Late Spring Snow

dz · Mar 21, 2013

It is snowing in La Grande tonight. I'm worried about the animals. We have had two deer die in our yard this winter. I hope this cold snap passes soon. What is everyone else seeing out there?

DZ

440sixpack · Mar 22, 2013

Here in the central part of the state ( Crook county ) it's been cool but you have to go high to find snow. our snow pack is well below normal.

Other than a few weeks around the first of the year we haven't had a winter.

I figured the NW part of the state the same, hope you situation is isolated. the snowmobiling around Sumpter sucked this year so it must be from there north.

Stay thirsty my friends

bonepicker · Mar 22, 2013

We've had enough sun and warmth to get the grass coming up on the south slopes and that grass is packed with protein and nutrients, they've been able to get to that for a week or two now so they should be fine. Even if we get a few inches of snow, they can paw down and get to the new grass. The winter hasn't been too hard on the animals from what I have seen. Hopefully we can continue to get some rain throughout the spring and into June so that there is plenty of good feed this year.

springer · Mar 22, 2013

3" of new snow this morning in the John Day valley.

Murphy · Mar 22, 2013

SE of you in Richland it looks pretty good. Deer have dispersed from the valley floor and there's lots of open ground. The coyotes killed an awful lot this winter when the Powder iced over and the deer were in the canyon but it's opened up now. Were the deer that died fawns or yearlings? If there's an early greenup they stay on that new grass but don't get any nutrition out of it. They sometimes stay on it until they die.
We had squalls come through late yesterday and today. Cold wind all day today.

440sixpack · Mar 23, 2013

Murphy, What do you think your weather did to the chuckar? I know you had quite a bit of snow later on . I stopped hunting them about Christmas because it looked like they were having a tough enough go of it.

Good winter or bad winter the deer in Oregon are in trouble. maybe a good winterkill would be the best thing for them, then they would have to be listed on the ESA.

Stay thirsty my friends

Murphy · Mar 23, 2013

I just don't know how they did. My gut feeling is there wasn't a major die off. More guys such as yourself are backing off when the birds are stressed. Gives them a chance to concentrate on survival instead of using up their reserves avoiding us. Overall I think last years hatch was spotty. Some spots had good numbers and a few miles away there wasn't much.
I traveled the Snake River road going back and forth to Ontario 3 times in late winter and never saw a chukar. Kind of odd. I'm on Brownlee all spring and summer(charter boat) and have a pretty good idea how the hatch is. If I don't post PM me and I'll tell you what I'm seeing.

dz · Mar 23, 2013

The two that died were fawns. One was a twin that lost its Mom midwinter. I'm not sure what got her as we have had a few cats around or she could have been hit by a car. The other one showed up looking pretty sick by its self and died a couple days later.

DZ

Murphy · Mar 24, 2013

Even in mild winters some of the young ones don't make it.If they start on that new grass to early they're goners. We see it every year and it's usually a fawn or yearling. This was a bad winter for predation here. From what we see there are more killed by predators than are being born in our area. They take the fawns in the spring and deer of all ages in the winter.Coyotes and cats. Coyotes take more than many realize, maybe more than cats just because there are so many of them.If the wolves show up? Also for the 1st time there were more whitetails that muleys on the valley floor this winter. The future really doesn't look good for muleys.