ORIGINAL: deer_handler
Dead deer found in woods = starved to death because of no food.
Where is the autopsy so say these animals was not injured that cause the starvation? Femurs said it starved to seath. Fine. But don't conclude that it was from lack of food with an autopsy. That animal could of been hit by a car or gut shot. But did you all do an internal skeloton check on this animal or gut them open? Nope, you just presumed they starved to death. Think again who has whos head in the sand when it comes to looking for answers. I am the one looking for answers you all are making answers from an assumption without physical evidence other than ferum test and saying yep, It starved to death.. All I am doing is asking for hard evidence to say it starved because lack of food and not an accident. I bet you do a test on them deer and they all have had an accident other than no food source.
Like I said, you are grasping at straws.
I have examined a lot of deaddeer over the years and some of them have been winter kills. I am sure I have examined a whole lot more deer that died of winter mortality, or any other cause, then you have or likely ever will.
Though there are some deer that you just can’t tell what the cause of death was, or what contributing factors might have been involved in some of those that died of malnutrition, there are also a lot that you can simply and positively say died of starvation.
When I walk a draining, in the wintering grounds, and find two, three or four small, deer laying dead in a relatively small area and they all have red bone marrow I pretty well know they died of malnutrition. Then when I look around and see that they have eaten all of the hemlock boughs they could reach (leaving the small hemlocks bare of any boughs fro about five feet, other then what is buried under teh snow pack) and had then resorted to eating the beech back to the size of a pencil I already know what they died of without needing a more complete necropsy. But, then when I look in the rumen and find it full of beech browse it is very conclusive that they plain and simply couldn’t find anything nutritious to eat and died of starvation.
Now take a couple of minute to see if you can form a couple of rational thoughts and yourself this question, “Why would three or four wounded deer, that are miles from any major road, all go to the same place, in a prime wintering grounds to die of starvation a month or two later, but only after eating everything they could find”?
That simply doesn’t make senseto any logical thinking person, though it might for someone grasping at straws and not wanting to accept the fact that many areas have had more deer then the habitat could support for far too long.
R.S. Bodenhorn