I apologize in advance if this seems a bit on the grisly side, but as Mainers, we're tough.

Lately, on my drives to work at around 5:15am, In a couple particular spots, I've seen deer on the side of the road. I've also seen tons of deer tracks. And even worse, I've been seeing waaaay more deer killed by cars. At first, I thought maybe it was all in my head, and that I just happened to be in the right place, at the right time.

After all, my home is in a rural area, as is my camp. Which is the other place I started to notice all these same things happening as well. And believe me, in no way, shape, or form, am I any kind of an authority or deer, or a biologist. Heck, I'm not even really that smart. But they're seemingly just everywhere right now.

When we have those summers where we're seeing squirrel roadkill all the time, it's usually during a 'mast year'. That means the summer previous, food was plentiful, and squirrels gave themselves the green light to start making tons of baby squirrels. I'm assuming it must be something similar with the deer.

I do have enough good-old common sense to know that if I'm seeing a lot of living and dead deer, in separate towns some ten miles apart, that there must be more deer. And there must be some truth to it, as Maine is considering raising the amount of any-deer permits by up to 60%.

Still, here's the thing, and again, I'm not capable of teaching anyone anything, so this is just friendly advice, but maybe it's time to slow it down just a shade at dawn and dusk. Or in the middle of the night. If there's that many more of them out there, you're just tempting fate.

Nothing gets stuck in my head more than thinking about having to replace my front end, because some dumb young buck decided to jump into traffic for fun. Practically all of us have either hit one, or known someone who has. So keep your eyes peeled, slow down a smidge, bub. Your rusty old Ford might live to see another year.

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