Steve Bartylla
5 year old buck +
Dipper, 100% correct that white cedar swamps can be ideal yarding areas, as they produce both thermal cover and food (I read some study stating the white cedar is the only woody browse deer can eat exclusively all winter long, without suffering ill effects from it...Sure, they can and do survive on other browses, but they must combine other browse species to not suffer ill effects, where as they don't have to with white cedar). One problem is that white cedars often aren't located where they are accessible to deer. Another problem is that they are being logged off and/or maturing past the point of ideal cover much faster than they are being replaced. Yes, white cedar falls, but in deer yards the rate of falling often doesn't keep up with the demand from deer packed in these cedar swamps. That's another area where being overly mature hurts, as the reachable branches have typically been browsed clean and scraps are all the yarding deer can hope for. Several northern wildlife biologists have been sounding alarms about this for many years, now. You are lucky, in that you have a good amount of cedar swamps in your area of the state. Most of the state does not.
In the area of N WI I grew up, you couldn't find a cedar swamp if your life depended on it. There, the traditional yarding areas I studied/scouted were either groves of pines/spruce or valleys sheltered from the winds. You could go to any of them and, by Feb, walk through, see a couple hundred deer and never have one run more than a couple bounds from you, but the standing cornfields not near them would be void of tracks. In areas like that, I've personally never been able to get deer to stay over normal-bad winters with just corn. That's also been the experience of other's I've spoke to about this (being a N WI boy, yarding has always fascinated me).
In your area and points south, my experiences play out exactly as you describe. I couldn't agree more with what 10 acres of corn will do in those settings. That said, that just hasn't been my experience at all in areas void of thermal cover in the areas further north during bad winters. I've learned that lesson the hard way more times than I'd care to admit.
In the area of N WI I grew up, you couldn't find a cedar swamp if your life depended on it. There, the traditional yarding areas I studied/scouted were either groves of pines/spruce or valleys sheltered from the winds. You could go to any of them and, by Feb, walk through, see a couple hundred deer and never have one run more than a couple bounds from you, but the standing cornfields not near them would be void of tracks. In areas like that, I've personally never been able to get deer to stay over normal-bad winters with just corn. That's also been the experience of other's I've spoke to about this (being a N WI boy, yarding has always fascinated me).
In your area and points south, my experiences play out exactly as you describe. I couldn't agree more with what 10 acres of corn will do in those settings. That said, that just hasn't been my experience at all in areas void of thermal cover in the areas further north during bad winters. I've learned that lesson the hard way more times than I'd care to admit.