Crunchy snow what the **** do the deer feel the same

[danielldehoff198]

OK so here it is I live in West michigan 5 mi inland from Lake Michigan we had roughly a foot of snow. Last week it warmed up to 45 and rained melting all 3 but inches then with michigan being michigan the wind switched 180 and blew 60 MPh and giving us a high in the teens all, week this week with lows in the singel digits. Weather has been gorgeous wish it was still deer season the barometric has been high as 30.8 high as I have ever seen it but averaged 30.5 and never dropped below 30.2 lcalm to light wind and crystal clear skies. Been after the coyotes before and after the rain and freeze and before the crunchy snow I would see 50 -60 deer while hunting or driving by the standing corn behind my house and in the last three nights I seen 15. Is it possible that the loud snow is keeping beded up till the safety of Darkness or could it be the nearly full moon and the full moon. With the weather being beautiful and season being closed for two weeks wouldn't think the moon would have that type of an affect on the deer hope to here some intelligent I put please d
Don't tell me that I am spooking them walking in cause a
I can sit in my ****ing house and see the whole
God damn field. So let's here what u think

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[mtluckydan]

One option is they are moving during the middle of the day while you are at work. They do this especially when it is very cold to conserve energy. Another possibility is they relocated to a more heavily wooded area with thermal cover to conserve energy and get away from the crust. My best guess without actually seeing the layout of your location. They still need to eat daily so if you are not seeing them they are either moving when you are not home or able to see them or they left.

 

[Osprey]

They have abandoned the harvested fields and swithed to a different food source. Once the snow gets crunchy or hard to access waste grain the deer will switch to browse and pawing up acorns if they can. They will also not move much if food becomes tough to get and generally move during the warmest parts of the day they will stay bedded for prolonged periods as they use less energy to stay warm. They don't want to burn more energy to get food than what they will get out of it. Right now under those conditions they will be congregated in yarding areas which offer the best protection from the winters these areas generally don't change much year to year unless the habitat in the area changes. Deer are on a conserve energy mode right now, once you get a warm up the deer will feed really hard making up for when food was tough to come by. Deer can go days with very little or any feed but won't move hardly at all when this happens.

 

[danielldehoff198]

I mean hunting season is over here any way but there is an an 80 acer standing corn field in my back yard that my grandparents own they mystery be nocturnal then because standing corn should be the easiest food for them to get right

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[Osprey]

Standing corn fields can be used for both security cover and food. However if the cornfield is not near the natural yarding area you might not see a lot of deer using it if the snow depth starts getting deep. It also depends a lot on where the standing corn is located. Standing corn through Oct, Nov, Dec can be dynamite spots but deer really seek out quality shelter areas when the winter really starts to crunch down. However they may hit it at night when there are good feeding conditions they might move 1 mile or more from prime cover to feed. I've seen these very same tough cond in season in Dec so whenever you can observe the whitetails in your area as you never know what conditions might be like in the following season. Some areas deer shift to yarding areas before the winter cond ever really require it other times deer don't venture to them until they area sort of forced into them. It seems to vary by area and also of course hunting pressure in the area plays a huge factor into it as well hunting pressure can shift deer patterns to different food sources if they find a good food source that they didn't get pressured in during season they may continue to use that same food source. One of the public areas I hunt is often over looked late season however the deer use it as bedding but travel up to 3 miles to feed in adjacent private land fields which by late season is primiarly done at night and once the snow gets crunchy they just browse until it softens up in the fields again. These deer travel a lot in this location but the guys hunting the private fields don't do very well after Nov. There are quite a few areas that I hunt that a awesome in Nov but are poor choices come mid dec and on. I think whitetail deer move and adjust more than a lot of hunters realize which is why taking mature bucks in heavily hunted states is difficult since most hunters hunt small parcels of private or public the bucks really get exposed to a lot of pressure even outside of the rut. I've also seen areas where deer will spend 365 days a year however I've generally noticed deer concentrate more in specific areas compared to Oct and Nov. I start seeing some of the movement around mid Dec but it depends on the year sometimes even early dec.

 

[Broomd]

Osprey's posts are spot on in in every way......mucho sage wisdom right there.