Deer and snow/cold

Suther

Suther

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So I was hoping you guys could help me understand deer a bit better. I started hunting a year ago, and we are nearing the end of my second season with very little to show for it. I have spent quite a few days out there, and while I love being in the outdoors, it is getting pretty discouraging to spend all this money on gas, tags, ect ect and coming home empty-handed every single time.

I am wondering how they tend to react to the cold and the snow. I tried to do some research online on the topic, but everything is about White Tail deer out east, and Im trying to hunt Mulies out west.

Specifically, I spent Friday night/Saturday morning outside of Pemberton. It was well below freezing, -7 to -14 or so. The only thing we saw in about 7 hours (2 Friday night and 5 Saturday morn) was a single bobcat. That was around 11am, when I was headed back to the truck to head home. We also spent about 4 hours driving around Friday trying to find places to hunt, but the truck couldn't get into the spots we had wanted to go to due to the snow.

So I guess my question is two-fold. When is it too cold for deer, and when is the snow too deep for deer? I feel like the snow wasn't the issue (it was only a foot deep or so) but I think it was too cold. Especially for the morning in a valley, where the sun doesn't reach until noon...

Im thinking when its that cold (-10ish), they are not in the valley bottom so much as on any south-facing slope? And they probably spend most of their time bedded down? Is elevation a factor? Higher slopes are colder, but they get the sun earlier and for longer? Is there an approximate temperature that is too cold for them all together?

As an aside, do bears hibernate based on temperature? Or is it more based on time of year? The point of this trip was to try and fill a bear tag (ends tomorrow) but deer was also on the menu if it presented itself... And we didn't see either of 'em...
 
I don't think its ever too cold for deer, they have to move around and eat regardless of the temps. Some places are better than others and thats seems to be the key in being successful.
When I first started hunting, I hunted an area that had some deer but far and few between it seemed, I seen two in three seasons. After that I found another area that had many deer, and my success went way up, I would see deer almost every time, and rarely went a season without getting my deer. Finding a good spot that has a population of deer seems to be the key to success.
 
Deer are less likely to move this time of year if temps are warm, due to their winter coats (heavy fur).
They must feed and have to move. In warm temps more at night, better chance they will move in the day when it's colder.
You may want to set up a few trail cams in the area to see what's moving and patterns, also checks for tracks, dropping, scrapes & rubs.
Lot's of prep and planning behind the scenes helps, usually a year ahead, but even with that, once the season opens rules of engagement change.
Snow on the ground is good, easier to spot a deer off in the distance, easier to track too if needed.
Do not get discouraged, many have gone years before taking a deer, your time in the bush will pay off.
 
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Given the short amount of time you've got left, and low success rate of sightings, I'd abandone this year and save your troubles.

Start next year out by doing some scouting. Hunting isn't a few weeks a year thing, it's an all year thing. Spend time out and about, finding out when they are in the off season, see what the evironment type is, what they are eating. Check out places you'd think they'd want to live in, but keep a keen eye out for sometimes they can be found in unlikely places. This may or may not change with the seasons, but it's something you need to study to save frustration in the weeks that matter.

This time of year, they'll still be looking for easy access food. Fresh cuts can be gold mines, or any areas of green is still accessible beneath the snow.
 
It's never too cold for a deer; it can easily get too warm for them to want to run around much.

A deer can lay down in a snow bank at -35 C and enjoy the night. They have good fur coats. If they have to run around a bit, it is easy to over heat if it is too warm. Cold is not your issue, and never will be.
 
I'm no expert...

Tracks? No tracks = no deer, regardless of how much time you invest. Yes there are other signs, but with a foot of snow there need to be tracks.

Even with the season over I'd say head out there till you find tracks. See where they lead. See what they're eating with a foot of snow down already. May not apply next year if there's no snow but it's valuable knowledge.

The females will move around based on the availability of easy to acquire calories. When the stars align and the rut happens the males will be near the females.

High wind, rain, snow on the ground... Makes it harder to detect what's going on around you. They'll want to move at night more likely. As mentioned, a trail camera is a good investment.
 
