northern ontario hunt camps having hard time deer

[Canuck525]

Yes, turkeys have been shown to impact deer numbers by pecking the testicles off of new-born male fawns. No new breeders to replace the older bucks as they die off, and the population plummets.

What the hell has happened to this thread?

Here is what we have noticed. The turkeys seem to be quite aggressive with the deer. Also, at bait sites if the turkeys hit it the deer stay away. I don't know if it is turkey crap or what it is but this is simply an observation.
!0 years ago we hardly had any turkeys.Since the turkey population has sky rocketed the inverse has been true for our deer herd. Perhaps it is just co-incidence but maybe not.
But to really spell it out for you we believe the deer may have a disease in the heard as a result of the turkeys.We do not know this for a fact but are suspecting this may be the case.

In 2005 there was hardly a turkey to be seen in our zone( they were introduced a few years before this).The deer harvested that year was 15894.
Ever since then the turkey population has climbed exponentially. The last 3-4 years it has become ridiculous with the amount of turkeys( especially the last 2).
The deer harvest has fallen almost inversely to the turkey population.
2015 the total deer harvest for our zone is a total of 2921.
So, maybe just maybe the turkeys do have something to do with it after all.

 

[9.3mauser]

There are no turkeys in the immediate area that I hunt ( unsuitable habitat) yet deer numbers are still down. Moose numbers are up, 11 different bulls on camera and there might have been more but it was too difficult to differentiate. The brainiacs at the MNR will tell you there's no correlation between moose numbers and deer numbers, but that's not what I've observed over the last three decades. Moose numbers up, deer down, and vice versa.

 

[TwigPig]

In WMU 5 the deer numbers are down significantly, lots of wolf tracks, and moose numbers are down but coming back up. Shot nice 9 point yesterday morning. They are in full rut now which is very, very late up here. Good luck to everyone.