Stephen Bishop
For anyone looking for prime advertising space, boy have I got a deal for you. Last night, while I was driving home from a bee yard, I had a “Eureka!” moment. Yep, while I was swerving and slamming on brakes, the thought came to me that many of the deer grazing the roadside were big enough to put billboards on. In the best-case scenario, a deer in the headlights already commands your attention even without snazzy ads applied. In the worst-case scenario, you can’t get more in-your-face advertising than a deer through your windshield.
Of course, there would be a certain irony to me becoming a wealthy deer advertising mogul. Frankly, I’m pretty sure the local deer herd already has my bank account information, considering how much money they’ve stolen from my farm over the years. Think you’ve got a beautiful crop of melons? So do the deer, which is why they’re having a picnic and playing croquet in your field as you read this.
Wildlife biologists estimate the current deer population in North Carolina stands at one million. I agree and estimate the vast majority stand in my zip code. According to biologists, there were only ten thousand deer in North Carolina a century ago, which means that deer may be the only large land mammal that has multiplied faster than people. And this is despite the billion-dollar hunting industry and my participation in it.
Yes, I once was a prolific hunter. In fact, I bagged a ten-pointer, sabretooth tiger, and windowpane in the same trip, the trip before my mom confiscated my bb gun. Afterwards, two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and my mom made sure I took the one straight to my room, not the tree stand. But apparently a lot of other people are prolific hunters, and you’d think with the run on ammo in recent years, there wouldn’t be a deer left standing. The only thing I can figure is most hunters are pretty bad shots, which I suppose is why I’ve found a few bullet holes in my hives over the years.
Admittedly, one hole was my own doing because I hadn’t properly sighted in my little .22 rifle in several decades, which caused me to fire about two feet above the skunk that was terrorizing the bee yard, or possibly there was a major updraft in the atmosphere that day. Either way, for any skunk lovers who may be reading this, you can rest assured that no skunks were shot in the making of this story—in fact, mostly it just ate like a king, feasting with its belly full of bees each night until it was flattened on a road.
Speaking of roads, I can assure you there are plenty of deer still standing on the roadsides, which brings me back to the advertising idea. The good news is I’ve already solved the main obstacle to advertising on the broadsides of deer, which is catching the deer to adhere the advertisement. Deer stagger away from my fields so engorged on farm-fresh melons that they fall over in a sugar coma. Thus, I have ample time to splatter some paint on a deer—strike that, I mean apply a targeted ad on a mobile billboard—before the billboard wakes in a craze and darts in front of a car full of potential customers.
So if you want to reach a coveted demographic, namely drivers who are highly alert and trembling, consider placing an ad with my newest business venture, Your Ad Deer, Inc.
My slogan is, “There’s no money in farming, but big bucks in deer.”
Stephen Bishop helps feed the world’s deer population from his farm in Shelby, NC. You can sign up for his weekly blog post at misfitfarmer.com or follow him on Twitter @themisfitfarmer
