Every time Mike and Dana Blevins take their side-by-side around their 300-acre property in Perryville, Missouri, they see something they once had to work hard to bring back: white-tailed deer. “We take the side-by-side out with our grandkids, and we will always see deer,” the couple told the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) in its September 2026 Missouri Conservationist feature. “Watching them year-round is a way we monitor the herd.” That routine is more than a family outing. It is also a quiet measure of how dramatically the property has changed since the Blevins bought it in 1992.
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