Rough times for whitetails?

[ArlyA]

Funny that someone posted "all the deer in the UP have been eaten by wolves". The UP is where we live, so with the deer and turkey population seemingly so high, how did those wolves miss so many!

 

[Dftodd]

We have so many deer. Come take some of ours. They are a nuisance

Yup, they are very fat and happy in my area. Plenty of wild feed for them. It's also to legal feed and bait.

So they have plenty of choices for food.

They just had a weekend only velvet bow hunt a few weeks ago.

Bow season started this weekend I believe.

Muzzle loader start in two weeks.

Heck, if I chose to hunt, I wouldn't have to go very far. I had a doe bedded down about 20ft from my truck in the yard last week.

 

[Hay Dude]

Yup, they are very fat and happy in my area. Plenty of wild feed for them. It's also to legal feed and bait.

So they have plenty of choices for food.

They just had a weekend only velvet bow hunt a few weeks ago.

Bow season started this weekend I believe.

Muzzle loader start in two weeks.

Heck, if I chose to hunt, I wouldn't have to go very far. I had a doe bedded down about 20ft from my truck in the yard last week.

I’m ready

 

[LouNY]

Whitetail populations can vary tremendously in just a short distance. Normally they are browses animal eating leaves and twigs. So that brushy areas are good for them. That said many in my area are becoming grazing animals in hay fields and during the winter the rye planted for cover crops. Corn fields as the corn matures become less interesting to them. young corn plants and corn cobs in the milk stage they will decimate but once the corn starts drying down and getting hard they don't care for it as much.
In my area we have an over population of deer, but they are short on bucks so the does are getting breed later and later, some not till their 2 or 3rd heat cycle. So the fawns get dropper latter and latter, resulting in smaller deer having to survive the winter and being smaller animals because of getting stunted when young. The damned DEC can't get their heads out of their butts and have a couple of years of does only to get the ratio back in order and get decent sized deer again. I could harvest a dozen antlerless deer in a fall easily, most of them under 100 pounds live weight.

 

[BnRidge]

And I can still remember seeing deer prints for the first time in the 70s on the farm. Now there are several "herds" of 15-20. One doe, completely docile, wanders around with triplets behind her. Where there was two, there's now 5.

 

[CalG]

And I can still remember seeing deer prints for the first time in the 70s on the farm. Now there are several "herds" of 15-20. One doe, completely docile, wanders around with triplets behind her. Where there was two, there's now 5.

"They are so cute!"

 

[QRTRHRS]

I don't want any more around then what we already see. I did not consider that they prefer younger standing corn. They sure do clean up the cracked corn in my bird seed. Just commenting and pointing out that they may be moving around more. I had one jump over the guardrail one night around midnight. I was moving along about 70 with my Dodge dually with a full 100 gallon fuel tank on my bed. Hood, grill intercooler, radiator, etc. I don't remember if I had deer whistles on the truck or not? I am a firm believer in them. I first tried them after reading about a local rural police department reducing their hits with them. The area had a lot of orchards and I would see deer look up as I approached.

Ha, as if hitting that deer that time was not bad enough, the area also had bear crossing signs that were put up after some pretty bad collisions.

 

[Cycledude]

Waaaaay to many deer in my area, wish they would do something to get fewer deer

 

[WM75Guy]

Mine seem to be fine. Same 3 come around almost every night. I do throw a little deer corn out under the tree for them.

 

[DK35vince]

We have a lot of them here, and healthy looking.
Sham to see so many hit along the road, I have deer running in front of me nearly every mourning just trying to drive to work
We put out corn and have half dozen apple trees, so multiple deer in our yard nearly every day