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02-08-2007 | 06:17 PM

#33

R.S.B.

Typical Buck

Joined: Jul 2006

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RE: How long can Whitetails survive the deep freeze?

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ORIGINAL: Phil from Maine

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It isn'tthe deer that die during the winter that have the biggest effect.

It's not? Here we have lost alot of adult deer and alot of them were pregnant does. The coyotes put the deer onto the ice causing them to hamstring and then it is over for the deer. 2 years ago 23 deer in one deer yard was killed at one location ( about 3 miles from me ) most of them were does with lambs and it was calculated to be from 52 - 54 deer had the fawns survived.

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What really matters the most is if the preganant does maintain sufficient body weight to give birth to healthy fawns that will survive.

This is a true statement and it is worst in March on them if alot of snowfall has come. This makes it hard for the deer to get all the food they need for the unborn to survive.

Also predators and dogs out running deer in cold weather is very dangerous to the deer in the temps we are currently having. After the deer are run for long lengths of time they will die even if they do not get caught. This happens because the deer when run generate a large amount of body heat and when running for long periods of time releases more heat. Causing the deer to heavily sweat and when they stop the cold air cools them off to quickly causing the deer to develope pneumonia. This in turn can and will kill deer. But, cold air by itself does not appear to kill them when they are not bothered by predators or dogs.

The further north in the range of the white-tail deer you go the more likely the populations are to be influenced or even controlled by the length and severity of the winter. That is why winter mortality of deer is a bigger factor in upstate New York and up through the New England states to Maine then it is here in Pennsylvania, at least during a normal Pennsylvania winter. It is also true that temperature do somewhat affect the survivability of deer, that is why the further north you go the larger the body of the deer. The further north the deer will have more body mass and proportionally less heat loss area (nose, ears, etc.) so they can retain more heat through the cold winters.

Here in Pennsylvania we are just far enough south that don’t have much winter mortality but we do have major fluctuations in the fawn survival rates that are induced by the fall mast crop combined with the length and severity of the winter.

As for the affects of deer dying after being run by predators that actually does occur though it is more often the result of stress myopothy (sp ?) or just the lack of being able to find sufficient food to replace the energy lost from being chased repeatedly. Stress or capture myopothy, as it is sometimes called, is the result of the animal pumping so much adrenaline into the muscle tissue that it can result in the animal dying days or even weeks later. Deer seem to be the species most prone to mortality from stress myopothy. It happens to a relatively high percentage of the deer that get captured and handled unless the incident is very short in duration. That is why our deer handling teams try to have very little and very quick contact with the research deer they capture. That is also why trap and transfer of deer doesn’t enjoy much success like it does with animals less flighty then deer.

Stress myophothy can result from the deer being stressed from any type of major disturbance while they are locked in winter yarding areas too so I suspect that is at least what happens when the deer are believed to be dying of pneumonia. As I said previously though it can also be that the deer will die simply from not being able to replace energy lost after repeated disturbance during times when food is hard to find or get to. If you do a professionally necropsy on the deer they should be able to distinguish between the various cause of death. But, in reality that most likely doesn’t happen, due to the expanse and hassles of transporting deer to a diagnostic laboratory when there is no indication of disease or anything more then normal winter affects. In fact, in the truest sense of the big picture it really doesn’t matter which deer died of starvation, predation or stress myopothy since they are all non-infectious and generally related and connected to the winter conditions.

R.S. Bodenhorn

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