I don’t need to tell you things are, uh, stressful. There are all kinds of healthy ways you can deal with this–friends and family, exercise, eating right, getting sleep–but you can also click compulsively around the internet looking for something to press the “maybe everything isn’t the worst” button in your brain. To aid you in the latter, I present: deer cam.
I’m not sure why YouTube dropped “Brownville's Food Pantry For Deer” in front of me, but I’m glad it did. It’s a livestream of some deer-feeding troughs in Brownville, Maine, filled with acorns, apples, and oats, according to News Center Maine. The livestream runs 24/7, with this year’s beginning on “December 16th and end[ing] when natural browse is easily available at the end of the winter season,” according to the channel description.
The basic premise is simple: The deer come and eat the food, and you watch them. There are multiple cameras that focus on the troughs, a trail, a pond, and more. (There’s also a “bird buffet” camera, which is the same thing, but for birds.) Every stream has a chat, where viewers have nicknamed the deer things like Star, Oreo, and Mr. Floof, and are also talking about the weather.
My favorite part, besides looking at the deer who look way too soft for animals I am not touching, is the sound: In the trough view right now, the deer are crunching away at their food, nosing around for the best goodies and doing that “looking around while chewing with their mouth open” thing animals sometimes do. They stomp around in the snow and snort, and it sounds like you’re right there with them instead of, if you’re me, sitting alone in your New York City apartment with your brain crawling after a morning spent listening to RFK Jr talk.
WABI TV says the Food Pantry is run by the McMahon family, who are in their 16th season of feeding the deer to “help restore herd numbers” in their area. The McMahons feed the deer “approximately 700 pounds of oats daily,” which WABI says can cost up to $20,000 a year. Randy McMahon, who operates the Food Pantry, told News Center Maine, “The revenue we get from our YouTube channel helps up immensely. Without YouTube, we wouldn't be able to afford what we are doing.” There are multiple ways viewers can donate, and also a merch store.
