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<blockquote data-quote="BSK" data-source="post: 345354" data-attributes="member: 17"><p>Winchester,</p><p></p><p>When it comes to young deer, especially fawns, they can die in extraordinary numbers, yet their bodies are so small and the skeletons so under-developed that they rot away and are consumed so completely be scavengers that rarely will anyone find a dead fawn carcass.</p><p></p><p>Think about this: fawn mortality studies across the Southeast will come up with a wide range of numbers, but the average between all these studies is around 50%. That means that half of all fawns born die before hunting season every year. In all your years of hunting/scouting how many dead fawns have you found? At 30 deer per square mile, 7-10 fawns die per square mile every summer every year. If you have been hunting for 20 years, that's almost 200 dead fawns per square mile over that time-frame, yet how many of those have you found dead? I work in the woods 3-4 days per week all year round and have done so for almost 10 years, but I can count on one hand the number of dead fawns I've found.</p><p></p><p>We had a project in westcentral GA where the deer were extremely over-populated and the herd was very unhealthy. Fawn survival was extremely low. Fetal counts from harvested does showed the average doe late in preganancy was carrying on average 1.3 fetuses. That means, for every 10 does, 13 fawns were being born. Yet fawn recruitment was only 10% (by hunting season there was only 1 surviving fawn per every 10 does). 12 of every 13 fawns born each year would die before October, yet you could walk around this park-like property (the browse-line was so severe you could see 200 yards through the woods in summertime) and never find a dead fawn. That is until we did some controlled burning. Once all the leaf litter had been burned away, they ground was absolutely covered in little bits and pieces of fawn bones.</p><p></p><p>In West Virgian a few years ago, a couple of locations experienced an HD die-off that killed 30% of the entire deer herd (and those parts of West Virginia have fairly high deer densities). Yet not a single person called to report a dead deer. Not a single person noticed this major die-off other than some field biologists.</p><p></p><p>Deer can die in amazing numbers and no one will notice. Scavengers are amazingly effecient at cleaning up Nature's excess.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BSK, post: 345354, member: 17"] Winchester, When it comes to young deer, especially fawns, they can die in extraordinary numbers, yet their bodies are so small and the skeletons so under-developed that they rot away and are consumed so completely be scavengers that rarely will anyone find a dead fawn carcass. Think about this: fawn mortality studies across the Southeast will come up with a wide range of numbers, but the average between all these studies is around 50%. That means that half of all fawns born die before hunting season every year. In all your years of hunting/scouting how many dead fawns have you found? At 30 deer per square mile, 7-10 fawns die per square mile every summer every year. If you have been hunting for 20 years, that's almost 200 dead fawns per square mile over that time-frame, yet how many of those have you found dead? I work in the woods 3-4 days per week all year round and have done so for almost 10 years, but I can count on one hand the number of dead fawns I've found. We had a project in westcentral GA where the deer were extremely over-populated and the herd was very unhealthy. Fawn survival was extremely low. Fetal counts from harvested does showed the average doe late in preganancy was carrying on average 1.3 fetuses. That means, for every 10 does, 13 fawns were being born. Yet fawn recruitment was only 10% (by hunting season there was only 1 surviving fawn per every 10 does). 12 of every 13 fawns born each year would die before October, yet you could walk around this park-like property (the browse-line was so severe you could see 200 yards through the woods in summertime) and never find a dead fawn. That is until we did some controlled burning. Once all the leaf litter had been burned away, they ground was absolutely covered in little bits and pieces of fawn bones. In West Virgian a few years ago, a couple of locations experienced an HD die-off that killed 30% of the entire deer herd (and those parts of West Virginia have fairly high deer densities). Yet not a single person called to report a dead deer. Not a single person noticed this major die-off other than some field biologists. Deer can die in amazing numbers and no one will notice. Scavengers are amazingly effecient at cleaning up Nature's excess. [/QUOTE]
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