Dewey wrote:JoeRE wrote:mainebowhunter wrote:
Winter kill dead? Or hunting season kill dead?
I couldn't tell for sure on most, but time of death suspiciously lined up with early to mid December, meaning Iowa's gun seasons. That is typical, deer drives are a great way to loose a lot of deer if hunters don't know what they are doing, or just don't care. One clearly died earlier in the fall as the bones were pretty much free of tissue, another I did find what looked like a slug hole in the hide around the stomach. Given the mild winter decomposition was a little faster that usual but a poorly placed shotgun slug combined with a lazy hunter unwilling to follow the trail is the culprit many times.
I am up to 12 total dead bucks...half of them 2 year olds or older. That is more than twice as many as usual, and I am covering about the same amount of ground as average.
I also found a total of 3 broadhead tipped arrows and 1 crossbow bolt all of them fired into animals as there was traces of hair or tissue on them still and they were all bent or broken...weird because before that in my entire life I only ever found one arrow in the woods. Strange spring.
Joe I have been finding the same thing but can't confirm if any were truly mature because in many cases the skull was missing. I did find one with the horns cut off that looked big boned and mature. I assume we are in the same general area so that concerns me that this many dead deer are being found. Been finding lots of other scattered bones too without the rest of the carcass. Kinda strange as I am accustomed to only seeing this in the far northwoods after a severe winter.
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Yea, there will be always lots of dead deer every spring, regardless of winter strength. I dozens of dead deer every spring, most does and young ones. The unusual thing this year was just the number of 2 year old or older bucks for me. I am pretty certain 75% or more of deer I find are killed and lost during the gun seasons. Usually most bucks I find are missing heads, just this year for some reason I stumbled across a number of larger bucks before anyone else did. One was a big shed buck.
Having done some scouting in WI and IL public land here and there I can say Iowa has a lot more dead deer in the woods at the end of every year. Several times more. Deer are plentiful so unfortunately I think that makes some hunters value them less. There are slob hunters everywhere I know but here there just seem to be a higher proportion of hunters (even though we have less hunters overall) who won't track a deer, if it doesn't fall in sight its not worth following up. That combined with gun hunters predominantly using deer drives, which makes for more challenging shooting if they don't know what they are doing. If you were around here in gun season, you wouldn't believe Iowa has a bunch of bucks that grow to maturity because it sounds like a war. Far more shooting here than any gun season I have experienced in Wisconsin. If even 1 out of 2 shots hit a deer, there wouldn't be any deer left....obviously that isn't the case, my guess is 1 in 5 shots or less connect with a target.
Even though there are a lot of dead deer around every spring, it used to be much worst. In the mid-2000s the DNR began advocating herd reduction, and issued a lot of antlerless tags. One would think that means hunters would shoot more does, tag them, and drag them out of the woods....some did for sure, but some just seemed to get bloodlust shooting every deer they saw and leaving most lay. The kind of thing a psychologist could write a good paper on I guess. For several years I saw so many dead deer every spring (almost all does) it made me sick some places....I could see where standers were by piles of shotgun slug cases, and there were deer scattered in a line through the area. That behavior tapered off but I still find more dead deer than any other state I have been in.