I guess I was not accurate in my understanding of winter death, here–sorry! I just read that in the lower peninsula, especially as it has been warmer lately, winter kill is not a big factor. I think that a larger side effect has been deer eating up small trees excessively, and also the motorcycle/deer and car/deer accidents. I know personally of two very severe motorcycle/deer accidents, and in the last year I think there have been 19 deaths of motor vehicles vs deer, with 11 being with motorcycles (which makes sense).
That happens here, too. My wife’s uncle and his family lived in the Upper Peninsula, where there were increasing wolf populations. They had tales of dogs being stolen off front porches by wolves, and were not very happy about the increasing wolf population.
You have much stricter laws there than here, for white tailed deer, it sounds. We can hunt on any government land that is far enough away from residences. We don’t have roe deer, but when I was young, we were limited to only 1-2 deer/year. Now, we are allowed up to 9, given the situation and location, I think (especially if we take a doe). There are 2 million deer in Michigan, which is thought to be a pretty high number (with 10 million humans). I found a statistic that about 537,000 hunters participated, which is about 5%, here, too.
Thank you!
