Ask The Biologist

Cold Shoulder

Cold Shoulder

By Bob Humphrey

Hunters and biologists don’t always agree on deer behavior.

QUESTION: I’ve always heard cold weather gets deer moving, but I recently read an article that disputes that. Is that true that deer don’t move more in the cold?– Daniel B.

ANSWER: I’ll start by noting there’s not much in the way of peer-reviewed research supporting the contention that deer move more during cold temperatures. I’ll follow that up by paraphrasing something one of my wildlife professors told me many years ago: “When what you observe in nature contradicts what the textbooks say, the books are wrong and nature is right.”

While the research doesn’t necessarily prove deer move more in the cold, there is some research on northern deer showing they move less when it’s warm. Where you live or hunt can also make a difference. Northern deer have much thicker coats and can withstand the cold but may be uncomfortable when it’s seasonably hot. Ask any experienced outfitter from Saskatchewan or Alberta, and they’ll tell you the colder it gets, the better the hunting is because the deer move more – and that’s based on decades of personal experience and observation.

It’s quite a different story down south where deer have much thinner coats. My observation from nearly two decades of hunting in Alabama each January has been that a deep cold, the kind we wish for back home in Maine, tends to subdue deer movement. It may be that the energy they burn moving around to feed is more than they can take in. Or they may just be uncomfortable. Being a biologist for 30 years, I tend to support the research in most cases, but nearly 50 years of deer hunting experience has taught me that when the temperature drops, I want to be in the woods. Except in Alabama.

 

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