The other side ……..

[NH Mountains]

If they stopped all winter feeding, what would be the effect on the northern Maine deer herds?

I think there’s be less deer and less hunters.

 

[NH Hunter]

If they stopped all winter feeding, what would be the effect on the northern Maine deer herds?

I have no idea what Maine’s situation looks like. I can tell you with certainty what it looked like in my town for 3 years with a woman that posted her land due to hatred of hunter. She fed the deer on Route 11. Over a 3 year span I personally saw 30+ road kill deer. That’s not counting those that were hit and ran over the bank or up the hill and died on the other side.

A half dozen of us contacted F&G , all they were able to do at that time was put a “deer crossing ahead” sign and ask her not to do it. She killed more deer from the two surrounding mountains in 3 years than any hunter would in a lifetime.

When I served as a volunteer firefighter we were responding to a car wreck beyond the house. As we came around the snow covered corned, there were a minimum of 8-10 deer in both lanes. I was hammering on the air horn while the guy driving was doing some nascar kind of shit trying to miss all the deer in a pump truck.

 

[NH Mountains]

I have no idea what Maine’s situation looks like. I can tell you with certainty what it looked like in my town for 3 years with a woman that posted her land due to hatred of hunter. She fed the deer on Route 11. Over a 3 year span I personally saw 30+ road kill deer. That’s not counting those that were hit and ran over the bank or up the hill and died on the other side.

A half dozen of us contacted F&G , all they were able to do at that time was put a “deer crossing ahead” sign and ask her not to do it.

When I served as a volunteer firefighter we were responding to a car wreck past the house. As we came around the snow covered corned, there were a minimum of 8-10 deer in both lanes. I was hammering on the air horn while the guy driving was doing some nascar kind of shit trying to miss all the deer in a pump truck.

And if 20 of those dead deer were does they probably lost another 30+ fawns along the way.

 

[RememberBaker]

If they stopped all winter feeding, what would be the effect on the northern Maine deer herds?

I can’t remember where, but I saw a quote from a Maine deer biologist in the past year or two that said without winter feeding there would be parts of northern Maine without deer, but I think that’s because the deer yards don’t exist to get them through on their own.
That’s certainly not the case in most places.

 

[mainer4570]

I can’t remember where, but I saw a quote from a Maine deer biologist in the past year or two that said without winter feeding there would be parts of northern Maine without deer, but I think that’s because the deer yards don’t exist to get them through on their own.
That’s certainly not the case in most places.

Hey, take it from me and others, there are plenty of places in northern Maine with no deer, supplemental feeding or not.

 

[longbow]

If I understand correctly it was logging, which produced food for the deer, combined with adjacent/nearby large wintering areas that produced the good deer numbers of years ago. There is still the logging, but apparently, from what I have heard, a lot of these large wintering areas have been cut now and the deer are suffering from it. That combined with more predators these days, are reducing the deer numbers.

 

[mainer4570]

If I understand correctly it was logging, which produced food for the deer, combined with adjacent/nearby large wintering areas that produced the good deer numbers of years ago. There is still the logging, but apparently, from what I have heard, a lot of these large wintering areas have been cut now and the deer are suffering from it. That combined with more predators these days, are reducing the deer numbers.

I believe that what I saw in Kenora and Dryden,ON areas bears this thinking out. Big logging, but lots of remaining black growth for winters. Lots of deer in spite of a healthy wolf population. But enough deer so there were many escape routes for them.

 

[mowbizz]

I believe that what I saw in Kenora and Dryden,ON areas bears this thinking out. Big logging, but lots of remaining black growth for winters. Lots of deer in spite of a healthy wolf population. But enough deer so there were many escape routes for them.

Isn’t Ontario where they hunt over bait? Or is that Saskatchewan? I know many YouTube videos are over bait somewhere up there…

 

[RememberBaker]

I had thought that there was no such thing as too much logging where deer were concerned but apparently that’s not the case when it’s the winter yards that get cut.

 

[longbow]

Isn’t Ontario where they hunt over bait? Or is that Saskatchewan? I know many YouTube videos are over bait somewhere up there…

You can bait deer in Saskatchewan and Ontario during hunting season. A lot of guys from the US go up to Ontario and hunt deer just like they do in Maine though by tracking and still hunting. Saskatchewan is pretty much all bait hunting, out of country hunters have to have a guide.

 

[mainer4570]

Isn’t Ontario where they hunt over bait? Or is that Saskatchewan? I know many YouTube videos are over bait somewhere up there…

As far as I know most provinces permit hunting over bait. Mostly all of Canada requires non-Canadians to be guided. There are some hunting districts in Ontario that allow non-Canadians to hunt unguided.

 

[longbow]

Baiting:
Alberta, no. Manitoba, no. Sask., yes. Ontario, yes. Quebec, yes. New Brunswick, yes. British Columbia, no.

 

[NH Mountains]

As far as I know most provinces permit hunting over bait. Mostly all of Canada requires non-Canadians to be guided. There are some hunting districts in Ontario that allow non-Canadians to hunt unguided.

I think Quebec allows hunting without guides. Dick Bernier hunted in a camp my brother went to that was in western Quebec. Near the Ontario border.

 

[NH Hunter]

I should've included that even after the woman stopped feeding , the deer continued to come for 5-7 years later. If we had an early snow, there was dozens of tracks in the first few years. Towards the end it would be a few single sets. In my opinion that was because those deer were brought to her yard as fawns and thought that is where winter survival is achieved, rather than the natural areas they were used to for generations. People feeding, will stop feeding at some point. Whether if be from death, sold land, finical hardship, divorce, etc..... there are a million factors that come into play when humans start "saving" other critters.

 

[NH Mountains]

Was there any storm damage in other parts of NH besides Grafton County? There’s thousands of trees down there now that’ll provide plenty of browse. Power is still out in lots of places up there. I guess there were 70+ mph winds to go along with 5” of rain and an 18” snow melt.

 

[NH Hunter]

Was there any storm damage in other parts of NH besides Grafton County? There’s thousands of trees down there now that’ll provide plenty of browse. Power is still out in lots of places up there. I guess there were 70+ mph winds to go along with 5” of rain and an 18” snow melt.

We don’t have many trees down that I’ve seen, but the blackwater river was up about 4’. I have 6-8”a of rock hard frozen snow in my yard. Although not many of any acorns or beech nuts for them regardless. I think the turkeys are going to take a massive hit unless they find some well stocked bird feeders. I remember reading an article a few years ago where the turkeys were eating seed but couldn’t find gravel for their gullet due to similar circumstances as now. I want to say a few dozen birds were found dead in the yard.

 

[NH Mountains]

I guess the Bradford/Newbury Vt area got hit hard. They had to close I91 yesterday to clear lanes. I saw trees on it just north of Browseline. So there should be lots of browse down.

 

[frontierrots]

Was there any storm damage in other parts of NH besides Grafton County? There’s thousands of trees down there now that’ll provide plenty of browse. Power is still out in lots of places up there. I guess there were 70+ mph winds to go along with 5” of rain and an 18” snow melt.

Over here in next door Sullivan county not much tree damage over all
Lots of ice on top of the snow though

 

[NH Mountains]

There’s still quite a few outages after 4 days.

 

[mowbizz]

Lots of small dead branches down in my area but haven’t seen any large trees that blew down. We were lucky in that NHEC had power restored for us after only 4 hours or so. I was running on generator anyway.