My late father, bless his soul, always had a problem understanding why I would head out to hunt deer, especially when the skies opened up and dumped a bunch of rain or snow on his No. 1 son.
"It's stupid," he'd say, "to go out into a bad storm or foul weather just to hunt deer. Why not stay inside where it's warm and dry, and not get sick. It's a wonder all the deer don't die of exposure."
Dad simply didn't understand deer. And his lack of understanding came back to me a few days ago when someone told me it was stupid to hunt deer in bad weather. I wouldn't say it to my father but did tell the other person that "it's my kind of stupid. You don't have to do it, but I enjoy hunting in nasty weather."
The more people have talked about the crummy weather, and the rain of last week, the more I think about how if affects whitetail deer. Many people, who live indoors, always wonder about deer. A common comment is: "It's raining outside. The deer won't move."
They relate to how they wouldn't want to be wandering around outdoors in the rain. They seem to forget that deer live outdoors, day after day, during their entire life. They learn to cope with bad weather or die. For them, there is no choice but to learn to live with bad weather.
Now, for you and me, a bone-numbing rain would make us wet and irritable, and possibly sick if we stayed out too long and got too cold and too wet. Well, how about the deer? How does it affect them when wet and sloppy rain or snow falls, when the temperature rapidly drops, and when strong winds blow.
I've watched deer stand for long periods of time in the rain. I've seen big bucks stand without moving a muscle while two or three inches of wet snow pile up on their back. They've seen or heard something that caught their attention, and are trying to decide what it is. They won't move until they decide if it is safe to start moving again.
They could, if they so chose, wander over and stand under a pine tree that would break up some of the snow. I've watched deer lay in the snow, their body heat turning their snowy bed to ice, while the snow piles up on them. It doesn't seem to bother them a bit providing they can gain access to forage when they get up.
The problem with knowing this is that, like my father, many people unwittingly apply human-like thoughts and feelings to deer. A deer doesn't think or reason like humans, and they simply take what nature hands out and try to make the best of it.
Now, cold and wet (rain or snow) weather when combined with a cold and strong wind, can and will affect deer. I don't quite understand the winter severity index, but when temperature and wind chill factors are crunched together, out pops the winter severity index. It basically tells us how cold it feels when standing outside. When deep snows begin to pile up, and moving from one location to another becomes more difficult for deer, that is when the animals begin to suffer.
It takes more than two or three days of nasty weather to affect deer. If the snow isn't deep, they can browse freely without having to yard up. What we have right now is not harsh enough or nasty enough weather to force deer into a winter yarding situation.
We are still in the early stages of the upcoming winter. In time, the weather will change for the worse, and then winter's effects on deer can and may turn their lives from uncomfortable into a death trap from which there is no possibility of escape.
Winter is one way nature has of reducing herd size. It means survival of the fittest, and the young, weak and worn-down rutting bucks are among the first to perish in a bad winter.
One of the deer's major winter weather problems is slipping on wet, slippery ice. If they fall just right, or cannot get to their feet, they become coyote fodder, and that is not a pretty sight. Neither is starving to death in a yarding area during winter months.
Most deer yards are over-browsed, and fawns cannot reach the browse line, and even if they can, their mother (who is pregnant) will chase her fawns away to preserve that food supply for herself and her unborn fawns. There is little sympathy among wintering deer for young-of-the-year fawns.
Actually, rain rather than snow, allows deer a greater access to standing corn, grasses that grow in the fields, and the natural browse and other forage found in the woods. This present kind of weather can save the life of a big buck or a fawn.
It's when the snow starts falling from dark overhanging clouds, and it begins to pile up, it still isn't really a big problem. It's when the snow reaches belly-level on an adult deer, and they must plow through deep snow to feed, that the wheels start falling off the whitetail deer survival wagon.
Without food, winter deer begin to live off their fat reserves. Skin out a deer during this time of year, and great gobs of fat are collected around the abdominal cavity. As the winter drags on, and forage becomes less abundant and much more difficult to reach, stress begins to play an important role in the lives of wintering deer. The greater the stress from nasty weather and a lack of food, the sooner deer get a fuzzy face and their rib and hip bones begin to show.
Then the bone marrow begins to be used up in a last-ditch effort by a deer to survive, and once that happens, they are dying a slow death. Once any fat reserves in the bone marrow is gone, the deer curl up in the snow and die.
Whitetails are amazing creatures, and given enough food and the proper thermal cover that offers some protection from the elements, they can live to a ripe old age. However, if they go into the winter in poor shape, and have little opportunity to feed before deep snow covers the ground, the winter die-off can be horrific.
I toured several Upper Peninsula deer yards several years ago. A DNR wildlife biologist and I strapped on snowshoes and walked two miles back in to visit a deer yard.
The browse line was nearly seven feet off the ground. Bucks, does and fawns lay scattered like jackstraws across the yarding area, and the few deer that were still alive, stood idly by while the humans counted dead animals. They quit counting when it rose to over 100 deer in that one small area, and then they snowshoed in to another area several miles away.
It was more of the same. Dead and dying deer everywhere. Interspersed among the deer tracks were those of bobcats, coyotes and wolves. The winter feeding season for carnivores was underway.
It takes a bunch of snow, and over-used yarding areas, to produce massive die-offs like what we saw. Now, with the chronic wasting disease scare and bovine tuberculosis looming over our deer herd, it is no longer legal for sportsmen and their families to feed deer behind their homes during the winter months.
It makes me wonder how our wild turkeys will survive without the public handouts that have enabled people to feed them corn in areas with high bird numbers. I'm fearful that many of our birds will perish if we have heavy snow or a lingering ice storm.
Ice storms do great harm to deer as well. Any travel by deer will result in the ice cutting their legs. That leaves a blood trail that predators can easily follow.
It's when this type of weather sets in that pet owners should keep their dogs on a leash, in a kennel or under direct supervision in the house. Dogs should not be left to roam outside at night because they will chase and kill deer that become mired in deep snow.
Deer live and they die, just as humans do, but it's far more humane for a deer to die from a hunters' well-placed arrow or bullet, than to starve slowly to death during the winter months. The animals only hope is to die before the coyotes find them, and begin eating them alive.
That is truly an awful way to go.
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