Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind (44 page)

A deer’s second defense against bitter cold is its winter coat. Twice each year—once in the spring and again in the fall—whitetails molt, much as birds do. That is, they gradually shed one coat and replace it with a different one. During the spring molt, in particular, the winter coat comes off unevenly, while the summer coat is replacing it.

The result is that whitetails in late spring or early summer often have a very mangy, moth-eaten look. This passes quickly, though, and the deer are soon sleek and resplendent in a glossy, reddish summer coat. This consists of only a single layer of fine, solid hairs that shows its owner off to great advantage.

When autumn arrives, the process is reversed: off comes the summer coat, replaced by winter garb. This winter coat is a marvel of efficient heat retention. A thick, soft undercoat holds in body heat, and what heat escapes that layer is retained by the outer coat. The latter consists of longer hairs, each one of which is hollow—an air trap that provides outstanding insulation. In addition, the winter coat is a grayish brown, much more suited to the somber color of the fall and winter woods than the red summer coat.

The third winter defensive strategy is to move into winter quarters. These are popularly called “deer yards,” which is something of an unfortunate misnomer, since it gives people the impression of deer crowded into a little area much like a sylvan barnyard.

This misunderstanding manifests itself in a variety of ways. As a classic example, Walter D. Edmonds, in his 1936 novel,
Drums Along the Mohawk,
an otherwise well-researched book, described a scene in which the settlers went to a deer yard and, when the deer stopped against the far wall, used them for target practice. This description belies reality, which is entirely different.

Biologists much prefer the term “deer wintering area” to “deer yard,” because it’s far more descriptive of actual conditions. Even in deep snow, a deer wintering area has packed paths or trails scattered through it, and it’s often possible to wander around in one of these areas for hours and catch little more than a fleeting glimpse of a deer. There are such things as very small wintering areas, where it’s likely one will get a better look at the inhabitants, but a wintering area that small will normally contain only a handful of deer. In any event, so-called deer yards don’t have “walls” of snow, or anything else.

Deer have very specific requirements for wintering areas, and if the winter habitat is destroyed—by clearcutting or a housing development, for example—the deer can’t simply go and find a replacement. The first requirement in areas of severe winters and heavy snowfall is low-elevation, mature softwood growth, usually at least forty years old. The thick, interlocking canopies of mature cedar, spruce, balsam, pine, or hemlock trap much of the snow as it descends; subsequently some of this snow evaporates, and what filters down to the ground is so fine that snow depth is much reduced. This, of course, greatly facilitates travel by the deer.

In addition, the dense evergreens break the wind and cut wind chill a great deal, and they reduce radiational cooling at night. There may also be an added thermal benefit from mature softwood cover, because the dark evergreens absorb heat from the sun and make a small but crucial difference in the temperature below.

A second attribute of a good wintering area is a south- or southwest-facing slope so that the low-lying winter sun in afternoon strikes more directly, and hence provides more heat. Deer also manage if the terrain is flat, but won’t select wintering areas on north- and northeast-facing slopes.

The whitetail’s final defense against winter is a reduced metabolic rate. This helps them conserve energy when food is scarce and the cold is severe. Even with all these adaptations, however, winter is a dangerous and often deadly time for whitetails. In northern climates, even under good conditions, they lose a substantial amount of weight, and when that loss approaches one-third of their body weight, death from outright starvation and causes related to severe malnutrition begin to set in.

A prime wintering area contains patches of mature softwoods interspersed with smaller openings that provide younger trees for browse—ideally, hardwoods or white cedar. However, because of their reduced metabolic rate, whitetails can endure several weeks in winter with little or no food, provided they aren’t disturbed. As soon as deer become nervous and agitated, their metabolic rate rises; if the deer are forced to take flight, energy consumption becomes even greater. That’s why winter recreationists such as cross-country skiers, snowshoers, and snowmobilers should avoid deer wintering areas.

Despite all these adaptations, a harsh winter will still take a substantial toll of whitetails. Some deer die even in a mild winter, but many fawns, as well as some older deer, succumb during a severe one. In fact, life in the wild at any season is extremely hazardous for deer. Ask a room full of people how long they think an
average
deer lives in the wild, and many will guess fifteen years, twenty, or even more. They’re grossly overestimating. Although a small percentage of deer live into their teens, the vast majority die much sooner, and the average life span of a whitetail is only about two years!

No account of the hazards of winter would be complete without mention of the damage caused by roaming domestic dogs. When confronted by the fact that their small dogs are “running deer” (the colloquial phrase for pursuing deer), many owners bridle and say, “Why, Fido and Fifi wouldn’t hurt a fly—and besides, they’re far too small to damage an animal as big as a deer.”

