Whitetail deer raids Upton couple’s birdfeeders
Eleanor LeComte says her birds get first dibs on the peanutbutter and seeds in the feeders.
By Terry Karkos
Staff Writer

UPTON – This winter has been anything but usual for Richard and Eleanor LeComte, who live in an old log home they renovated 30 years ago on Mill Road.

They’ve had raccoons on the porch, a mother black bear and cubs in their garage, from 30 to 160 deer in their driveway, and a 250-pound white-tailed “bird” eating from their bird feeders.

The couple’s home sits on a picturesque site in the woods along a cove of Lake Umbagog near the mouth of Dead Cambridge River.

During the winter, Richard feeds wild white-tailed deer in his driveway and nearby deer yard fields.

Eleanor feeds the birds, keeping her assortment of feeders stocked with birdseed and peanut butter. Three resident Canada jays and woodpeckers prefer the peanut butter, she says.

On Nov. 30, the day after the firearms deer hunting season ended, a “huge, old gray buck” arrived in their yard, “much to the chagrin of hunters in the area,” Eleanor LeComte said.

“He is a grumpy, nasty old guy,” she added. That’s why she named him, “The Boss.”

This particular deer, she said, would eat his allocation of Richard’s deer food, then mooch birdseed from her feeders.

“He can empty a bird feeder in 30 minutes. He used to come every day at noon to eat up all the birdseed we put out, but now he comes in the afternoon,” Eleanor LeComte said.

After Christmas, the buck discovered her hanging log feeder that’s filled with peanut butter, “and that was the end of the peanut butter,” she said.

Then, one day last month, the couple was awakened at 4:30 a.m. by a thumping noise coming from their screen-enclosed porch. They thought it was raccoons.

“There’s nothing like waking up at five in the morning and hearing something on the porch. I looked out the window and there was that deer,” Richard LeComte said.

Eleanor said The Boss had his head in a bag of grain, and was stomping around the porch. After her husband yelled at it, she said the deer calmly walked out the door and down the steps.

A few days later, the buck returned. It opened the screen door – which opens out – walked onto the porch, and ate heartily from the grain bag again.

Only this time, the buck ignored Eleanor’s noisy attempts to shoo it away.

“But a good slam on the house door really reached him. He sounded like the Lone Ranger, running down the porch and then, bang! With one giant flying leap over the porch rail, he jumps out through the screen,” she said.

The next morning, The Boss was back, peering through the kitchen window while dining on the window bird feeder.

A lack of natural foods in the woods this winter is bringing deer and other animals out of the woodwork, Richard LeComte said.

But they’ve just about had their fill of The Boss.

“He may have won the porch battle, but this is war. My birds have first dibs on that feeder,” Eleanor LeComte said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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