Often people question why we don’t have more deer and blame the lack of deer on hunters harvesting too many deer. Though it is possible to over harvest deer in some small pockets of any area I believe the following pictures show the biggest reason we don’t have more deer in most areas.

These pictures were taken last week in one of the wintering grounds areas near Ridgway.

The first picture shows how the deer chewed the rhododendron down to what was under the frozen snow crust where they couldn’t dig down any further.



This picture shows how the deer ate all of the rhododendron that wasn’t buried beneath the snow to as high as they could reach.



A view of how the hungry deer ate all of the hemlock, down to the stem, that was above the crust line.



Make no mistake about the fact that the deer in this area proved that their numbers are about to the maximum the winter could have supported. Even with the winter having opened when it did it will likely still result in reduced fawn survival rates once again this year due to many not reaching the correct birth weight due to the stress mom endured through the winter.

Dick Bodenhorn

Did you happen to find any dead ones along the creek bottoms?

Quote :

s-10 wrote : Did you happen to find any dead ones along the creek bottoms?

I haven’t walked any of the creek bottoms yet. We still have too much snow in some of the areas. Many of my roads are still closed from too much snow or so icy you simply can’t travel them. Plus in some of the worst places we still have close to a foot of hard packed snow in the woods.

I’ll try to get a look along a few of the streams in the wintering grounds sometime toward the end of the month or perhaps a little sooner if things open up enough sooner.

I really don’t expect to find much winter mortality but I do pretty much expect to see a reduced fawn recruitment rate when the volunteers run their survey routes this fall.

Dick Bodenhorn