"Here are the dead deer from Greene County. Obviously no wounds and in the typical position (head back over the shoulder) of deer that died of starvation. Where deer are starving to death without deep winter snows you should know there is a habitat problem, unless you are simply in denial because you don’t want to believe the evidence and facts."
What facts?? Only facts I see is that you are jumping to conclusions as to why 2 young deer died during extreme conditions. Deer can and do die due to lack of thermal cover, especially ones that havent accumulated a good coat of fat, for whatever reason. They dont have to have died from being "wounded" I spoke of that because that is an undeniable contributor to some winterkill. THere are many "internal" conditions that can contribute to winter death. WHen you take 10's of thousands of people, some are gonna be less healthythan others and deer are nodifferent.
"Here are what the person had to say that found them and examined them along with one other comment following the pictures.
“Deer were at Deep Valley...southwestern corner. Lots of deer and little food. They were laying under a pine tree next to a trailer. Cut open their bellies and hardly anything in them and the bone marrow looked like strawberry jelly.
Could pick them up with one hand.” "
I read that on the other site. Not unusual to be able to pick up afawnwith one hand, especially a late born even when healthy. Though I dont doubt deer in late winter are much lighter.
“Why would that surprise you?2A had one of the worst breeding rates for fawns in the state. It also had a higher winter mortality in 2004 than Clearfield county. Wow, Beaver and Somerset counties really had high winter mortality that year. They were a lot worse than Potter, Tioga and Elk counties. Actually, they led the state in winter mortality. I guess it doesn't just happen in the big woods.”
Ahh, yes, our always anti-deer friend DOUGLAS adding his two cents. Perhaps he should read the annual report. Despite fawn breeding rates, the overall health did NOT rate as poor and the goal was to STABILIZE the deer herd. Or so we were told. That is based on acceptable health of both herd and habitat.
"I agree that Greene County probably doesn’t get a lot of winter mortality but the evidence is pointing toward the fact that unit 2A really can’t support many more deer then already exist there."
I dont necessarily agree, however it doesnt matter. Im not asking for many more. In fact, at this point, Id be happy if the allocation allowed the supposed stabilization we had supposedly been undergoing. Id liketo see some slight growth permitted to help along the ehd hit areas (which arehave recovered a bit, but FAR from pre-ehd levels) and also to undo just a bit of the hr that has undoubtedly taken placethe last few years, when we werentsupposed to be reducing....I have concerns also for other areas of the state, perhaps a bit more herd increase could be had in some, other areasperhaps same deal as 2A.