ORIGINAL: TRYKONOISSEUR
Just curious as to how long the deer can put up with this severe cold we are having in the Northeast? I know years ago officials used to find hundreds of deer in deer yards that died due to the weather or lack of food caused by it. Anyone know?
Cold temperatures alone don’t really cause much of a problem for wildlife though they will have to eat a little more often when the temperatures drop.
What hurts the deer is deep snow that they have to push through to get to the food. That causes them to expend more energy so they head down hill into the valleys and thermal cover. If they can get into mature stands of pine and hemlock the snow usually isn’t as deep so they have better mobility and often the snow will weight the hemlock down enough to provide browse that isn’t available at other times of the year. As long as those conditions don’t last too long and the concentrations of deer don’t eat all the wintering grounds food the deer will do pretty good.
Deer can also be aversely affected by crusted snow that they can’t walk on top of and break through with each step. When they have those conditions they are easier for the predators to catch. If the crust is solid enough for the deer to walk on thought that can be a benefit to the deer since that elevates them so they can reach browse that is out of their reach at other times of the year. Turkeys do great with a crust, in fact the only time turkeys get in trouble is with deep powdery snow cover that they can’t push through or when they get wet in the springs seeps and then walk through powdery snow until they have ice balls dragging behind them.
If the streams and rivers ice over, like they are doing right now, the deer will use them as travel corridors and feed on the browse they can reach along that edges that is out of their reach during the rest of the year when they wouldn’t be able to reach it. The iced streams work to elevate the deer to where they can reach a lot more browse then they could without the ice.
In this area the deer and turkeys are both doing just fine so far.
R.S.Bodenhorn