I took a walk through a local forest preserve tonight and saw 26 deer. I was looking at a herd of 17 of them when it occurred to me that 17 (two of which can be seen here) was quite a lot of deer. I wondered if it was, in fact, more deer than I could shake a stick at.
I decided to find out. Unfortunately, I was in a field and couldn’t find any sticks. I walked on a bit further, but when I finally found a stick, the deer had disappeared.
About 15 minutes later, I came upon three more deer. This time I was in the woods and found a stick right away. I shook it vigorously at the deer with no problem.
Therefore, based on this initial experiment, it appears that the maximum number of deer you CAN shake a stick at is greater than three but less than 17. I intend to research this further as I am not totally satisfied with these results and would like to find a more definitive number. Stay tuned.
You the man.