This is a huge misunderstanding. True, someone’s little terrier, spaniel, or beagle can’t attack a deer and bring it down by brute strength, but it can easily run a deer to exhaustion in the winter, especially if the snow is deep. When a deer finally drops from fatigue, even small dogs may begin to gnaw on it while it’s still alive—and even if they break away from the chase and head for home, an exhausted deer is often so stressed that it won’t recover.

Roaming dogs taught our children at an early age a harsh lesson in the damage that dogs can inflict on deer, as well as in the hard realities of the natural world. In order to take the school bus, the children had to walk a mile down our narrow, wooded dirt road. One day, halfway down the hill, they came on a deer lying in the road, completely exhausted by pursuing dogs. It was an appalling spectacle; the deer was still alive, and the dogs were already beginning to feed on it. The children ran back to the house to fetch my father (I was away at the time), who drove the dogs away, shot the deer to put it out of its misery, and called the game warden.

One common myth about deer in winter is that starving deer can be saved by giving them hay or grain. Deer are ruminants—that is, they chew their cuds and have a stomach with four segments—and ruminants depend on microorganisms to help them digest their food.

Winter microorganisms in a whitetail’s stomach are different from those which help it digest summer food. In summer the microorganisms are varieties that can digest a wide array of herbaceous plants. In winter, however, the whitetail’s normal food supply consists of browse—the tips of small twigs and branches—and the microorganisms in its digestive system shift accordingly to types equipped to handle this woody fare. That means that a malnourished deer in the winter simply can’t digest these new foods presented to it by well-meaning humans and will literally starve to death with a full stomach.

Winter feeding of deer
can
be successful, but only if it’s started early enough in the fall. Whether or not it’s a good thing, however, is highly debatable. An increasing number of people are now buying “deer pellets” at their local feed store and supplying them to deer in their backyards. While people understandably enjoy seeing these beautiful animals close to their homes, and feel good about saving some of them in a severe winter, artificial feeding of deer has two very undesirable results.

First, artificial feeding tends to exacerbate what’s often an overpopulation of deer to begin with. As overpopulation grows worse, more and more deer have to be fed ever larger quantities of expensive food to keep them alive. Eventually, things reach the point at which deer become an intolerable nuisance, even though the artificial feeding may be able to sustain them.

A second problem caused by artificial feeding is far less tangible: it robs deer of their wildness. One of the most splendid native traits of the white-tailed deer is its quintessential wariness. To many of us, this deep, instinctive caution is the quality that makes deer the magnificent animals that they are. But deer are highly adaptable; they soon learn the pleasures of handouts, and rapidly adjust to them. In the process, they also adjust to human proximity and become semi-tame—a sort of oversized yard pet. This is degrading both to the deer and to us. It robs them of a vital spark at the very core of their nature, and it makes us a party to this process simply because we want the gratification that comes with seeing semi-tame deer around our houses. Although some argue that feeding deer is no different from feeding birds, there’s one essential difference: birds don’t lose their wildness by being fed, but deer inevitably do.

Deer aren’t very vocal most of the time, but they’re capable of making several different sounds. The one most commonly heard, perhaps because it’s the only one that carries for any distance, is a high, whistling snort. This sound is often referred to as “blowing.” Blowing or snorting represents an alarm call, a warning to other deer. Mostly it’s used when a deer suspects something is wrong, but isn’t quite sure. As soon as the certainty of danger sets in, the deer usually bolts, although it may run a short distance, pause, and snort over and over for a number of minutes.

Anyone unfamiliar with this sound can readily approximate it. First jut the lower jaw forward to create a narrow opening in the mouth. Then expel your breath with explosive force against the back of the upper teeth and use your diaphragm to maximize the amount and velocity of breath being expelled. Every effort should also be made to pitch this sound as high as possible. The result, at least with a little practice, should give a fair idea of what a blowing whitetail sounds like.

The bleat of a hungry fawn has already been described, and I’ve also heard a fawn with its mother make a little squeaking sound, almost like the sound of creaking saddle leather. Does bleat also, and can on occasion make a louder sound. One night, just as my wife was about to turn into our driveway, a doe leaped off our lawn, landed on the hood of the car, rolled off, and galloped away unhurt—but not before she expressed her dismay with a loud
BAAAAA!

Bucks, in addition to the snorts that all whitetails use, also grunt in a guttural fashion, not unlike a pig, although the sound doesn’t carry as far. In particular, a buck hot on the scent of a doe in heat will often utter a series of what’s known as “tending grunts.”

