I live in a sub-division with 247 homes and I'm right smack dab in the middle....
My wife told me the deer were eating our landscape so I went out to do some magic man trackin in the snow...YEP....THEY WERE.
So I went down to the man cave and loaded up the I40...
She was right....The little(doe?) never even touched my squirrel feed...they're all over anything green on the trees..247 homes guys...and I'm in the middle...Crazy!
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"Cherish your time in the woods"
I wonder if some of the heavily populated southern counties will losesome deer due to winter starvation? Normally they don't lose much, but we've had above average snowfall and bitter temps. I guess mother nature has a way of trying tobalance things out. I hear a lot of people complaining that they can't feed the deer. If they have to feed them in the southern counties to survive, there are too many. I wish that would lead to more hunters harvesting does in the fall.[&o]
We in PA have been pounded too. While the snow isn't as deep, its mostly ice. We had 3-4" of snow, then an inch of ice, then 3-4 more inches of snow, then more ice. It's layered up pretty nasty. Combined with temps in the single digits for the past week, yeah, its been nasty here too. Hopefully it won't last much longer.
I don't know what part of Pa you're in but in northern Clearfield county,we have well over 2 feet on the ground.The deer are starting to get pushed off the higher elevatations and into the valleys.This may end up being a tough year for deer in some areas around here.The deer didn't have the benefit of a heavy mast crop and if they got stuck in areas with little browse,we'll see some mortality and decreased fawn recruitment.
It's been a tough COLD winter here in OH thus far as well, compounded by the drought at the end of our growing season, and I'm expecting to have some wintering deaths and decreased fawn production. Some of the acorns I picked up this fall were literally wrinkled in a raisin-like manner, which I'm sure means they weren't nearly as "nutritious" as they may have been otherwise. But they are TOUGH animals and they have an amazing will to survive.
Michigan deer are very very hungry!(PIC)
