In most parts of the United States, homeowners share the land with herds of deer seen nibbling on garden plants, wandering through neighborhoods and running across highways. They are so ubiquitous that it is difficult to imagine a time when they were not so abundant. But as poet and journalist Erika Howsare explains in The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship With Our Wild Neighbors, the clearing of forests and constant unchecked hunting that Europeans wrought upon the land in colonial America began to decimate deer habitats and communities. By the early 20th century, deer populations had “gone down to zero” in many areas, only to rebound as conservation efforts allowed deer to multiply in droves throughout the U.S.
Through carefully wrought prose and evocative imagery, Howsare depicts how deer and human populations have both relied on and butted up against one another for eons. Traveling through history and culture, she provides insight into the practical, environmental and spiritual “kinship” between our species: Cherokee hunters were mindful of Awi Usdi, a white deer who reminded them to ask each felled deer for forgiveness; villagers in the West Midlands of England celebrate the animal with a centuries-old pagan tradition called the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance; and deer riders abound in mythology, such as the Hindu god Chandra and Slavic hunters called vile, who bewitch men with their beauty.
The animal, Howsare writes, “perfectly symbolizes the way we live with nature now, and the way we will carry on into whatever weird, paradoxical future awaits.” Her rigorous research, along with personal anecdotes, relates the impact of human intervention on the deer population and the damage that overpopulation wreaks on forests. Howsare rides along on a culling mission with Princeton, New Jersey’s sole animal control officer, and she discusses other methods government and wildlife officials have used to reduce their numbers, like sport hunting and sterilization.
Throughout the book, Howsare returns to a proposition stated in her introduction: “To look at our modern relationship with deer . . . means asking the biggest question of all: How will we live on this planet?” The Age of Deer is a thorough, eye-opening invitation to ponder our own relationships with the natural world, practically and reverently.
