Scarcity of Deer ???

[JBen]

Can only guess at this, but if I'm the MNR and trying to manage a province as big as Ontario, with so many issues and problems (Moose, Walleye, Asian Carp, WTs, Rabbits, Coyotes, Wolves, and on and on and on) on a shoe string budget.

For Whitetails, I would monitor the winter yards. I don't know from how far deer migrate into the Loring Yards. From all over 47, I imagine and maybe beyond. But for a few months each year.........And also why when I hear word of month the MNR went in there in the spring of 14 and found 20, 30 does dead and piled up under trees........I don't apply as much salt as I might normally...

One day theres just the residents, the next poof thousands of deer concentrated in a small area, then as if on cue one morning in Feb/March poof they are all gone, back to wherever they came from. Would I think tell me, how the deer from a big chunk of central Ontario are faring............

When we arrived on the 8th, the migration had just started, deer were on the move. When the 3.5 day blizzard hit on Sun night it shut down until Wednesday night when the dam opened and they started pouring in from wherever they waited out the storm. Sadly that just left us basically 1 day to hunt.

I received an email from the people that live there. As I said, in years gone by they would be host to hundreds of deer over the winter.

Not 1 week after we left, they started showing up right in front of our cabin. Lol, Murphys Law.



If this were taken on Dec 15th, thats where we park our bikes and leave Bows.............


I imagine by now there are even more showing up in their yard every day.

[Monster29/66]

[COLOR=#333333] "When 120 Turks move into a 15 acre cut corn field that is left not disced for the deer as a food source and start eating a cob a day minimum...[COLOR=#333333]What is left for the deer that need that corn to fatten up for winter. "

I think you had better study up on the habits of deer and what they eat.

Deer survive mainly on browse, not corn[/QUOTE]

Jaycee

Deer eat browse in the middle of winter when other food sources aren't available because they are buried under 2 feet of snow. That's is natures way of adapting to conditions. Tree branches have a habit of being above snow.

I know for a fact deer will winter beside a standing corn field if its available as we left a field for sileage behind my house 4 years ago and guess what.

The deer never went to the yard down the road that happens to be beside a 100 acre field that has been left standing for spring sileage for their dairy cattle . They stayed right in my managed forest browsing on buds and chewing kernels off corn from the standing corn.

You keep studying the Internet to hone your outdoor skills... I'll form my opinions based on what I see in the woods swamps and fields in my back yard.

What was the point of your thread to complain that MNR wasn't doing its job, deer were scarce and based on here say coyotes ate 9 fawns.. Why do you think I asked you to get pictures because I knew it was complete BS...


It sounds like you had a tough hunt and are looking to blame everyone or everything out of your control for it.

Ohh well study up on the Internet for next season or get out there kill some yotes, let some does walk and try and have a better season.

Ps have you watched turkeys eat the same buds off Trees that deer browse off... I HAVE.

[jaycee]

[COLOR=#333333] "When 120 Turks move into a 15 acre cut corn field that is left not disced for the deer as a food source and start eating a cob a day minimum...[COLOR=#333333]What is left for the deer that need that corn to fatten up for winter. "

I think you had better study up on the habits of deer and what they eat.

Deer survive mainly on browse, not corn

Jaycee

Deer eat browse in the middle of winter when other food sources aren't available because they are buried under 2 feet of snow. That's is natures way of adapting to conditions. Tree branches have a habit of being above snow.

I know for a fact deer will winter beside a standing corn field if its available as we left a field for sileage behind my house 4 years ago and guess what.

The deer never went to the yard down the road that happens to be beside a 100 acre field that has been left standing for spring sileage for their dairy cattle . They stayed right in my managed forest browsing on buds and chewing kernels off corn from the standing corn.

You keep studying the Internet to hone your outdoor skills... I'll form my opinions based on what I see in the woods swamps and fields in my back yard.

What was the point of your thread to complain that MNR wasn't doing its job, deer were scarce and based on here say coyotes ate 9 fawns.. Why do you think I asked you to get pictures because I knew it was complete BS...


It sounds like you had a tough hunt and are looking to blame everyone or everything out of your control for it.

Ohh well study up on the Internet for next season or get out there kill some yotes, let some does walk and try and have a better season.

