Providing food to help deer through the winter sounds like a good thing—a little corn and some apples might make a white-tail’s day, and you could bring some wildness back to suburbia. Bird feeding is nice, so deer feeding must be even nicer.

To your surprise, it doesn’t take long to get a small family of deer to eagerly take your offerings. Soon you begin to think bigger. You buy a bale of hay at the farm store and order Deer Chow online. You drop a salt lick in the bird bath, and now your group of three deer has expanded to a herd of 15. Before long you start thinking you are a modern day St. Francis of Assisi. Brace yourself, though—you are actually more like Sam Walton. Your backyard deer feeding station has become the equivalent of a wildlife Wal-Mart, and ultimately, both systems are equally ruinous for the user.

Deer biologists in New England have identified several problems with deer feeding. According to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, deer feeding sites concentrate animals, spreading disease like demodectic mange and chronic wasting disease (CWD), a mad-cow like disease threatening deer populations across the country (CWD has not yet appeared in New England, though has appeared in New York). Wal-Marts similarly attract high densities of people, which the Center for Disease Control warns is a good way to contract human diseases, like the flu. The next time you try on a bargain sweater, think about all of the other people who tried on that same sweater and wiped their runny noses on the collar as they pulled it over their head.

Another way in which Wal-Mart and deer feeding stations are similar is that they both increase the chance of predation. Large congregations of deer attract predators like coyotes, bobcats and domestic dogs. In many places, predation, not starvation, is the major cause of dead deer in the winter. In a more natural setting, deer make an extensive network of trails in secluded wintering grounds, enabling them to out-maneuver predators even during the deepest snows. Deer feeding stations, however, focus the deer trails into just a few main arteries, which make for perfect ambush points. Wal-Marts also attract ambush predators: modern day pirates who prey on shoppers who are dazed by the low prices. Parking lots are the favored hunting grounds, according to “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices,” a feature-length documentary that critiques the retail giant. At one point in documentary, a list of 70 parking lot crimes that occurred in 2005 scrolls across the screen. The list includes a purse snatching in Pleasanton, Calif.; an abduction in Tyler, Texas; a car crashing and assault in Benton, Ark.; and drive-by shooting in D’Iberville, Miss.

Both deer feeding stations and Wal-Marts encourage poor nutrition. Corn and table scraps do not provide the valuable vitamins and nutrients that deer have evolved to need in the winter. The Purina Corporation does make Deer Chow (www.deerchow.com), which boasts a complicated mix of protein, fat and minerals, but that’s no substitute for wild foods. Wal-Mart’s offerings are also nutritionally weak, with their bushel bags of Doritos, cords of Twinkies, 50-gallon drums of Sam’s Choice soda, and cheap Wal-Mart snack bar wieners. Although things may be looking up—word has it that Purina is test marketing a Wal-Mart Chow.

Both deer feeding and Wal-Marts carry an emotional price. This season’s Wal-Mart slogan is “Home for the Holidays,” which might make sense if you grew up in a dysfunctional household. Wal-Mart links buying stuff with love and thus emotionally supercharges holiday shopping. This passion for the purchase escalates during sales, as evidenced on the day after Thanksgiving this year in Orlando, Fla., where Wal-Mart shoppers had a fistfight over cheap laptop computers. Security guards wrestled one shopper to the ground after he forcefully cut ahead of other shoppers in line. Similarly, biologists warn that competition and aggression are high at deer feeding stations. Dominant adults fight to rule the food, which results in a bunch of exhausted, stressed deer.

Ultimately, many biologists believe that the number-one problem with deer feeding is that it screws up the relationship between deer and their habitat. Deer feeding lures white-tails away from their natural wintering areas to marginal habitats that lack the variety of resources they need to survive. Left to their own devices, deer retreat to dense shrubby areas to avoid deep snow, high winds and extreme cold. N.H. Fish and Game wildlife biologist Kent Gustafson notes that “if deer continually go to feeding sites instead of natural deer wintering areas, then young deer may never learn to find their traditional winter habitat.” Wal-Marts also draw people into inferior habitats. Wal-Marts are always located at big retail centers that contain fast food, poorly made clothing, and other frivolous items that suck away people’s valuable economic resources. Also, as much as Wal-Mart advertising may lead you to think otherwise, Wal-Mart is not part of your family. Our communities would be a much happier habitat if we shopped in our neighborhoods and supported our local retailers.

To curtail the scourge of deer feeding and Wal-Marts, many communities are fighting back. On Dec. 16, the Lincoln, Ill., City Council denied a zoning variance that would have planted a Wal-Mart Super Center across the street from a church, a daycare and a school. Similar decisions have been made in San Luis, Ariz.,  Oakland, Calif., and New York City. Communities are also putting laws against deer feeding on the books. Even though it’s still legal (though not smart) to feed deer in New Hampshire, don’t try it in New York. There, police have gone after the deer feeding king pin: 65-year old Anita Depczynski. Known as the “Deer Lady of Cheektowaga” she spent a week in jail earlier this month for refusing to stop feeding three deer, named Piglet, Pumpkin and Toothpick, in a city park.

Really the answer to both of these problems is self restraint. Even though it would be cool to pretend you are Snow White and feed deer in your backyard, refrain; it degrades the ecology in your area. Similarly, even though you may like to think you are Garth Brooks or Queen Latifa in a Wal-Mart holiday ad, don’t shop there; it degrades your community. Also, remember that Brooks and Latifa are getting paid shop at Wal-Mart.

To learn more about Wal-Mart’s impact on communities and our society, visit www.Wal-Martwatch.com. To get the scoop on deer feeding, check out the N.H. Fish and Game Department’s brochure at www.wildlife.state.nh.us/Wildlife/Wildlife_PDFs/More_harm_deer_brochure.pdf.