Hard winter leads to deer deaths from starvation, road kill

A deadly winter for deer in southern New Brunswick will likely see the number of deer killed in the fall hunt reduced by up to 20 per cent, says the province's deer biologist.

Joe Kennedy says deer mortality in the southern part of the province is double what it usually is because of a hard winter.

With metre-deep snow in much of the province from February through early April, deer had a difficult time travelling to find accessible food, he said.

Kennedy has examined road kill deer and found they were starving after the winter.

"We're seeing that the deer have severely reduced their body fat so that all extraneous body fat has been used up, so now they're starting to utilize the fat that is in the bone marrow," said Kennedy.

"And we're seeing even the bone marrow fat content is resulted to starvation levels."

This is one of the more severe years for winter starvation, Kennedy told CBC's Maritime Noon on Friday.

"This year is not quite as severe as 2008, but close to it. It's one of the more severe years we've seen on record," he said.

With the high mortality rate over the winter, Kennedy expects hunters will have a harder time bagging a deer in the 2015 hunt in the fall.

He expects the number of deer taken in the hunt will be down between 10 per cent and 20 per cent.

"That's similar to last year," said Kennedy.

"We had seen about an 18to 20 per cent reduction in the harvest during the fall hunt in 2014 and I expect to see a similar reduction for 2015."

There has also been an increase in the number of deer killed by vehicles along roads this month as the snow has been melting, said Kennedy.

"There's definitely a relationshipbetween harsh winter conditions and road kill," he said.

"As the snows start depleting along the roads' edges, deer concentrate along there to try and get any exposed grass of nutrients."