Oh, Deer: The Buck-Naked Truth about Our Local Cervids

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If you’re a gardener, it’s a flower-munching marauder.

If you’re a visitor, it’s a delightful wildlife interlude.

If you’re a driver, it’s a deadly road hazard.

If you’re a hunter, it might be dinner.

And if you’re the Minnesota DNR, it’s one of the state’s “most ecologically, socially and economically important animals.”

Yes, most everybody has thoughts about our white-tailed deer, that attractive and most-abundant large mammal in our Big Lake neighborhoods.

White-tailed deer are one of about 100 subspecies of the deer family that include moose, elk and caribou. Moose is the largest deer cousin, reaching 1,800 pounds, and the pudu in Peru, at about 22 pounds, is the smallest. White-tails fall somewhere in the middle, with the biggest bucks topping 300 pounds.

Our white-tails can be found from southern Canada to South America. In the United States, there are around 14 million white-tailed deer, according to the National Geographic Society. Mule deer, the next most populous U.S. subspecies, number only about 7 million.

It seems white-tails have always been in our North Woods, but they are immigrants. “Deer are a recent phenomenon,” says Rich Staffon, former wildlife manager with the Minnesota DNR and now president of the Duluth Isaac Walton League chapter. “Until the 1900s, they were few and far between. The deer came after all the logging and fires, which created ideal habitat for the deer.”

Until the mid-1800s, moose and caribou outnumbered deer in the mature forest surrounding the Big Lake. The dense woods didn’t provide the clearings that offer critical deer food sources such as native grasses, tree tips and seedlings or wild fruits. As the region experienced forest fires and logging, the deer moved in from the south to browse on newly regenerating forest, sticking to the edges for forage and fast getaway.

“Populations in the northern part of the province, such as the Lake Superior watershed, are at or near the northern edge of their range in the province,” reports Jolanta Kowalski with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

The Lake’s shores can be a haven for deer.

“It’s a little warmer by the Lake, and there’s a lot of conifer cover to provide winter shelter,” says Rich. “That clay soil near the Lake creates a lot of browse … so there’s good food and good cover.”

Chris Balzer of the Minnesota DNR agrees. “Definitely on the North Shore, the deer migrate toward Lake Superior” for less snow and milder temperatures.

Another thing attracts deer. “They really have adapted to living in and around people,” Chris says. “In some places, especially in the northern forest, there are more deer around cities and towns rather than deep in the forest.”

Easy browsing – think gardens – could be one reason. Another is reduced interaction with large predators that avoid human populations.

While deer numbers around the Lake currently are considered healthy, that can fluctuate rapidly and often depends on our season of white. The winters of 2012-13 and 2013-14 brought deep snows, which makes escape from predators harder, and frigid cold that require more energy and food. During hard times, it’s not unusual for the does either not to become pregnant or to abort before birth.

“Those winters really knocked the deer herd back,” Chris says, but adds, “They do bounce back with mild winters. Not only do the adults survive winter more but there are more and bigger and healthier fawns.” Older does might even have twin or triplet fawns during mild winters.

More wolves do have an impact, but not as much as one might speculate, according to Adam Murkowski, Big Game Program leader for the Minnesota DNR. “Ultimately, deer are a by-product of their habitat, and wolves are territorial and self-regulating of their numbers in any given area,” he noted. In recent years, deer available for human hunt have increased in most permitting areas within wolf territory. Along the North Shore, deer populations average 10 to 15 per square mile.

Hunting season helps to manage deer, with allowable harvests fluctuating with the population estimates. Deer hunting is a passion and a tradition in many parts of our region. Licensing and connected equipment bring billions into the three states and province, a positive economic impact of deer. In the northwestern Ontario district in 2015, the latest figures available, 14,000 residents bought $48.43 licenses totalling $678,020 (Cdn.) and 2,200 nonresident hunters’ $241.61 licenses totaled $531,542 (Cdn.)

Some might wonder why deer need to be managed, but while our abundant antlered neighbors bring beauty to our backyards, they also bring problems. From tree seedlings to garden greens, deer seem to have a penchant for eating exactly what humans wish they wouldn’t. Their love of white pine and white cedar seedlings force foresters to protect plantings with costly cages. Gardeners turn to fences and smelly repellents (often based on spoiled eggs).

In the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, the National Park Service tries to keep to a minimum the impacts of deer browsing on sensitive species, like the Canada yew, which is “deer candy,” says biologist Peggy Burkman.

“Deer will preferentially browse on Canada yew. You’ll see places where you’ll find a cedar or hemlock seedling in perfect condition, but right next to it, the deer have completely eaten the yew.”

On the Apostles, landscape-scale Canada yew, a species nearly wiped out on the mainland, provides a rare example of what the woods were like around the Great Lakes before large scale logging and other development, she says. The understory of Canada yew is just as important to that historic landscape as towering trees.

Hunting is permitted within the park and special regulations on the islands allow primitive weapons and extra tags. However, sometimes hunting isn’t enough. When deer numbers exploded on Sand and York Islands in the early 2000s, culling was needed to reduce the population.  

Deer may be found on any of the islands, but year-round populations live on Basswood, Oak, Sand and Stockton. The slender-legged cervids can swim between islands in summer and cross ice in winter.

On the Wisconsin mainland, the state DNR’s focus is less on what deer eat and more on keeping the population in the Lake Superior basin healthy. In November 2011, a doe suffering from chronic wasting disease (CWD) was discovered near Shell Lake in Washburn County, approximately 70 miles from Lake Superior’s shore. The disease attacks a deer’s nervous system with symptoms that included weakness, difficulty swallowing, loss of coordination, severe emaciation and anxiety and an inability to stand. It is fatal to all in the deer family.

