HuntingNet.com Forums - View Single Post

02-21-2007 | 05:50 PM

#28

R.S.B.

Typical Buck

Joined: Jul 2006

Posts: 584

Likes: 0

RE: Allegheny vs NC

Quote:

ORIGINAL: deer_handler

Quote:

ORIGINAL: R.S.B.

When I walk a drainage, in the wintering grounds, and find two, three or four small, deer lying dead in a relatively small area and they all have red bone marrow I pretty well know they died of malnutrition.

That simply doesn’t make senseto any logical thinking person,

And that makes sence that these deer starved to death in a group? Yep they just gave up and they was hungry and died together. None of them left to look for food and they all died in this small area. What logic is that for us to think? Why would they stay together after one dies. Are they devoted to the dead one. Your saying at the exact time they all starved to death in these groups you all found. And you want people to believe this? For a deer not to get a mile away from a main road and die as it is hit by a car is like saying a deer can't run more than a hundred yards after it's been shot in the vitals. Are we hunters supposed to believe this especially archry and have witnessed these things our selfs. Do not deer use the same trails as other deers? And can this be the reason you find them together in an area dead? Like I said to many questions to be answered to say they had no food. I am sure all the deer in that area looked very skinny and just barely survived because of no food then. Got any pics to prove this to us? I didn't think so.

Wow, are we going to have to go that far back to the very first square of deer interactions to start this educational process?

In the hard winters deer get locked into the wintering grounds by the deep snows. Then as winter progresses the condition of the deer deteriorates to the point they don’t have the energy to go off pushing through deep snows looking for food. So they just try to conserve energy by lying down. Eventually they don’t have the energy to get up to even feed. The head will roll back over their back and they linger on until they eventually die.

Some winter morality deer will even die outside the wintering grounds after the snows have receded. If a deer loses 30% or more of its body weight over the winter and then the winter opens up or the deer gets more food it is probably still going to die. Once they reach about 30-35% loss of body weight they will probably die within a few days to a week even if they are once again mobile and able to leave the wintering rounds. This problem of losing that much weight is much more pronounced in the younger deer but can also happen with older deer if the winter is real extreme.

The deer being locked into the wintering grounds is why it is common to find dead deer in groups.

Incidentally my winter mortality survey routes were all at least three miles from any paved roads. The furthest one was a little over seven miles from a paved road and more then two miles from the closest dirt road open to motor vehicles. Therefore, it would be a real stretch to suspect any of the deer on my mortality routes had even been hit by a vehicle.

By the way I also noticed that you pulled snippets out of my previous post that you could use out of the context, making it look like all of my quote, yetused to suit your cause. Don’t you feel more then just a little bit dishonest when you do something that?

R.S. Bodenhorn

Reply

0