Rough times for whitetails?

[QRTRHRS]

Other than the recent remnants of Hurricane Helene, it's the toasty dry here all summer. (No damage, no power loss for us) Our property is on a ridge. Ours and our neighbors land are laid out like a hand with gullys and ridges. The gulllys are heavily wooded and surround about 3/4 of our property so we always have deer in our yard.

I don't bother them so they just stay put when I am out and about. I noticed that they seem a bit skinny? Wormy maybe? I think it is a lack of nutrition. The grass is dry as are the leaves. No acorns on two trees that hover over my one pasture and make a lot of work for me to clean up.

They are around off and on all day long, looking to clean up the birdseed that I put on trays on the ground for the ground feeding birds. They had it good while my apple, peach and pear trees were dropping fruit. Yesterday, they were right by my deck eating this one varigated bush down to the "nubbins". There are also corn fields close by that have not yet been harvested. I would think that they would be decimating those crops.

Anyway, if indeed they are having to forage more for food then I would expect them to be getting hit and killed more than usual in the fall.

 

[Runner]

I think they would go extinct in my area if not for my apples, shrubs and bird bath.

 

[EddieWalker]

Deer populations tend to increase over time, until there are too many deer for the land to support. Then Mother Nature kills off most of them with starvation and disease. An area in South East Idaho that was famous for it's huge mule deer had this happen one year and 90% of the deer died over the winter.

 

[Hay Dude]

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

 

[Racer4]

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

Same here.

I had an apple tree fall over. Mind you, I have 3 1/2 acres surrounded by woods. Should be plenty of food out there. Acorns are dropping everywhere. 9 deer were in the backyard eating the leaves off the apple tree. 7 were bucks! Everything from a spike buck to a 6 and an 8 pointer. Tree was stripped of leaves in 12 hours.

 

[ArlyA]

To many here. Can we send you some??

 

[DarkBlack]

Plenty here too.

 

[kenmbz]

We have so many deer that it is hard not to see them every day.
Worried that one hard winter and I will find carcasses everywhere.
Already finding some deer parts, like part of a leg in the shared road btw neighbor and my house.
We have 4-5 new bucks born last year from stubby to 4 and 5 points.
Lots of fawns born on our property and our neighbors. Maybe 10 or so.
Have to drive slow as they wander in the road a lot.

 

[bdhsfz6]

If you run low, come up to PA and help yourself.

PA is #4 in the US for road kill. I can't drive anywhere around here without seeing a carcass on the side of the road.

 

[CalG]

Local white tails are looking very healthy in my area. At least the many that I have seen.
They should! They have eaten every leaf off of every Hosta plant for a radius of about 5 miles. I don't keep track out further ;-)

 

[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