In my area, after the rut is over, and we get into December and dropping temps, deer activity and movement drops significantly. Once things get settled into a couple feet of snow and night time lows dip into -20 to -30's, deer don't move much and they tend to frequent coniferous forests where snow depth under trees is less and they can get at ground plants more easily. They're not usually browsers like moose. Movement burns energy, and they have a hard enough time conserving energy with the low temps. They'll actually vacate areas of deep snow and migrate to areas of less snow, as it happens in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where you'll get large herds "yarding up", even though they're a solitary animal by nature.
 
With a foot of snow the deer likely have moved out. You were likely at quite a high altitude to have that much snow, so they may have gone down to a lower altitude.
A good wintering area for mule deer is an old growth forest, in particular, a douglas fir forest.
Your best source of information is a game biologist in the area. Sounds like you are in the Kamloops region, so give them a call before you go out again.
 
H4831 said:
With a foot of snow the deer likely have moved out. You were likely at quite a high altitude to have that much snow, so they may have gone down to a lower altitude.
A good wintering area for mule deer is an old growth forest, in particular, a douglas fir forest.
Your best source of information is a game biologist in the area. Sounds like you are in the Kamloops region, so give them a call before you go out again.
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Nope, I was in the Pemberton Region, so a bit north of Whistler. I was at a high altitude in general, yes, but not in relation to the surrounding area. I was hunting the valley bottom after the snow proved to be too much for my truck to get into the cuts we had planned to head for. It was just me and a friend, so we didn't want to drive too far off any of the main FSRs.

We ended up under a set of power lines. It wasn't a big cut though, only like 20m wide. There were quite a few sets of tracks in the snow, mostly crossing the cut from one side to the other, although there were two quite large sets running the length of the cut as well (One of these sets was not ungulate. Im thinking cougar, not entirely sure though) The big issue with the tracks is trying to determine age - it hadn't snowed in a few days so while I know they were there recently, I dont know exactly how recently.

So how does the cold change behavior? When its warmer, everyone seems to advocate the first and last hours of the day as the best hunting time, but is that still the case when its -10? What about the sunshine? Is that a big factor when its cold? Do they seek the sunshine, or do they not care?
 
IMO this year was an interesting one for deer. I normally hunt the foothills in Alberta and it was chillier some days than last year with a few warmer days (-15) (we usually dedicate a whole week to the hunt). The thing we noticed was that there were less grouse and deer out and about this year but I am pretty sure it was a result of the logging operations. As well, we both shot our deer at 1200-1330 timeframe. I haven't shot a deer at the noon timeframe since 2007. Usually we see them in the early morning or late afternoon. Out of boredom and curiosity, we checked the best hunting/fishing times on my Garmin GPS which uses a theory that animals move based on lunar/gravity alignment and it had that the best hunting times were at noon for most of the days we were hunting and a bunch of hours that were not in the legal hunting period. I normally don't buy into weird ass theories like this but we have been checking the Garmin Hunt/Fish thing more and hunting the non-traditional hours more actively.
 
Suther said:
Nope, I was in the Pemberton Region, so a bit north of Whistler. I was at a high altitude in general, yes, but not in relation to the surrounding area. I was hunting the valley bottom after the snow proved to be too much for my truck to get into the cuts we had planned to head for. It was just me and a friend, so we didn't want to drive too far off any of the main FSRs.

We ended up under a set of power lines. It wasn't a big cut though, only like 20m wide. There were quite a few sets of tracks in the snow, mostly crossing the cut from one side to the other, although there were two quite large sets running the length of the cut as well (One of these sets was not ungulate. Im thinking cougar, not entirely sure though) The big issue with the tracks is trying to determine age - it hadn't snowed in a few days so while I know they were there recently, I dont know exactly how recently.

So how does the cold change behavior? When its warmer, everyone seems to advocate the first and last hours of the day as the best hunting time, but is that still the case when its -10? What about the sunshine? Is that a big factor when its cold? Do they seek the sunshine, or do they not care?
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I think the answers to your questions are actually quite "area specific" in many ways. Deer in B.C. may well have to take altitude into account when deciding where to be at any given time (well, at least the effects of altitude on habitat - I doubt they read altimeters) but the deer in Saskatchewan can pretty well ignore the effects of altitude on habitat. ;) So you better listen mostly to those who live where you want to hunt, and know what deer do in their area.

I can only offer the generalization that I think factors like food availability, snow depth and condition as it affects mobility, ###, and the presence of predators will have much more effect on their behavior than does the actual temperature.
 
