Your Experiences hunting after a Hard Winter

[sclancy27]

That winter had an even worse effect on pronghorn than it did deer north of the Missouri. We had a nearly 100% mortality on fawns and yearlings. I believe it was Andrew Jakes that had a study that pointed to nearly every surviving doe from that winter aborted the fetus but was unable to pass the femur bone of the fetus and became sterile for the rest of their life.

So you were left with repopulating an entire area with only the does and yearlings that were not bred going into that winter. It took at least 7-8 years to even see 50% of the pronghorn that used to be north of the river and Fort Peck.

I remember driving from Fred Robinson to Malta and seeing almost nothing for years after that winter. Antelope were getting hit by trains, falling through the ice on Fort Peck, dying in mass. Do you have a link to that study? I guess if you abort a fetus late term there are bound to be complications but that is crazy.

 

[BuzzH]

THAT was a brutal winter. I can't account for antler size, but yeah lots of dead deer in the roads. If they didn't starve, they got hit by cars. I remember seeing more wolves and lions than usual the next year, but their numbers dropped subsequently. Rebound took 3-4 years.

I killed a pretty good whitetail in 1996 that winter, lots of snow for sure.

The area I hunt in NW Montana, the deer always go into winter in excellent body condition and were able to pull through due to the amount of mature doug-fir/P pine stands. The deer survived pretty easily, for the most part, jumping between the crowns in the tree wells, where there was plenty of good shrub cover for them to feed on.

The Fall of 1997, I missed a chip shot at one of the better bucks I've seen in that country. There were fewer 1.5 year old deer as I think some, but certainly not all the fawns didn't make it through that winter.

That year did produce the best runs of king salmon on the Clearwater and little salmon I've seen in my life, so there was a major plus side for all that snow.

 

[Deleted member 18333]

I recall reading a study that linked antler size to the stress a doe was in during pregnancy. If they were stressed (during a bad winter) the buck fawn would never develop a large set of antlers. I don't recall how they determined if the buck would have had big antlers in the first place though.

An article about the study you referenced.

Study: Deer’s lifelong fate is affected by mother’s health at birth - WyoFile

Multi-generational research shows health of a mule deer mother at time of birth may influence lifelong size of offspring.

wyofile.com

The study. It details how they determined the antler size correlation.

https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1161&context=nrm_pubs

 

[WYelker]

Honestly. Right now in centeral
way I don’t think hardly anything younger than 1.5 and anything older than 4 survived. Both the lopes and deer I am seeing left all look to be young prime age adults. I am afraid a lot of the older age class is gone and that we lost all
Of last years babies and that all of this years babies are aborted.

It is going to be a good year for tag soup…

 

[DFS]

The green up is a hard time for deer as well. I’ve watched this little one the last couple days and I will be dang surprised if it makes it.

 

[Bam Bam]

The green up is a hard time for deer as well. I’ve watched this little one the last couple days and I will be dang surprised if it makes it.

Why is green-up hard on deer? Do you mean that some of the deer are so malnourished that they die, even after the plants start growing again?

 

[DFS]

Why is green-up hard on deer? Do you mean that some of the deer are so malnourished that they die, even after the plants start growing again?

Somebody smarter than me should probably answer this but I believe it’s hard on their digestive system to transition.

 

[WanderWoman]

Somebody smarter than me should probably answer this but I believe it’s hard on their digestive system to transition.

Greenup is good for deer. The “surf the green wave” theory on migration is centered on the fact that deer and other ungulates track the leading edge of greenup to capitalize on forbs and grasses at their most nutritious levels.

What’s hard on deer in the winter, and what I think you’re thinking of, is when they’re in starvation mode and come across something like a haystack. At that point, their gut microbes aren’t adapted to that “green,” more nutritious forage and that’s when you see a bunch of deer die with full bellies.

 

[Ben Long]

I killed a pretty good whitetail in 1996 that winter, lots of snow for sure.

The area I hunt in NW Montana, the deer always go into winter in excellent body condition and were able to pull through due to the amount of mature doug-fir/P pine stands. The deer survived pretty easily, for the most part, jumping between the crowns in the tree wells, where there was plenty of good shrub cover for them to feed on.

The Fall of 1997, I missed a chip shot at one of the better bucks I've seen in that country. There were fewer 1.5 year old deer as I think some, but certainly not all the fawns didn't make it through that winter.

That year did produce the best runs of king salmon on the Clearwater and little salmon I've seen in my life, so there was a major plus side for all that snow.

It takes more than a one-in-a-century winter to stop Buzz!

 

[squirrel]

Why is green-up hard on deer? Do you mean that some of the deer are so malnourished that they die, even after the plants start growing again?

The very first green on winter range is almost always on the berm/mound from the highway being cut into the landscape. Both sides of the road (often but not always depending on direction of exposure). The deer will completely disappear for two/three weeks following the melt line of the deep snow. Like clockwork as soon as those berms green up they come back and it is a final slaughter as they stumble across the double yellow from one strip of green to the other. Happens every year, due to start here in about a week I would guess,, as they have been absent for 1-2 weeks, hanging up about a mile from the danger zone. YMMV that's just what happens here.

 

[Irrelevant]

Rare ‘inverted’ snowpack magnified winter's heavy toll on wildlife - WyoFile

Precipitation and water content in the mountain snowfields were just above average, but not extraordinary, in most of western Wyoming. At low elevations, though, the snow depths shattered records — and killed tens of thousands of ungulates.

wyofile.com

 

[DFS]

Greenup is good for deer. The “surf the green wave” theory on migration is centered on the fact that deer and other ungulates track the leading edge of greenup to capitalize on forbs and grasses at their most nutritious levels.

What’s hard on deer in the winter, and what I think you’re thinking of, is when they’re in starvation mode and come across something like a haystack. At that point, their gut microbes aren’t adapted to that “green,” more nutritious forage and that’s when you see a bunch of deer die with full bellies.

The dinky neighborhood fawns hit the dirt right when the green up starts and you would think they had made it. And spring storms are killers, E.g. last year. I swear I read a study that initial green up is hard on them when they switch from winter forage but maybe I’m not remembering that correctly.