Last year's long winter. How has it affected wildlife in your area?

Last two winters here have been 4" snow, 1 inch crust. Repeat till You get 5 ' . The deer have been up to their guts in that and it's been an all You can eat buffet for the yo dogs. The one's the yoddlers don't get just crawl under a spruce and die. We've virtually lost whitetail hunting here in those two winters. If this one's the same we're done
 
Wouldn't say we had a long winter, but it was dry. Lots of grouse this year, but the deer are super skittish it seems, but there's tons of sign and I've had lots snort at me.
 
The other sign of trouble is the seemingly significant drop in turkey numbers here. I saw very few flocks this spring, and heard almost no gobbling, in comparison to the previous few years. A friend who is an avid turkey hunter was skunked, and said that despite a lot of scouting, he saw very few birds.

I suspect that the snow conditions last winter were the main culprit.

I'll be putting down trails as per the suggestion above, if we get significant snow this year.

Not sure about feeding, though. I'm worried about making the remaining deer even easier targets for predation.
 
The last winter was the worse for me here and despite all the ice and snow and endless cold we have more deer then we can count right now. We have seen little bucks in one place where nobody has ever seen one before even. There is a way to get does tags for the regular season but I can find nobody who speaks enough english or even written in french to explain how they get them. Muzzle loader season will be 4 days of bang bang bang out back as usual . My place only ever has does on it and have never seen a buck but there are many many does to pick from.
 
Hotwheels81 said:
WT numbers are about half of last years, not seeing many young ones if any in with the mature does either so I'm thinkin the wolves and coyotes had a good spring cleaning up what starved thru febuary and march...

Elk and moose numbers are way up, every cow I have seen this year had a calf and been seeing cow elk every way I turn... Now if a bull elk would just step out where I can see it or a calf moose where I'm legal to shoot it I could post a meat quality review for all of you :p
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I hereby recant this information, WT numbers in my area are almost equal to last fall.. Seen several big herds after last light in areas I have never spotted them in before... Looks like they are changing habits to adapt.

Still a bit thin on fawns and yearling's tho but I did notice a few mature doe's with twins recently but not much fresh blood in the bigger herds.

Oh... And the buck's are starting to do silly things :)
 
apu said:
Apparently because of the harsh winter cull its antlers only for white tail this year in Manitoba, that said in my small chunk of the world its the best deer numbers I have seen in nearly 10 years, went for a little walk last night in my bush and spoked up at least a half a dozen, mostly does but at least one was a buck. We had some bad fires the other year and I suspect we got a lot of new deer that relocated from the US as I am seeing some very distinctly different deer. It probably also helps that my neighbour was aggressively trapping last winter, caught 4 timbers and 9 yotes. Nonetheless, it seems weird all over , I caught a cougar on my game cam a couple of weeks ago. There have never been cougars in this area at least that I know of. Neighbours saw a solitary Moose walk through their yard last week. They have been extinct in the area for over 30 years.
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Well as an update I guess I have to be the deer population change dissenter, they are frikken all over my farm. I filled my tag with a spiker thinking that its the best I am going to get and then my friend nailed a real nice 4x4 shortly afterwards on my land. There are tons of does in the area. What is definitely down is the number of road hunters, keep up the bad news boys, its working just fine :)
 
Skunked in the snow in WMU 46. Not a doe tag among us. One buck was sighted over the last couple of days, and a few old tracks. We normally see a number of does and fawns over the course of the hunt. This year, 1 doe and 1 lone fawn were all that were seen (and then the single buck) over the course of 2 weeks.
 
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Counted 8 does and one buck on my ranch last night. Now one less buck. Numbers seems to be about usual. Tho I have seen way more muleys this year. My wife got a real nice 3x3 and I got a really big doe a couple of days ago. Coyotes numbers are big this year, had one come with 50 yards of the house, last time he ll do that. Already reloaded 200 rounds of 22-250. Going to be a good yote season
 
ANTICOSTI ISLAND lost 40 thousand deers ,,the females avorted and we saw no yearlings this fall ..spring was way too late so they starved or froze to death.. there are no predators [wolves or coyotes on the island .. hunting was a challenge but we tagged out .
 
black powder said:
ANTICOSTI ISLAND lost 40 thousand deers ,,the females avorted and we saw no yearlings this fall ..spring was way too late so they starved or froze to death.. there are no predators [wolves or coyotes on the island .. hunting was a challenge but we tagged out .
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Losing 40,000 deer a winter on Anticosti island is not a catastrophe. Last I read there were 166,000+ deer on the island. Approximately 20 per sq KM. That's losing about 1/4 of the population. Considering how many deer are born every year the population will rebound quickly. However the deer are eating themselves out of house and home. When I was there in 2012 you can see the browse line everywhere. They have some areas fenced in and the difference in vegetation between outside and inside the enclosures is incredible. The deer are smaller than those on the mainland. It is just a matter of time before there will be a major collapse of deer on the island unless something is done to reduce the herd. Everybody shoots bucks (2 per hunter). So the doe population is very high. Maybe they should institute a rule of 1 buck and 1 doe. Still is a beautiful place. Right on the coast, fresh ocean air. Would go back again.
 
WMU 10 was down, We had no surplus tags this year (good thing). Still seen enough deer but would of likely seen twice as many last year. That's just my experience. This winter did not start out very well, went down to -30 third week of November...gonna be a long one.
 
crash277 said:
One of the guys i work with started complaining about it when it was used yesterday, so a few of us started using it non stop. haha. he might punch someone soon....
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No worse than that wanker Jay Scotland going on about "windchill" every morning on the news. I actually got into a bit of a twitter-brawl with him over it. "Windchill" drives me loopy, especially when they talk about it when the temp is still above freezing (yes Peter Coade, I'm looking at you!).

Back to deer. I know that 21/22 in Saskatchewan had a wicked winter kill over the last few years and both whities and mulies have suffered hard. Hopefully this wet fall has left some crop in the fields around the edges of the sloughs (not wishing 40 swampy acres on anyone) to supplement the deer herd's feed.

Here are a couple that didn't make it through the fall.

 
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bearkilr said:
We just call it "winter" here in MB. ;)
Some are longer than others, but it's always cold with snow.
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I'm getting a little worried here Bud, less than 10 days to Christmas and we have very little snow and we lost a big bunch recently! The sleds are ready to rock and roll and so is the groomer! I think I'm gonna stick my neck out here and call it a brown Christmas for 2014! I really don't recall one in the past!
 
While I personally saw lots of deer, and filled one tag, I think overall hunting success in central Ontario was way down. I know of three camps that got tag soup.

Most of the deer I saw were large deer, the fawns did not fair well in the deep snows last year. The wolves, and coyotes did very well.

I'm hoping the huge acorn crop we had this year will set them up well for the winter ahead.
 
Home3 said:
Got there at first thaw. Very few signs. Depressing. How does it look in your area for 2015?
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Across the province (Sask) things are looking a bit better than last year but it still isn't great. There are little pockets here and there that didn't get hit that hard by the bad winters. My newest property is one of them, the deer are killing the batteries on my bear cameras. Annoying, that.
 
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