I spent the Weekend in the exact spot you did. I didnt see a thing either. As with you we saw lots of tracks but no other sign at all. Im not from the area but traveled so I could hunt with a old buddy. I think part of the issue with the area ( assuming Lilouett River *spelling??) is it is way to close to a major population and realistically not a lot of accessible terrain as you and me experienced. Cold it was as we slept under a tarp but deer are made for those conditions.

All we saw was a moose and followed another set of moose tracks that had a blood trail hoping to find a gut pile with a bear near it. (then the hunter gave up tracking long before we did as his/her tracks ended very shortly) Dont even think moose is open in this area :(
 
RRal offers good advice....

No matter where you hunt,bit's a good idea to narrow your area by knowing where they won't be.... For example, my acreage has lots of apple trees and acorns..... On a bad apple year, the acorn areas get heavy traffic and vice versa..... Luckily in my case, the bedding area remains the same..... So I set up accordingly.....

Don't abandon the year..... Get out there and scout and learn and keep your hopes up..... If this was easy, it wouldn't be fun..... Just think of how rewarding your first success will be....
 
c.t.smith said:
I spent the Weekend in the exact spot you did. I didnt see a thing either. As with you we saw lots of tracks but no other sign at all. Im not from the area but traveled so I could hunt with a old buddy. I think part of the issue with the area ( assuming Lilouett River *spelling??) is it is way to close to a major population and realistically not a lot of accessible terrain as you and me experienced. Cold it was as we slept under a tarp but deer are made for those conditions.

All we saw was a moose and followed another set of moose tracks that had a blood trail hoping to find a gut pile with a bear near it. (then the hunter gave up tracking long before we did as his/her tracks ended very shortly) Dont even think moose is open in this area :(
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I had a very specific area that I wanted to hunt, but the truck couldn't get there due to the snow. In hindsight, I should have just parked the truck and hiked in, but as they say hindsight is 20/20...

I dont think proximity to a major population center is the real concern here, its not all that close to Vancouver. Im sure it doesn't help, but I feel like there are far more significant factors at play.

And you are right, there is no Moose open season here. Might be able to get a LEH draw for the region, I dunno.

I feel like deer in different regions might react differently to the cold, that is why I specified my area. It generally doesn't get much colder than it did this past weekend (-15 is cold for here, even in the dead of winter) so I was thinking maybe this is a factor... Im thinking deer from a colder region would be more tolerable of the dropping temps, whereas these deer are used to somewhat warmer winter temperatures? So while interior deer wouldn't be bothered by -20, these coastal deer might not like it nearly as much?
 
Suther said:
I had a very specific area that I wanted to hunt, but the truck couldn't get there due to the snow. In hindsight, I should have just parked the truck and hiked in, but as they say hindsight is 20/20...

I dont think proximity to a major population center is the real concern here, its not all that close to Vancouver. Im sure it doesn't help, but I feel like there are far more significant factors at play.

And you are right, there is no Moose open season here. Might be able to get a LEH draw for the region, I dunno.

I feel like deer in different regions might react differently to the cold, that is why I specified my area. It generally doesn't get much colder than it did this past weekend (-15 is cold for here, even in the dead of winter) so I was thinking maybe this is a factor... Im thinking deer from a colder region would be more tolerable of the dropping temps, whereas these deer are used to somewhat warmer winter temperatures? So while interior deer wouldn't be bothered by -20, these coastal deer might not like it nearly as much?
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Possible deer may react different to cold temps if un-accustom to it. All I know is Where I'm from I generally see no one when out and about where as where you and I where on the weekend ( Assuming same location) We passed at least 5 groups of hunters and a bunch of side by sides and snow machines all will send wildlife packing and out of the area. Also the area had very little easily hunt-able terrain in comparison. I also hiked into a lot of areas after the truck could go no further
 
Most likely the snow is more your problem then the cold. Mule deer tend to move a long ways to find easier feed instead of having to dig for it. Are there any areas with lots of low buck brush that they can browse on. I don't know the area but is there any kind of farming or ranching in that area where they are finding hay fields. I have hunted mule deer in -30 and -40 temps even and they were still moving at the end of November early Dec. They tend to cycle the last couple of weeks of November when it gets colder. Find the does and you will find bucks.
 
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