Habitat and weather influence body condition in white‐tailed deer, Wisconsin, USA

Abstract

In temperate and northern ecosystems where there are pronounced seasonal patterns in weather and available energy, there are corresponding patterns of body condition among white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Body condition of white-tailed deer can affect survival and reproduction, which has large repercussions for state-level natural resource agencies that allocate hunting permits. In this study, we investigated how variation in winter weather, spring phenology, habitat composition, and browse quantity affected white-tailed deer body condition across a large spatial scale. Several body condition indicators (e.g., carcass mass, heart fat, antler size) were measured by hunters for 795 deer during September-December 2016-2018 in Wisconsin, USA. Winter severity in the previous year was an unreliable predictor of fall body condition of deer when winters were considered mild or moderate. The timing of spring green-up had a consistent effect on the body condition of all age and sex classes of deer. Earlier spring green-up resulted in heavier fawns and larger antlers among adult males. Region and spring green-up interacted to affect the heart fat of adult females. Earlier springs resulted in adult females in northern and central Wisconsin having a higher probability of heavy heart fat, whereas spring green-up had no effect on adult female heart fat in southern Wisconsin. Effects of habitat differed by age and sex class of deer, and by the body condition metric being evaluated, indicating that there are important physiological differences among age and sex classes of deer that are affected by the environment.Our study demonstrates that the hunting public can contribute

Moose and white‐tailed deer mortality peaks in fall and late winter

“…Increased GDD also did not decrease white-tailed deer mortality during summer or through the subsequent winter. This result contrasts with mule deer survival (Hobbs 1989) and evidence indicating white-tailed deer body mass is improved by earlier green-up (McGraw et al 2020). Though GDD is a good predictor of forest growth, other climatic variables unassessed in our study (e.g., precipitation) influence forage availability (Dox et al 2022).…”

The influence of landscape composition and configuration on breeding waterfowl pair abundance in Wisconsin

“…While many of our study years occurred prior to the development of the Wiscland 2 data set, we were comfortable using this landcover classification to reliably describe distinct habitat types that may vary in form and function annually but broadly persist across years. It is possible that some landcover types transitioned between the time of our surveys and classification, but we anticipated these transitions were a minor contingent and followed the approach of similar studies that used Wiscland 2 to derive landscape variables from outside the time period of development (Pollentier et al 2021, Gilbert et al 2022, McGraw et al 2022).…”