fence. It doesn't have to be eight feet high; make it four feet high with eight-foot posts, and put two rows of string up to the top of the posts.

Or, you can do as Mary Crow did to protect her garden: put up two four-foot fences with a space of two feet between them. A mule deer, even one lusting for the delicious fruit on your ever-bearing strawberry plant, won't try to jump over a fence into a two-foot space. Hopefully.

If you have a garden gate that's not fastened tight, there's more than a good chance a deer buck will stick his antlers in it, get stuck fast and then try to run off with it.

Control your dog. There's nothing worse than to see a loose dog in pursuit of a mule deer yearling that was on its way to the wintering ground.

Drivers have to be extra careful during the deer migration season. They're all too common criss-crossing Highway 20 between Black Butte Ranch and Bend.

Dawn and dusk are times when deer and elk like to wander across the highway on the way to their ancestral wintering grounds - and they're tough to see.