Lots of hunters are fretting about what the long, hard winter means for the 2014 deer season. But the question is, “Was it really a long, hard winter?”
If you paid unusually high bills to heat your house — like I did — then yes, it was a long, hard winter. I don’t blame anyone frustrated by the lack of a “January thaw.” The persistent cold kept a lot of us indoors while winter dragged on. But was it anything unusual for deer?
Remember that deer are equipped for cold. The hollow hairs of their winter coat offer powerful insulation. And they adapt their diet to browse — those woody twigs from last year’s new growth. In deep snow and cold they don’t move much to conserve energy, so most of us saw few deer through the winter.
So, was winter really that bad for the deer herd? That depends on what aspect of the winter you’re looking at:
• For sure, we had the coldest winter in decades. But cold temps don’t always translate to a tough winter. The deer of the northern Midwest, Alberta, Saskatchewan and northern New York and New England experience severe cold every winter. So deer are built to take it.
• We also had the longest winter in many years. We anxiously awaited opportunities to get out into the spring woods, to say nothing of lower heating bills. But prolonged, unseasonably cold weather doesn’t necessarily mean a hardship for animals.
• The winter hardship for deer is deep snow. It weakens them and makes them more vulnerable to predation. But in the Southern Tier of New York counties and the northern tier of Pennsylvania counties, most places did not experience prolonged, heavy snowcover. And that saved a lot of deer.
We had pockets of heavy snow, but in many places less snow than usual. The extreme cold caused the Great Lakes (where most of the moisture comes from) to freeze over earlier than normal. Some areas in the east had heavier snowfalls, but it’s snow accumulation that’s an adversity for deer — not how many storms we had.
The biggest issue is the food supply. Good acorn crops last fall eased the hardship on deer, as did many places where farmers had to leave corn standing. It’s also increasingly common for people to be more sensitive to the needs of deer. Some hunters who lease land contract with farmers to leave a little corn standing. And more hunters than ever are planting winter food plots to help deer winter over.
Despite the prolonged cold, deer in most places had access to enough food to see them through.
There were exceptions, of course. Wherever the snow depth limited movement, wherever food supplies were poor and wherever predation was heavy, deer struggled. Those may be the places you want to avoid hunting this coming fall.
One surprising sign I’ve noticed this year — and a sign that deer did well — is that many people have seen deer holding antlers well into the spring. I saw two bucks still holding antlers on March 15. I ran into a friend at the local diner who said he saw a buck on April 7 still carrying one antler. And I heard from a friend who saw a buck with both antlers early in the morning of April 9.
Antlers on bucks’ heads from mid-March on are a sign that bucks are healthy and not under stress. They haven’t been weakened by deep snow, or malnourished due to a lack of food, or hounded by predators. Bucks carrying antlers into the spring is a sign that a long, cold winter that was frustrating to us was not necessarily a special hardship for deer.
It might sound counterintuitive, but overall, a “hard” winter due to prolonged cold temperatures and a “hard” winter due to heavy snowcover are two different conditions for deer. We had the first everywhere, but in many places we did not have the second. And it’s the second that is a much bigger threat to deer.
(When the “Everyday Hunter” isn’t hunting, he’s thinking about hunting, talking about hunting, dreaming about hunting, writing about hunting, or wishing he were hunting. He is the author of “Growing Up With Guns,” and his website is www.EverydayHunter.com.)
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