UP winter losses

[UP Hunter]

OK, I know I may be ranting, but did any of you hear about a big 110,000 deer die off from last winter before the season started? I knew I wasn't seeing as many deer this fall but I was seeing enough bucks when I was traveling around that I was very excited for the season to come. Opening day came and went and I still hadn't seen a deer in the woods. I have seen more as the season went on but the numbers are way down. I did see a lot of deer skulls all over the woods this fall. Now the DNR reported in the paper that we lost over a hundred thousand deer last winter! Did I miss it or was this purposely left out of the forcasts so people would expect to see lots of deer.

[littlejohn]

Well I definately agree there must be less deer. Last year because of my house burning down during November I only hunted the first 2 1/2 days of rifle season, and saw over ten deer including a nice ten point i got on opening day. This year I have put in over 8 days of hunting so far and I saw one deer, an 8 point opening day which i bagged. Is there somewhere to find this article? I would like to read it.
John

[Liver and Onions]

Yes I did read about the 100,000 deer loss. I think I read about it before bow season started, but I'm not sure. The article also said that in some of the hardest hit areas that 75-80 % of the fawns would also die from the does that did make it through the winter. Lets hope that this winter is an easy one for the deer.
L & O

[Eastern Yooper]

So far, so good.

We are halfway thru December with no snow here at-all, and the deer are still scattered throughout their summer range.

The snowmobilers might get mad as hell at me for saying this, but it wouldn't break my heart if we entered January with no accumulation on the ground! Combine that with an early spring and that could set us up for a banner year next fall.

(sure hope I don't have to eat these words)

[whackmaster]

I hunt in Ontanagon County. We were way down on sightings this year. We also seen lots of skulls. It was strange to see all these does, and no fawns. It was a reminder of how harsh mother nature can be. I don't know how much snow is up there now, but I hope they have an easy winter this year. Up there, it can snow a couple of feet in a day. So, I would tend to believe the report. There wasn't the amount of shots in our area that there usually is.

[Rencoho]

Our bow hunt in Baraga County this year provided about half the sightings then the previous year. We also noticed several does without fawns, and very few twin fawns. Six of us hunted for a week, the middle of Oct.

[Trophy Specialist]

The DNR did report that an estimated 100,000-plus deer died last winter in the U.P. Their forcast before the season stated however that they expected the U.P. deer kill to be about the same as 2000. They even increased available antlerless tags thoughout the U.P. The fact of the mater is that the kill was down from 22% to 45% depending on who you talk to. The hardest hit last winter were fawns, so there was a definite void in 1.5 year old bucks in the woods this fall. Since 1.5 year old bucks make up the brunt of the harvest in the U.P. this explains why the kill was way down. Where I hunt in Delta county, there were vertually no fawns to be seen, which suggests that there was a high fawn mortaliliy during the spring of 2001. That's going to make next deer season poor no mater what kind of winter we have. For more information on the 2001 deer kill, pick up a copy of Michigan Outdoor News, there is a good article in there. My question to the DNR is: Why did the DNR issue more antlerless tags following a winter with high deer loses?

[UP Hunter]

I was hunting in Ontonagon County last Saturday. There was only a dusting of snow on the ground and it has been above freezing this week. I saw more deer (8) than I did the 4 days I hunted there during the rifle season (4) but there sure aren't the numbers. As someone else said, next year's hunt will be bad no matter what. There were very few of this years fawns out there this year.