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Unique herd, tribute to old way of life mark Muncie farm

MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) - A white tail deer trudges through thick snow battling freezing, howling wind. The small deer is emaciated, separated from its herd and marching through perpetual snowfall with no chance of survival.

Unable to endure, the deer's journey ends, alone, in the middle of an open field.

It is at that moment when two brothers from a cattle farm a few miles down the road spot the deer. They are determined to save it.

During the Blizzard of 1978, Jay and Jerry Scott hiked their way across a snow-blanketed field and together scooped up an adolescent male deer that was hours away from starving to death or succumbing to the bitter cold of the state's worst winter on record.

Nearly 40 years later, Jay Scott still remembers the rescue.

"He was just standing there, exhausted and skinny," Scott told The Star Press (http://tspne.ws/1wQf6f5 ). "He was weak enough that he didn't even try to run, gave us one little head butt and that was it."

The two brothers loaded the deer into the back of their pickup and drove it back to the family farm, a 179-acre triangular stretch wedged into the intersection of Ind. 28 and Ind. 67.

For most parents, a child hauling a sickly deer home would be profoundly distressing. For the Scott family, whose passion for raising livestock spans generations, the decision to keep the deer was easy.

"We didn't know if we was going to be able to save it, but we were gonna try" Jay Scott said. "We felt responsible for it, that it wasn't going to make it if somebody didn't do something."

The family made a home for the deer in a box stall in one of their barns. They fed it, gave it water, kept it warm and in the spring, when it was strong enough, released it back into the wild.

The family never expected the deer to tame, and Jay Scott said in all its time at the farm, it never did. Nursing the deer back to health wasn't about adopting a pet; it was an exercise as natural to them as breathing.

"When farming gets in your blood, it's just there, it doesn't go away," he said. "Taking care of animals is just kind of bred into us."

The deer had moved on, along with the harsh winter, but Scott said the experience had left him almost inexplicably fascinated with the animal.

"You just didn't see deer everywhere like you do now," Scott said. "Saving that deer is what got me stuck on the idea."

Scott's father, Ted, who has raised cattle on the farm since 1943, was similarly transfixed by the rescue. A few months after releasing the whitetail, Jay Scott used his high school graduation money to buy two spotted deer from a farmer near Royerton. Ted bought two more the same day.

A single rescued animal became a surreal landmark in the area, 37 years of the Scott family's ever-growing, ever-changing herd of spotted deer, grazing along Ind. 28 and skittishly eying passing cars.

Everyone from school teachers to police officers to fellow farmers knows the deer. They are drive-by entertainment for some, for others a marker signaling home is close by.

"I've driven by there for years; those cute little deer are the first thing that catch your eye," said Traci Gross, 43, an attendant at the corner gas station that bumps up against the Scott family farm. Gross, who has lived in the area since she was 13, said she used to enjoy taking in the sight of dozens of unique family farms in the area.

"It's changed a lot around here," Gross said. "Maybe they've just grown the cities too far out ... I have no idea."

Jay Scott said years ago, at that same corner gas station, the family had to repeatedly corral a young buck that refused to stop jumping the fence to frolic in the gas station parking lot each night.

For Jay, that kind of novelty and the challenge of raising an unusual animal have kept him interested.

But he acknowledges, from a business standpoint, the deer don't add up.

"I would say they're probably not very profitable; we put more feeding into them than we will ever get out of them," Scott said.

The deer herd isn't another business venture; for Jay Scott's father, the deer serve a different purpose.

Ted Scott, who recently turned 90, said the deer are a source of pride, a public exhibition of a style of living and culture he sees fading further into history each year. A way of life he made it his mission to preserve.

"I'm one of the few people that kept raising livestock around here," Ted Scott said with a grin, "More and more you saw cattle farms getting replaced by big crop farms."

Jay Scott said for his father, the deer are a chance to share the family legacy with the world that passes by.

"I think that's probably the biggest reason dad keeps them," Scott said. "Because he likes the idea that other people can come and enjoy what he's done."

Deer aside, the Scott family farm's pasture-raised cows, lambs, chickens, ponies and certainly their two resident peacocks are an increasingly scarce sight.

Family-run farms where livestock is raised and cared for by hand are disappearing. Small farms have steadily dwindled since the 1930s, about as fast as corporate feedlots have grown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports.

According to the USDA, the top 10 percent of farms account for 70 percent of the total U.S. cropland. Fewer than one-third of family farms will have a successor willing to take the farm into the next generation.

Jay Scott, who recently took over the monumental task of maintaining the Scott farm with his brothers, said he has an idea as to why family farms are being replaced by larger operations.

"It's the workload," Jay Scott said, "Every day there's something that you have to do; younger generations just don't want to be tied down that much."

Sometimes working 12 to 16 hour days for a return that is mostly intangible is a hard sell to younger members of the family, he said.

His daughter, who currently works at a manufacturing company, has expressed interest in becoming a teacher, not a farmer.

"I haven't given it much thought yet, but we are all getting older and it will have to be turned over at some point," Scott said. "I'm hoping that somebody in the family will want to continue on."

Jay Scott, at 54, is two years older than the starting average age of the modern small farm operator, but he will continue the work he inherited from his father and grandfather.

Like his spotted deer herd, the family farm has value for him beyond monetary gain.

"I like cattle raising just about as much as anything," he said. "It's just kind of in the blood, and once it's in the blood you can't get it out."

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Information from: The Star Press, http://www.thestarpress.com

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