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