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What stresses deer more.....?

S

Slinger

New Member
What is more stressful, cold or snow?

I am admittedly a trophy hunter first and the recent cold snap has me wondering how many bucks will be shed by late muzzy. I think it was the 2011 season when we had record snow in December and it seemed like 75% of the bucks were shed.
 
If say the hard cap on snow is worse than the cold. At least with cold they can still easily locate food. If you get a ice cap on snow it can be extremely tough for them to feed properly.
 
Several years ago we had snow from the 1st of December to late March and most of the time it was 12 inches or so. During LM I found several dead deer and others who were so thin you could see bones from lack of food. This place had a lot of deer in the section and you would see 50 to 60 deer consistently just in the small section I could hunt.
 
Agree with deep snow being the killer. Up here we lose a significant % of our deer herd each year to winter kill.

Another consideration in additon to those mentioned above is that predators e.g. coyotes can often walk on top of crusted snow giving them more mobility than the deer who must expend more energy "wading" through it.

BTW would anyone be so kind as to give me approximate current snow depths in NE Iowa / Decorah area?
 
Deep snow is very bad, but 2 inches of snow is not nearly as bad as several days of sub-0 temps in my opinion. I just check the harvest report and as of this morning there have already been 127 shed bucks reported.
 
bowmaker said:
Deep snow is very bad, but 2 inches of snow is not nearly as bad as several days of sub-0 temps in my opinion. I just check the harvest report and as of this morning there have already been 127 shed bucks reported.
Click to expand...

Kind of makes you wonder if that is accurate though doesn't it?
 
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