Currently, there is no evidence that humans can contract CWD by contact or consumption, but the disease can infect moose and elk. Among wild deer, southern Wisconsin has been a hot spot for spreading CWD, and it has been detected in southern Minnesota and lower Michigan. Ontario has not recorded a case of CWD.

Brainworm is another disease of concern. Benign to its deer host, it can be passed on and is fatal to moose, a species that has been dangerously declining in northeastern Minnesota over the last decade.

Not to malign deer further, but a big problem between humans and the cervids arrives by road.

The combined annual total deer-vehicle accidents for Michigan’s 10 Lake Superior shore counties number more than 1,200. A few years ago in Thunder Bay, police estimated that deer were causing 1.5 vehicle accidents a day within city limits.

The road isn’t the only crash hazard. The Richard Bong Memorial Airport in Superior had to install 5 miles of 8-foot-high fence capped with barbed wire after a small business aircraft struck a herd of deer on the runway in 1999, causing about $8,000 in damage to the plane.

Feeding and baiting bans in cities are used throughout the Lake region to keep deer from congregating, coming in contact with sick deer or being involved in vehicle crashes.

In Minnesota, Duluth, Two Harbors and Silver Bay all ban feeding deer. Since 2005, Duluth has had an in-city bow hunting season, with the Duluth public largely embracing the city’s efforts to reduce the urban deer herd.

In 2012, the city of Thunder Bay adopted a model for managing its urban deer population that mirrors Duluth’s. Before a feeding ban and urban bow hunting season were approved, deer were herding into groups of 10 to 15 in the city’s rural areas, and deer-feeding property owners reported up to 85 deer arriving for a free meal.

Marquette found its deer-feeding ban stabilized the city’s deer population. In 2001 and 2003, the city held controlled culls in its 323-acre Presque Isle Park after humans feeding deer caused the park’s herd to swell to more than 100. The feeding ban has allowed the herd to find “its own carrying capacity” of less than 20 deer, says Karl Zueger, Marquette’s Community Services director.

The city still has plenty of deer, but the herd has dispersed now that the park is no longer a central feeding ground. “The vast majority of residents understand that they really were the reason why the deer population had grown so large and most people see it as their civic responsibility not to feed the deer,” Karl says.

Lest we leave you with the impression that deer are more nuisance than neighbor, it’s good to remember their position in the ecosystem. They are the main food source for many large northern predators, like wolves, and their remains help to sustain scavengers, like bald eagles.

They serve another function, too. “Deer, like birds, do transfer seeds through their digestive system and can thus aid in seed redistribution,” Peggy says, adding bluntly. “Of course, they can also transfer exotic plant seeds, too.”

For most of us, though, deer appreciation comes down to that enigmatic majesty of a full-antlered buck or the diminutive sweetness of a doe and fawn. (An innocent look is “doe-eyed” for a reason, after all.)

And when our gardens are munched, perhaps the best we can really do is shrug it away with a fond,

“Oh, deer.”

A Different Kind of Deer Hunter

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Oh, Deer: The Buck-Naked Truth about Our Local Cervids

Photos from Jack Deo / Superior View

Oh, Deer: The Buck-Naked Truth about Our Local Cervids

George Shiras III prepares his camera and flash, sneaking up on wildlife drinking from Whitefish Lake, not far from Lake Superior.

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Oh, Deer: The Buck-Naked Truth about Our Local Cervids

Photos from Jack Deo / Superior View

Oh, Deer: The Buck-Naked Truth about Our Local Cervids

These early flash photographs were published in National Geographic magazine.

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Oh, Deer: The Buck-Naked Truth about Our Local Cervids

Photos from Jack Deo / Superior View

Oh, Deer: The Buck-Naked Truth about Our Local Cervids

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Oh, Deer: The Buck-Naked Truth about Our Local Cervids

Oh, Deer: The Buck-Naked Truth about Our Local Cervids

Today modern trail cams help wildlife managers. This photo was taken in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin.

Lake Superior-region deer gained notoriety in 1906 as the first animals shown in the National Geographic magazine when it printed 74 photos by George Shiras III, called the father of wildlife photography.

George, born in 1859 in Pennsylvania, grew up into his father’s law practice and politics. At age 30, he became fascinated with cameras and spent summers near the shores of Lake Superior, where he met and married Francis P. White, daughter of famed Marquette businessman/ philanthropist Peter White (the local library is named for him).

Eventually George moved to Marquette and devoted time to his photography and conservation. He devised two methods to photograph wildlife at night. One was a trip-wire system creating the first-ever “trail cam.” The other method mimicked an Ojibwe hunting technique of canoeing to prey using a fire in the front to attract its attention while a hunter shoots from the back. George’s “fire” perhaps was the explosion of the magnesium powder for the flash and his “rifle” was his camera.

Before he died in 1942 in Marquette, where he is buried with his wife and son, George patented several photo inventions and developed a friendship and correspondence (archived at Northern Michigan University) with Teddy Roosevelt. He also discovered a moose subspecies along the Upper Yellowstone River that was named for him – the Alces Americana.

Cervine or Bovine?

Deer and moose are cervids with branched antlers made of bone that are shed each year. Except for reindeer, only males have antlers.

Cows, buffalos and antelope are bovids sporting unbranched horns made of bone with a keratin sheath and not shed. (Keratin is in our skin, nails and hair.) For some bovines, both males and females have horns, for others only males do.

Ada Igoe keeps busy as co-owner with Andy McDonnell of Tuscarora Lodge and Canoe Outfitters on the Gunflint Trail in Minnesota.