A few days ago I was going back and for via email with Dan Aitchison, the Curator of Wildlife for Westchester County and the manager of our hunting program and forest research. We were talking about the deer season and the lack of deer sightings and Dan had some great points:
The "lack of deer" has become a state wide phenomenon this year. I
believe it is due to 1) lack of acorns 2) abnormally hot weather 3)
extremely bright evenings (has it seemed to you that the full moon never
ended?) 4) already diminished food resources 5) a later rut than we've
had over the last several years.
The deer this year seemed to be in lowland swamps
eating low preference foods such as barberry, ferns, mile a minute weed,
bittersweet, and any leaves (even those that had turned color) that
fell in storms. Once the barberry turned the deer moved out of the
swamps and folks are seeing bucks - does seem to have disappeared from
the landscape. Fawns have poor fat stores this year. The deer have been
seen eating evergreens already, even though we don't have snow. If we
end up having a bad winter I feel we will have a terrible winter kill.
I've been seeing extremely low deer numbers this year and have noticed that the does and bucks 3.5 and older have completely disappeared from some of my hunting areas. It's been a very strange year and I'm not sure that it will get any better before the season comes to an end at the end of December. It will be interesting to see what happens where I hunt in Connecticut during January once there's snow on the ground. With no acorns for the deer to dig through the snow to find, where will they be eating?
On a side note, for those of you that aren't aware, the 2012 proposed budget for Westchester County calls for the entire Conservation division to be terminated as of December 31.
This includes all County owned nature centers as well as Dan Aitchison's position,
the Adaptive Deer Management Program and research to protect and monitor
the forests. Tonight at 7:00pm is the final chance to keep the Conservation division alive at the BOL Budget Hearings at the BOL Chambers, 8th Floor, MOB1.
Great info thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteDeer are hiding from the hunters.. :)
Hi Marc,
ReplyDeleteYou pick a really good topic.
I agree with your all five reason mentioned above.
Well i guess NYS plan to curb the deer population is working then lol
ReplyDelete