RE: walkin in my woods
 

went in woods this afternoon see the deer found my corn looks like a couple deer around anyway

RE: walkin in my woods
 

today it was almost inpossable to walk around woods with snow/ice/snow/snow
hope the deer are walking in it better than i could started digging in garage for
old snow shoes but i think i will make a pair instead.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

Gonna try and get out a little tomorrow. Been seeing quite a few from the vehicle these last few days. Mighteven get up a tree with the bow one last time. Just sent a big box of deer sticks to a cousin in Arizona and that empty spot in the feezer is calling:D

RE: walkin in my woods
 

Alright, with all due respect to BTBowhunter and bluebird2. This is getting to a point where it's ridiculous. The bickering back and forth between you two has gone on WAY too long IMO. Everyone here can bring something to the table, even if you don't agree with one another. Hell, I don't agree with either of you on some things. However, I don't follow you two around on the board just to stir you up and start a mine's bigger than your's contest. Agree to disagree and move on.

I just realized there is a little "block" button here to block some users posts. That should help me wade through all of this nonsense a little easier and read intelligent, respectful and thoughtful posts from people who want to share expereinces and learn from one another.

As I said, I respect both of you, but come on guys....get over it.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

very well said but we dont want to loose them or RSB .

heck, i like what they all say cause i hear BOTH sides.

only thing that needs done is name calling or reference to KNOTHEAD comments.

heck, i have to ask a lot too because i cant understand arguments.

BUT I AM LEARNING TOO.

i dont want to see it stop, just tone down the silly name calling.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

MUZZY, you are near sgl252 .

can you give your opinion why there are few deer on those 15 miles or more of great habitat that the PGC keeps growing etc.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

Got out for a few hours today. Dang it was cold!!! The deer are definitely up and moving during daylight hours. We saw dozens today and the sign was everywhere. We saw a lot of tracks right up to the shrubs around houses.

Just a thought for you guys that live in SRA's that have a tough time getting permission to hunt might want to talk to folks that are getting damage now about next season.
Landowners are likely to get pretty receptive with the way the winter is shaping up.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

i did not like my sparty pants comment, so i deleted it

RE: walkin in my woods
 

i am seeing that deer have got into their herds and digging in snow for food. lots of winter left
for them

RE: walkin in my woods
 

can you believe that we have a lot of feeders that NO deer are coming into them.

my friend has over 3000 acres, he just told me that he does not know where deer he had went but he is worried, none are coming to feeders.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

that to me would mean the deer are not there or close enough to find feed that
would worry me that stinks sproul

RE: walkin in my woods
 

they were there,they are worried too, they took 45 tons of corn/alfalfa out.

they also farm it and have that whitetail stuff for 1/2 mile on pipeline on their property.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

maybe the deer dont like something or someone is bugging them i dunno

RE: walkin in my woods
 

How much snow do you have?

The deer in this area have mostly pulled down into the valleys and wintering grounds now. A little over a week ago I could find lot of deer sign on the high ground but now there is almost none in those same areas.

The only deer I could find on the high ground today were a few in one area that had just been cut within the past couple weeks with lots of fresh tree tops on the ground as browse.

R.S. Bodenhorn

RE: walkin in my woods
 

8 inchs in mountains .

if you enter renovo, my friend owns the mountain above railroad yard .

yes, his feed is on top and his fields areon top.

the doe and her 2 fawns have not returned to my feeder in 2 weeks in my yard.

not a sign of them.

squirewals stopped coming to my feeders also for at least a week.

what a winter,game is acting different than most are used too.

i will be hunting grouse on friday, will get report of what i see,i think grouse is in until sat.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

I live on a mt top and have snow and the deer are still around atleast was 2 day ago

RE: walkin in my woods
 

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

RE: walkin in my woods
 

Yes the squirrels stopped coming to my bird feeders for the past couple of weeks too. That is normal when it gets really cold. They will get into a hollow tree or other protected area in a tree and become semi-dormant for extended periods of extremely cold weather. When we get a run of warm weather again those squirrels will be back to the feeders though.

R.S. Bodenhorn

RE: walkin in my woods
 

I had to run out to mountain run around lunch time yesterday.There were tracks all over that bottom.Yes,it's all state forest.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

rsb we have 8 inches or so of snow ice underneath just was outthere tracks all over

RE: walkin in my woods
 

douge, cut it out!:)

RE: walkin in my woods
 

no wonder jim shockey said he heard this is great forum.

i agree,battle of titans continues.

i learned at lot on here,true or untrue you get to follow up on point you dont agree with .

man, i may change my title to PROFESSOR SPROUL,hmmmmmmmmmmmm:)

RE: walkin in my woods
 

RE: walkin in my woods
 

Eight inches of snow isn’t normally enough to cause deer any problems or to force them into the wintering grounds. Even with ice under the snow it is not a problem for the deer as long as they have mobility.

Deer get forced into the wintering grounds when the snow is deep and they have trouble pushing through it. When they have to push through deep snow, especially when it is frigid cold, it causes them to expend too much energy so they head down hill until they find the most protected areas with the best thermal cover they can find. Those areas are also generally the areas where the snow depth is a little less if it is under the cover of the pines and hemlock. Once there they will make trails that they continue to use day after day to keep them open.

