I'm worried about this here in northern va. as well,,,we started out in early dec with well below normal temps. and then the snow started! Im gonna try to get a couple hundred lbs of feed out to one of our hunting spots today and check the pine thicket out to see if this is where the deer are yarding up,,,but like you i have not seen a deer since the big storm hit and the only track i have seen you could tell the deer was jumping and bottoming out to get thru.

The news said this was the snowiest month EVER on record here. IF we dont lose deer this year then we NEVER will. Can pretty much say already what pgc will say. The deer are fine now. Completely fine... Knowing darn well some were lost, as its only to be expected.

Then a few years down the line they'll point back to this year, and the dead found by wco mortality surveying, and say it was because of too many deer and we need to kill more and not because of the extreme conditions. lmao.

I've been feeding the deer and birds behind my house they are eating 50 lbs every 2 to 3 days and seem to be holding there own han'nt seen 1 with antlers in awhile so I'm hoping the snow goes away and I can get after some sheds.

do control deer populations. For some, if it happened thirty or forty years ago, it never happened. Some have to learn the hard way.

At least in PA, they'll probably blame the PGC for the frigid snowy winter.

Yeah because everyone knows Pgc are always unfairly picked on by the irrational meanie sportsmen who have no legitimate gripes. PGC are just a bunch of innocent victims pure of heart...

Nonsense aside, there are alot of people who misunderstand and then unintentionally misconstrue basic concepts and distort them far out of context. Deer herds in line with habitat will fair better than one that isnt. And for the most part, ours always was under max cc, and surely is now! lol.

However..harsh extreme winters will take deer even when the herd is "inline" with the habitat. Ask Maine. If you lose significant numbers of deer during "normal" conditions for winter, then and only then do you have a problem....and in Pa losses have never been above that which should only be considered normal and expected. Minimal.

Pgc had done winter mortality "counts" by surveying sections of each wmu. There has never been any real issues and to my understanding they dont even bother doing it currently.

Im pretty sure, a higher mortality count would be expected this year than a normal year. Again, only to be expected.

Our population was always under max indeed! That couldn't be more wrong. I well remember the days when a Sullivan county buck was lucky if it weighed more than 100 pounds. Why? Because there were too many deer for the available feed and the woods had a browse line that you could see 200 yards through. I've never before seen the good body size deer that are there now.

Fact remains, as i said, significant winter mortality isnt and wasnt a problem in Pa.

As for body size, deer in this area are no bigger than they were previously at all.

im in raleigh county and my snow just melted off to see grass last week and there is still piles in walmart and other parking lots we have had over 110 inches of snow so far this year tv 4 news

Some of these issues we all see with late fawns being born is a direct result of having a young (1.5 -2.5 yrs old) overall herd. Bucks are breeding later and younger does are coming into heat later. Sometimes into Feb-March and later. It is the way the herd as a whole tries to rebound with out of whack buck to doe ratios and over hunting pressures. Then mother nature reacts with big storms to stop the revolving door and squash the cycle. IMHO we aren't helping it either.

Ain't nature neato!