High Country Snow

[RallyDawg]

I am new to the mulie game so I am wondering how much snow they'll tolerate before moving out of the high country for the season?  I am trying to prioritize a few hunting spots this October and trying to avoid some areas that I have hunted before that don't have much water and/or resident deer.  I am assuming that the does will head down a lot sooner than the bucks but figure they'll tolerate more snow than I think especially if it snows early and there is the potential to melt off.  Feel free to just PM me with your opinion if you prefer.

[cavemann]

I've glassed them on ridge tops in belly deep snow...  they tolerate quite a bit.  Not a mulie expert by any means but always get as high as I can no matter what

[boneaddict]

Ill try to keep this simplistic.   There is more to the migration than snow.   It could snow 2 feet this weekend, and the migration wont just happen.   It has to do with availabilty of resources, light, timing of rut and of course weather, which includes temperature.  Then to throw another caveat in there, some never migrate, or some migrate to where others have migrated from. and yes, generally speaking the doe and fawns will arrive prior to the bucks.

[bigmacc]

I,ve seen them happy and content in snow up to their briskets, I've seen them moving in Sept or early October when food and water was all but gone in the summer range during draught periods and Ive seen them moving at full tilt at certain times of the year with just a skiff of snow on the ground but temps were 20 below 0 or more. I,ve seen pictures from an old friend of hundreds of deer that got trapped in a big box canyon years ago in the Pasayten, nothing but deer piled up under trees in various states of decay, you could picture them getting under the trees to escape what must have been a hellacious blizzard that must have lasted for hours or days and basically locked them in to that canyon. There really isn't a playbook to set your watch by as far as when or why they get out of dodge, in the end, whatever way you look at it or try to figure it out, Mother Nature will let them know when to move based on many, many factors, study and learn those factors your whole life and its still a 50/50 chance you will hit that nail on the head year to year.

[RallyDawg]

Thanks for the input.  I was not suggesting snow as a trigger for the migration but rather along the lines of limiting resources.  Sounds like I'll stick to my plans and consider any snow accumulation as a limit to my access in an area.  Thanks again. 

[Bushcraft]

Ill try to keep this simplistic.   There is more to the migration than snow.   It could snow 2 feet this weekend, and the migration wont just happen.   It has to do with availabilty of resources, light, timing of rut and of course weather, which includes temperature.  Then to throw another caveat in there, some never migrate, or some migrate to where others have migrated from. and yes, generally speaking the doe and fawns will arrive prior to the bucks.

 

Thanks for the input.  I was not suggesting snow as a trigger for the migration but rather along the lines of limiting resources.  Sounds like I'll stick to my plans and consider any snow accumulation as a limit to my access in an area.  Thanks again. 

Exactly. Snow accumulation will become a limitation to you far before it limits big bucks.

[grade-creek-rd]

From what I have learned (through research...not guesses or folklore) is that most high country deer (bucks and does) will migrate when the nutritional value of the feed diminishes and they can't get enough calorie intake to sustain warmth (life). So, on the years when we have an early frost/freeze/snow the nutritional value of the feed degrades earlier in the fall/winter causing an "early" migration. Then there are years like last year, when trail cams in the high country still showed animals above 6,000 feet in late November (and the fall was very warm keeping the plant life/food from dying and degrading). Think of horses and cattle...they graze on natural foods (grasses) until winter when we supplement their feed with hay (alfalfa). Now the horse/cow just stands there in the cold winter months and uses little calories so they can survive on hay (dried feed) but a deer needs to stay active or else a predator comes along and eats them...so they need way more calories, and this is also why you see more deer out feeding throughout the day in the winter than in summer (when they come out at last light and spend the summer day in the shade chewing cud) because the feed in winter has less calories while the fresh green plants in the summer are more nutritious.

In other words, I head the old "rut migration", and while there is some truth in this, which is more due to bucks cruising and looking for receptive does, in reality if the does have no need to head to lower country (a warmer than average fall and high nutrition food) then the bucks won't come down either...but if the does move down (being small body mass as well as protecting young means constant moving/alert and burning more calories) then the bucks will follow mostly because they are hungry and then the rut causes them to "cruise"...and ironically all of this usually coincides with snowfall, or about the start of November when feed/plants freeze and lose nutrition, causing deer to move to lower ground and "mingle" with other groups of deer...and the buck spreads his genes throughout a larger demographic of deer/does...I think God got it right...again.

Grade

[rickomatic]

Another thing to remember, is that even if the bucks come down early, they will still hang out in the hardest to reach spots unless the rut is on. Even in “slow” years, you can still spot some big deer on ridges that are next to impossible to reach.