![]() ![]() Enough firewood to warm the big tents and continuously melt the heavy, wet snow falling nonstop on our roofs. After shoveling snow from the patches of ground where we normally erect our two big wall tents, we cut and split wood. Mother Nature (La Niña, actually) had other plans. Snow makes it easier to key on mature bucks. It would be the first hunting season in many years with tracking snow on the ground. Great numbers of trees heavily laden with wet, sticky snow leaned across the narrow trail. When I turned my four-wheel-drive pickup onto the forest road leading to our usual campsite, three miles south of the Canadian border and three days before the opener, snow was axle deep. We intended to take our usual four again during our 2017 Minnesota firearm deer hunting season. We have taken 97 mature bucks in this area since 1990. Due to our ongoing hunting-related research that began in 1970, we’ve become proficient enough to regularly pass up opportunities to take yearling and 2-1/2 year-old bucks. We thus decided we should not take does, the only deer that can improve our deer numbers. This is evident by deer hair, unworn/unstained fawn teeth and fawn-sized hooves and dewclaws in most wolf droppings all summer-long (never found in bear droppings). Since 1990, they have killed three out of every four fawns born in May by November 1. ![]() The main deterrent to subsequent recoveries in deer numbers has been grey wolves. That’s in a region that once supported 22 per square mile.ĭuring this period, three severe winters reduced numbers by a third or more. Deer ranged between six per square mile in 2016 to 11 per square mile in 2000. We accurately determine our deer numbers each year by several means. For one, ever since we established our current hunting/study area in 1990, our deer numbers have been exceptionally low. We limit ourselves to these deer for several reasons. The rest are non-breeding bucks 2-1/2 to 6-1/2 years old. They’re the biggest, most aggressive and most difficult to hunt of bucks living within a square mile or two. Usually, no more than one is a dominant breeding buck. We limit ourselves to four deer annually. Ordinarily, my sons, grandson and I hunt mature bucks only, not a spike buck. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |