What you need to realize is that the habitat is so degraded in many parts of the north central part of the state that there's nothing for the deer to eat during a bad winter.We were fortunate throughout most of the nineties because the winters were pretty mild.Deer depend on browse in the winter and need close to 5 pounds a day to sustain them.Take and fill a bad up with 5 pound of small twiggs and see how long it takes you to fill it up.No do it for sixty days strait and multiply that by how many deer you think that area should have.It doesn't take long to figure out that just a small number of deer can severly effect such degraded habitat.