Outdoors column: Deer are well adapted to cold Minnesota winters
Sitting in the sunroom in the early morning hours is a pretty common event at our house. As we sip our hot coffee, we are always entertained by the winter birds that frequent our feeders. On some days, especially when the weather is bitterly cold, we get to witness substantial deer activity.
I am always amazed at the resiliency of deer in the winter time. Life can’t be all that easy for them. However, they always seem to manage to survive our cold season.
I have come to the conclusion that deer don’t really like the bitter cold any more than we do. On some days, when the temps bottom out, we see a substantial increase in activity.
Having deer move around in our woods is a common affair. However, what is not common is to have them moving around later into the day.
On a recent very cold morning, we watched as four large does meandered their way through the woods. They stopped to nibble on browse, which is really woody twigs, as they slowly moseyed along.
Eventually, they moved up under one of our bird feeders and started nibbling the residue bird seed that was on the ground. From there, two of them wandered into the flower garden and ate the tops off of anything sticking through the snow.
When these deer had gone, a doe and two fawns appeared. Although their path was a little different, they didn’t seem to have any interest in bedding down on frozen ground.
An hour later, we spotted another group of deer across the driveway. Their pattern of wandering and browsing was the same.
Deer have exceptionally thick coats of hair they grow in the winter. This plays an important role in their ability to survive the cold.
They also eat heartily in the fall to store up fat reserves to help them through the cold period. Since the nutritional value of their winter diet is low, these fat reserves are quite critical. In addition to this, deer are able to reduce their metabolism in cold weather to further aide in winter survival.
Like other Minnesota animals, deer are very resilient creatures that are well adapted to survive the cold.
This is the opinion of outdoors columnist Jerry Carlson. Contact him at jerrycarlson@cloudnet.com.
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This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Deer are well adapted to cold Minnesota winters
