How much snow do you have and is there food and thermal cover available?

The deer here didn’t usually start pulling off of the high ground until we have about a foot of snow. Even then there are some exceptions, as those a saw yesterday, where they had a good supply of browse next to a large laurel bed. I suspect that even those ones will come off of the top though if we get much more snow or the winter becomes prolonged.

Take a look at the ridge tops or plateaus and then go look in the pine/hemlock/rhododendron river and creek bottoms. Compare the numbers of tracks and deer sign you see between the two areas. That will tell you if your deer are being stressed by the winter conditions and if they can use all of the habitat available to them.

There are a lot of variables but in general once the snows get deep most of the deer, and even the turkeys, leave the high ground and move into the thermal protected low lands and wintering grounds habitats. That is just as nature intended. The only time that is a problem is when there are more deer arriving then those wintering grounds can adequately keep fed and in a healthy condition. When that happens you can end up with some winter mortality and what is even worse, an extremely low fawn survival rate the next spring.

R.S. Bodenhorn