Outdoor

Took a ride with the better half to see a deer feeding yard in Northern New Hampshire. These feeding yards don't start until there is a lot of snow. I hunt up there a few days every year and thought it would be a good idea to get a visual on what bucks I never got to see this past season(before they shed).
There were deer all over the place...bedded down with-in yards of the road...stopped for breakfast and ran into a game biologist..They (he) claims and I have read articles feeding deer is a very bad idea. There are a bunch of reasons but this one I had to pass along..They(he) claims deer will travel from 20 miles to feed at these yards! Even though there were a lot of deer there...more than what I could imagine to be in that immediate area I just find it hard to believe this is possible. 20 miles? Ok I'll bite how do they know?
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Invented

Whats a deer feeding yard? Don't think we have one of those in Virginia

halcon

hunter60

we have 1 in ny i've seen as many as 4 or 5 hundred deer at a time 1 year they put radio callers on some of the deer 1 adult buck went 13 miles when he left also pa. put callers on button bucks to see how far they went in the spring they averaged about 8 miles the farthest was 20

mikej92280

During the rut or if pressured a whitetail deer will travel up to 15 miles. Otherwise they rarely leave a 1 mile square area they're whole life.

Ignatz

A deer yard is an area of pine or hemlock trees that the deer take cover under during the winter. The trees block the wind and hold in heat and limit the snow depth. In northen New England the factor that limits the deer herd is the winter kill.

EagleLake

yea ive seen them lots of deer bed there.

Outdoor

PJ- I lived in VA never saw one there either

These Feeding yards are set up by private individuals...someone who wants to feed the deer & watch them. Doesn't have to be in a hemlock grove or something like that as a matter of fact these are in open fileds...people think they are really helping by setting these up.

I was just surprised at the 20 Miles..but you have to wonder how "a deer" knows when to come to these yards and/or is this a message of sorts passed from other deer? weird is it not?

Rick Teal

Deer yards are quite common in Ontario, as they are throughout the north.

We have a large deer yard near Loring in the Parry Sound district that was left as the only one viable in the area after a population crash and severe wolf predation in the early '60's. This deer yard has been known to hold as many as 25,000 deer, and distributes deer over a very large area - over a radius of 20 miles or more. In recent years some new yards have been starting up, so the size of this yard and distances travelled have been dropping.

Cisco

There was a story in Whitetail Hunter last year about deer that were captured and collored and then moved great distances, up to 100 miles. I think this study was done in Texas, at any rate a single doe was moved 100 miles and ended up back in her orginal home range a few months later. So the article went anyway.