After telling hunters to take a flying leap for preventing the PGC from managing the deer, guess who said this on another MB?
Winter deer mortality isn’t the biggest deer reduction factor of concern any more though. With the deer management programs of the past several decades we have managed to keep deer numbers close enough to the over carrying capacity as to avoid major winter mortality. Now the real and most factor that limits future deer numbers following hard winters is the reduced fawn survival rates that occur when the does don’t get enough both winter and spring nutrition. When they don’t get enough food their fawns are born under weight and many of them (some studies have shown as high as nearly 93%) die within just a few days of being born.
Now that the deer in 2G have nearly twice as much food/deer as they did before, fawn recruitment should have increased dramatically over the past few years.