If those deep snows continue for extended periods the deer can get locked into those wintering grounds and simply can’t muster the energy to get out even if they have totally depleted the food supply.

Hopefully it doesn’t get that bad this winter. It sounds like things are ok in your area so far. The deer here are starting to show early signs of winter stress but then we have about eighteen inches to two feet of snow on the high ground of the mountains and plateau. Hopefully the warmer weather predicted for this weekend helps to pack the snow down enough the deer can more around easier.

R.S. Bodenhorn

RE: walkin in my woods
 

RSB

I was always under the impression that a hard crust, say 6-10" that was not quite hard enough for deer to walk on was pretty tough on them because itrubs their lower legs raw. We don't see that stuff often even around my camp in 2F. Is thatmyth or fact?

RE: walkin in my woods
 

Sproul,

To answer your question about my thoughts on your area.

Compared to a lot of areas, that area has always been a little thin with deer.I have several friends with camps up around those parts and they all have said the same thing.I don'tenvy anyone who hunts up there. This was even before all of the PGC nonsense. It's big woods hunting, which by nature is always tougher. I just think the PGC's policies have hit areas like yours very hard. The guys that own a bow shop up that way hardly hunt around there anymore and drive to Ohio to hunt more than here.

I took a walk myself on our property the other day and found lots of tracks, some trails right down to the bare ground and lots of pawing in the fields. We've also been hearing about and noticing a lot of deer around houses and such lately. I believe they're starting to get real hungry. I predict this prolonged snow, ice and extreme cold we've had is going to hurt the deer this year some.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

that means no fawns in may/june next year do to harsh conditions.

the doe hunting needs close so the deer that are left survive for another year and get older and maybe better chance for fawns.

to kill off the deer that are left when we know ,according to RSB that chances of having fawns is not good.:(

i hope the PGC sses this and closes the season in wmu2g for 2009.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

There is no way the PGC will close doe season in any WMU unless they are order to do so by the court and that is highly unlikely.
By closing the doe season they would be admitting that they reduced the herd too much and they will never do that. They may cut the doe tags by 5 or 10K ,but they won't close the season.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

My buddy had a great idea. He was plowinghis driveway last week with his quad and buzzed out into his field and took a few swipes across the snow and exposed some of his field. The deer showed up that night and have been pounding the snot out of that area since.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

that doesnt sound like a bad idea btb i am glad i am putting corn out

RE: walkin in my woods
 

You can't hold a good deer down.:D

RE: walkin in my woods
 

That is simply amazing. I often marvel at how wildlife survive the extreme conditions they are subjected to.

However , if those deer die of starvation was it due to a lack of browse or was it due to the deers inability to access enough browse.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

that is amazing

RE: walkin in my woods
 

BTB, we do something similar on our ground if we can in plowing. We swipe all of our roads, which we plant, to give them an easier time finding something to eat. We've also plowed out a bit of a few fields. Gotta feel for em in this type of weather.

That pic is neat. They are amazing survivors aren't they?

RE: walkin in my woods
 

Yes a crust that the deer can’t walk on and instead keep breaking through is hard on deer. It eats up their energy, results in broken legs and makes it much easier for predators, including pet dogs, that can stay on top of the crust to quickly run a deer down and kill it or in the case of dogs just eat chucks out them while they are still alive.

Hard crust or ice under the snow though is a blessing to the deer since it raises them up to a level where they can reach browse that would normally be out of their reach. Ice on the rivers and streams is also a good thing for the deer as they will walk along on the snow swept ice and reach browse along and hanging out over the normal water line that they couldn’t reach without the elevation of the ice.

Turkeys are fine on crusted snow. As long they have mobility they will find food even when they can’t dig down to the ground.

R.S. Bodenhorn

RE: walkin in my woods
 

I should have added this to my previous post but simply didn’t think of it at the time.
We had some warmer weather the past couple of days and by this afternoon a lot of our deep powdery snow was compressed and not nearly as deep as it was. I saw a fair amount of both deer and deer sign on the ridges again today and a lot more turkeys out walking around on the snow traveling to and around the spring seeps.

Today’s weather was a blessing to both the deer and turkeys of this area.

R.S. Bodenhorn

RE: walkin in my woods
 

blue-bird, when you see a lot of crews in woods driving steep sidehills and did not get a doe,cutting the DOE/DMAP permits would not even help.

i could see if everyone was getting a doe but thats not case in clinton/potter county where i hunt a lot.

RE: walkin in my woods
 

i did same thing in my yard ,bob 2 weeks ago.

deer have not returened and RSB was right, today was first day my sqirreals came back to feeder but no deer.

rabbits have been back but now the fox/owls are eating the rabbits as i have them coming to 1 spot i cleared.[:@]

RE: walkin in my woods
 

DOUGE,i bet that was in treasure lake, yep:)

RE: walkin in my woods
 

That picture has been floating the net, and not even taken in PA probably.