Ps have you watched turkeys eat the same buds off Trees that deer browse off... I HAVE.[/QUOTE]



You know absolutely nothing about me, I am not an internet type person, and I have not hunted this year due to knee replacement surgery.
I we live in the country, [40 years ] born and raised in the country, what I speak of is what I see right in our back yard, fields and the surrounding country, and from information from the surrounding farmers/landowners who are out there every day.
I have been hunting now for 60 years, which is most likely longer than you have been on this earth, and more than likely killed more deer than you have seen, by use of bow, shotgun, muzzleloader and rifle.
As I said when I speak I state what I see and have seen, other than what I was told about the pictures of coyotes dragging in fawns to feed their young, I posted that as info. as I thought the number was rather high, but they have/had the pictures to prove it.
You can have your own opinion, but you know what they say about opinions and certain body parts,"everyone has them."

[Monster29/66]

Jaycee


Others have stated back to back severe winters are a contributing factor but you've dismissed that given some guy you know, has pics of 11 fawns being eaten by wile e coyote in a den.

Is this why the Road Runner cartoon was taken off air.

Ps if you've killed more deer than I've seen and let go..don't worry about coyotes... It's you sir that would of wiped out the deer herd.

[JBen]

Interesting.
Sometimes the world works in funny ways. Just what we are in part talking about.

1. MNR’s business has expanded to encompass new responsibilities, such as land useplanning in the Far North and the use of Crown land for green energy projects3. At the same time natural resource management is also becoming more challenging: Ontario’s population is growing, its climate is changing, human activities from both within and outside of Ontario continually alter our land and water systems, and patterns of resources are driven by global economic forces and societal trends. The conflicts and competinguses created by these pressures steadily increase and accumulate. "
   
   **********
   
   Funny no mention of utterly inadequate fundingis, just more and more responsibilities and demands on the MNRF. Nor how that same growing, ever expanding population that continually alters "nature" and thus "natural balance", doesn't help pay the cost.
   
   just anglers and hunters

**********
"Another example of how MNR has evolved a management system to consider thebroader-scale landscape is the creation of nine Cervid Ecological Zones as part ofOntario’s Cervid Ecological Framework9. For each zone, the Framework contains broadguidance about how Ontario’s cervid species (moose, deer, caribou and elk) should bemanaged in relation to each other across a given landscape. Cervid Ecological Zonesbuild from existing Wildlife Management Unit boundaries but incorporate additionalinformation about landscape-level climate and habitat variation from the ELC system,species distribution and species abundance. "
*************

Theres a boat load to read and digest and try to ascertain how changes might affect this or that. How changes (and what the changes are exactly) might affect all different synergies and relationships. Aka how a change to say um

Coyote/wolf management
Might impact small game, and or cervids in central Ontario (the issue really in this thread), or how various things ( the same but also habitat loss, urban sprawl) and even weather like a couple back to back killer winters, might combine to create problems.

https://dr6j45jk9xcmk.cloudfront.net...rod-101043.pdf

Which seems odd because everything we can see on the surface (aka recent changes) flies in the face of this so called broader landscape approach.


The EBR for small game/fur bearing changes from which the above is linked.
https://www.ebr.gov.on.ca/ERS-WEB-Ex...language=en%3f

[Noseyarentcha]

I did read that in areas of high snow that the deer will eat the trees that they can reach because the snow is too deep for them to uncover food. That makes complete sense to me. Snow can wreck havoc on deer and they become stuck in areas of high snow....with no food, they die.

[jaycee]

I did read that in areas of high snow that the deer will eat the trees that they can reach because the snow is too deep for them to uncover food. That makes complete sense to me. Snow can wreck havoc on deer and they become stuck in areas of high snow....with no food, they die.

