The deer are hungry.
West Virginia
Contributors to this thread:
My girlfriend said she saw a deer eating out off black trash bag along the side of the road. I have never seen that before
It happens all the time in the southern part of the state. They're like dump bears. That's why they get so big.
I guess with no food in their home area this year they are getting take-out now.
I have found 2 dead yearlings, on my farm , in the past couple of days. I'm suspecting starvation. I have also been seeing another yearling in the yard that looks pretty thin. It's been a tough winter here for the deer.
The deer on my place look good, of course they have been getting a ton of corn and sweet feed every 3 weeks.
I always here people say it is not good to feed tem but if I didn't feed them at my cabin they would surely die..I would like to know the biology behind it.
There's pros/cons about it.
In the ideal world it would be best if we didn't do it. Let nature dictate what lives and what dies. But we don't live in an ideal world. Feeding can make them more prone to predation, but so can being so weak from a severe winter following a mast failure.
Feeding can promote disease transmission, but only if the disease is there to be transmitted. CWD , and bovine TB being the main concern. But kinda like the flu, if I don't carry or have the flu I can't give you the flu.
You hear people say that a deer can die of starvation with a belly full of corn. That is true. Deer have to develop enzymes to be able to digest corn and that takes repeated exposure to corn for that to happen. If you took a starving deer that has never eaten corn and feed it a bunch of corn it would not be able to digest corn. I feed from sept. Thru march which allows the deer plenty of time to develop the ability to digest corn.
The other thing is that everybody is feeding and baiting if you don't the deer are going to go somewhere else. We do alter natural deer movement with baiting and feeding. That isn't good, but that's just the way it is. And quite frankly, if they outlawed it I don't think it would stop it. With the 3 buck limit everybody is worried about their neighbors and do what they can to keep deer on their property and/or leases.
Well in Pendleton county they sure get enough corn. LOL. Everyone feeds there.
Well in Pendleton county they sure get enough corn. LOL. Everyone feeds there.
Can't believe the deer ever survived millions of years without being feed by humans. Deer here in sunny Cal are healthy looking and seem to be finding plenty to ear.
A deer's metabolism slows down through the winter months to help them through the lean times. Of course, lean falls means a harder winter. I don't know about where you hunt but, here there was lots of mast, both red and white oak. And plenty of processional timbering that ensures adequate browse.
A deer eating out of a trash bag was after something but, I doubt doing it because it was starving. Deer love bread, potato peels, carrots etc... So, even it times of abundance, they'll flock to that stuff this time of year. It is carbs, and they love carbs in the cold.
God Bless
Well my neighbor found 12 dead deer. They could have died because they couldn't get one of those black bags open along the road. LOL. Or maybe CWD or by illegal hunters. Or maybe because we had snow on the ground here for 3 months. Still some on the ground here in places.
Deer are browsers. They eat bark, vines, twigs, plus a variety of other food items too numerous to count. Unless the snow is so soft and deep that they can't move they will find food. Man has probably done more damage feeding them than helping them. Soon they will be dependent on man to feed them, because they like many humans take the easy route.
Yea I would say these dead deer died of something else
I know Jimmy. They are doing that at my house too and at the cabin.
I saw over 30 deer yesterday from my cabin window. Most of them traveled by the feeder. All looked good and healthy. Saw 1 single gobbler and a pack of 4 longbeards still running together.