Winter kill on whitetail

Sadly, if deer are to the point of eating nothing but hay...even if for all winter their survival rate is pretty low.
 
we have had a good deal of winter weather in south western ontario but never any extended period of deep snow and the deer i have seen are in good shape and there are lots of them . i have seen them were they were fighting to stay alive in deep snow conditions were they had to dig for feed but they have had easy living the last two winters .
 
This winter isn't panning out to be good for a lot of reasons. Weather forecast says no weather over 10 degrees until two weeks from now. When it melts, it's going to be too rapid.
 
Two of the last three winters in Southeast Sask. have been killers. Four dead deer in my windbreak last week. There are so many the coyotes are leaving them untouched. Two years ago we lost about 60% of the deer. This winter is worse.
 
I seen one deer that may have died from winter this year.I'm see more deer wondering around then ever before! Although deer having been dying steady from vehicles-about 1 per week within 5 min. drive from the farm.We had a really early winter and still have 3 feet of snow almost the middle of April!!!
 
I am seeing an "ok" number of deer (in predictable areas) in the Peace Country but they did get hammered with this winter. It will definately take a few years of decent winters and cut back tag numbers for a rebound.

On the bright side, the ducks will have plenty of potholes and sloughs in a lot of Alberta this year!
 
The deer didn't do well up my way this year. Way to much snow and the wolves are running rampant up here. This time of year we usually see them in big groups in the evenings and now only 2-3 at a time, yup the deer populations suffered but the moose and elk seem to be just fine. Only time will tell, natures way of thinning the weak.
 
titch-- said:
I thought is might be CWD thats killing all the deer where I go to shoot yotes, because cant deer just live off of bales till the snow melts?
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A lot of ranchers in these parts are trying to stretch hay stacks enough to feed their cattle through an extraordinarily long winter - most aren't going to put up with too many deer feeding/ruining bales.
 
Got out around the farm in the Interlake on the weekend. Looks like the deer aren't doing too bad out that way. Lots of tracks and I saw quite a few along the ditches in the evening where the snow had melted. Today's snow isn't really going to help anything but hopefully we see some normal temps in around a week. Can't even get to our rifle range right now. I've been itching to try out some new guns for months now.
 
All the more reason to get out and hammer the coyotes and wolves, and help the fawn survival rates for a year or two. Ungulate carcasses should be hauled off and burned or buried, or used for trapping. Feeding dogs provides larger litters.
 
No shortage in my small part of Manitoba...I've never seen so many deer in one area. It's not uncommon to see 75-100 deer within a 4-5 mile drive from my house. 2 years in a row now they've completely decimated almost all the winter wheat fields in my area. They are like locusts.

We still had 1 general and 2 antlerless tags in my area last year, and it could stand to be increased more yet.
 
If the area I hunt in Saskatchewan was hit hard on the whitetails, I will not apply for a Non-Resident tag. Hopefully governments in the prairie provinces will have the sense to shut down particular zones that were decimated.
 
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