Found this on a different site;
Diet[COLOR=#555555][edit[COLOR=#555555]]

[COLOR=#252525]White-tailed deer eat large amounts of food, commonly eating legumes and foraging on other plants, including shoots, leaves, cacti (in deserts), prairie forbs,^[25] and grasses. They also eat acorns, fruit, and corn. Their special stomachs allow them to eat some things humans cannot, such as mushrooms and poison ivy. Their diets vary by season according to availability of food sources. They also eat hay, grass, white clover, and other foods they can find in a farm yard. Though almost entirely herbivorous, white-tailed deer have been known to opportunistically feed on nesting songbirds, field mice, and birds trapped in mist nets, if the need arises.^[26]
[COLOR=#252525]The white-tailed deer is a ruminant, which means it has a four-chambered stomach. Each chamber has a different and specific function that allows the deer to eat a variety of different foods, digesting it at a later time in a safe area of cover. The stomach hosts a complex set of microbes that change as the deer's diet changes through the seasons. If the microbes necessary for digestion of a particular food (e.g., hay) are absent, it will not be ​digested.<sup>[27]

Hmm! makes me wounder how they survive anywhere north of Barrie , where there is very little to absolutely no corn grown at all.
The deer up at the camp above Dorset that we have killed, must have been actually starving as I have never seen corn growing there in the bush, yet these deer usually had large amounts of white fat on their bodies and seemed to be very healthy, very strange???</sup>

[JBen]

Its a little more than just available browse they can get to NAY. The Loring Yards are likely the most famous/storied in Ontario. One reason sooooooo many deer migrate there when the snow starts to fall is because its rich/thick with hemlock ( wide at the top) and that helps keep snow off the ground like an umbrella. We hunt the migration, are right smack dab in the middle of the yard and which means we hunt "the runways". In short trails the deer know are there despite the snow and use year after year, generation after generation. I imagine all the yards are much the same, places deer flock to, in order to survive the winter that have certain ecological/habitat features.. Depending on where in the province their need for yards may not be as great (aka S. Ontario).

A nice read on some of the history behind the Loring yards. And yep the MNR to knows all about it and why its such a good barometer.
http://www.northbaynipissing.com/new...-deer-country/

A little more that kind of looks at the habitat and run ways. And I think talks about the winter feeding program that was nixed around y2k.
http://www.steerto.com/?p=820

And finally a thread from the spring of 2014.
Page 2 has some interesting comments and dire predictions.
http://www.oodmag.com/community/show...d-Status/page2

[Noseyarentcha]

This was good info from your link Jben.

"It is estimated the Loring area has a “carrying capacity” of between 8,000-10,000 deer. Using the idiom “in a nutshell” applies here. Deer migrate, from their summer range, into this wintering yard. Some deer will travel a distance of more than 100 kilometres, seeking refuge for the winter. The deer are attracted to the area for the winter shelter, found under the canopy of the towering hemlock forests. Ground snow depths are reduced under these protective conifers, making travel throughout the winter less demanding on the deer. There is more to understand."

The last link was sad ...

[JBen]

Yeah the last link is kind of sad. Sad that many people who spend time in the bush knew in the spring of 2014....what was coming (without knowing the winter that was coming)...
And still it took another full year and the winter of 2014-5 before tags started being reduced (drastically). In the fall of 2015 anlterless validations were gutted as were additional. This past fall (2016) basically zero available and while there were a few anlterless, getting one of those, a person should have probably run out and bought a lottery ticket as well.

Ive spoken about the place we go to many times in many threads. How the guy that lives there and owns property has a couple BMAs, knows the land and bush like few others (his family has owned land in Golden Valley since the 60s or so ) I kind of laughed when that one link pretty much took me right to the door of the cabin and the old viewing platform. "guaranteed to see deer on the way".
lol, not any more............
/sigh

Most of the people that spend significant time in the Loring yards or live there year round. Saw the dead deer piled up under the trees ( The one writer in one link spoke of deer stepping off the runways to find browse and.....) in the spring of 2014 and knew not only had there been a big kill, and awful lot of fawns were going to be absorbed by starving Does. And lo and behold very, very few fawns were seen in the summer/fall of 2014.

Yeah obviously dogs (coyotes/wolves and maybe even bears) are putting a bite into them as well. Certainly not helping, hurting-making it worse. The same people that live there or spend a lot of time there have seen a very noticeable increase in the numbers of dogs. But they don't blame the dogs, though they might wonder why they are allowed to make a bad situation worse. Especially when everyone (except perhaps some beuracrats at QP) knows that things are a changing, constantly and very little of it for the better.