Backyard Visitor

[timeout]

Timeout, Don't know your age, but in the 60's 70's and 80's this was a common Wisconsin winter. Used to put out hay in a traditional deer yard most winters. Moved on from that area, but would guess it is still the same this winter. Not a global warming believer, but believe the plant has weather cycles.

I lived through those winters here in southern WI. Grew up on a dairy farm and later I worked in town but raised hogs. Those were cold, snowy, tough winters indeed. Climate change is BS. The weather does run cycles and if one looks at recorded weather records that happened before the internal combustion engine and the like, it can be seen that wide temperature swings, etc. were happening. Whole nother subject. I'm a lifelong hunter through and through and I respect the animals.

 

[LHSmith]

I am posting this link because I just went through the corn feeding issue with a shooting buddy. His brother is a farmer and he contends that this issue is BS. What they say mirrors what I have been seeing through the years. It has little to do with Game Commission policies and everything to do with biological facts:

What to Feed Deer in Winter, and What NOT to Feed | National Deer Association

www.deerassociation.com

It's your herd, your conscience. Every reputable source on the subject says the same thing
This website is also a good source for foodplot info.

 

[Webster]

This time of year a deer's natural instinct is to eat browse......you know small woody plants like shoots and branches from oaks, cedars, sassafras, hickory, maple, and elm. They have been doing so for eons and somehow most manage to survive. They can bed for days bringing up cud saving energy.
Their natural instinct is to avoid foods that are foreign to them because their digestive system is rather finicky- i.e. acidosis from eating feed with only corn. The most difficult time for them is just before spring green-up, when most of the reachable woody browse has been consumed. Hinge cutting trees would help until the grasses begin growth.

Deer have been surviving winters for 20,0000 years. (the last ice age). They put weight on in the summer and fall and loose wt. in the winter. In the winter they eat the bark off of the new growth branches and the leaf and flower buds for next springs growth (the soft tender stuff). It may be hard but they make it. Deep snow and very low temp is the the biggest deer killer. There is a large state park 1/2 mile from my house. You cannot see a tree in the park that has branches lower than 7 feet.

 

[Treerat-sniper]

We're coming out of a cold spell as well (yesterday was the 1st day above zero in a few weeks). We're actually starting to see a pheasant population again & many folks are throwing out chicken feed or bird seed to them, legal or not.

 

[Coyotefurharvester]

The difference between the weather 30+ years ago and today. We didn't have government school teachers telling the kids the planet will die in 10 years, and the "changing" weather is their "proof". Of course no one has an explanation as to why cold blooded dinosaurs survived Montana winters(as we know them). Or how oil is a "fossil" fuel, as if it is the result of decaying dinosaur remains leaching their way through the soil and collecting in huge subterranean pools.