The past four hundred years have given the white-tailed deer a strange rollercoaster ride. From great abundance in a land of primeval forests, hunted by wolves and cougars with some human predation thrown in, they soon dwindled to a tiny fraction of their former numbers in a land changed beyond recognition. Gone were most of the forests, gone were the wolves and cougars, replaced by a flood of human predators.

Then the tide turned. Forests returned, and the human predators that had once decimated the deer now helped to restore them. Up, up went the deer again, to superabundance undreamed of a century before. No longer merely numerous, they now present a problem of excessive population in many areas. Beyond sheer numbers, they’ve become interwoven into the fabric of our daily lives in ways ranging from things as prosaic as dollars and cents to emotional and aesthetic meanings too deep to fathom. As the most visible and important proof of restored wildlife, and as a symbol of the wildness which so many of us treasure, the white-tailed deer surely deserves the title of the Comeback Kid.

23

The Great Strípper: The Moose

MYTHS

Moose are slow-moving and ponderous.

Moose are quite tame and safe to pet.

Moose drive out deer.

HUGE, BULKY, AND NEARLY BLACK, MOOSE (ALCES ALCES) ARE SPECTACULAR CREATURES. With the possible exception of a bear, no other North American mammal can draw a crowd of curious and excited spectators as quickly as a moose. Let a moose be sighted, and soon cars line both sides of the road, disgorging crowds of eager people with cameras and binoculars. If ever an animal deserved the title—now something of a cliché—“charismatic megafauna,” it’s surely this giant beast.

Moose are believed to have arrived in North America via the Siberian land bridge about ten thousand years ago, during the last ice age, and they’ve been here ever since. They’re very much a northern animal: it’s estimated that over 700,000 moose—about 80 percent of our continent’s moose population—reside in Canada, with many of the remainder found in Alaska. In the lower forty-eight states, moose are mostly restricted to the northern Rocky Mountain states, the very northern portions of the Great Lakes states, and northern New England and New York.

Although moose numbers have historically remained fairly stable—and perhaps even increased—throughout much of their range, the situation has been vastly different in New England and New York. Archaeological evidence indicates that moose were the dominant large herbivore in that region when the first European settlers arrived. As far as those settlers were concerned, they had landed in fearsome wilderness that had to be tamed and made to look as much as possible like the England from which they had departed to seek religious freedom (which they promptly denied everyone else) and the opportunity for greater prosperity.

White-tailed deer
(left)
; moose

But the business of wilderness-taming was hard, hungry work, and the settlers dined well on a variety of wild game—such animals as wild turkey, white-tailed deer, and moose. Just as moose were highly prized by the Native Americans, the settlers quickly learned to appreciate the huge animals for their delicious meat and valuable hides. Lazy these settlers were not, and they pitched into the task of “civilizing” their environment and putting game on the table with astounding energy. Thus it was that with ax and saw, fire and gun, the settlers inexorably eliminated most of both moose habitat and moose from the Northeast.

Despite the passage of laws from the late 1800s to the 1930s, giving moose complete protection, and the farm abandonment and forest regeneration that fueled the amazing comeback of the white-tailed deer, the recovery of moose in the Northeast was very slow. In fact, it really wasn’t until well after World War II that moose numbers in the region began to increase appreciably.

The trigger for the moose’s upward climb was a radical change in logging practices. Even the wilder parts of the Northeast weren’t true wilderness by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for they had already been logged several times. However, timber-harvesting methods concentrated on bringing the logs and pulpwood to the transportation system; that is, horses dragged timber from cutting areas to rivers or roads for transportation to the mill. This was a time-consuming system that tended to limit the speed with which areas could be cut.

All that began to change after the Second World War; now the strategy shifted to bringing the transportation to the logs. Huge bulldozers began to push wide roads farther and farther back into what had essentially been rather wild and inaccessible country. Logging became increasingly mechanized, for the bulldozers were followed by log skidders, tree harvesters, and trucks.

As a result, huge areas covering many hundreds—even thousands—of acres were clearcut. In a very few years those clearcuts began to grow back, mostly to the young hardwood trees which are prime moose fodder. In short, the new logging practices created vast “moose pastures” that the moose were quick to take advantage of. Moose numbers began a steady upward climb, first across northern Maine, next across northern New Hampshire, and finally across northern Vermont and New York. Then the great moose expansion began to spread southward, gradually encompassing most of the territory in the three northern New England states.

Of course, logging wasn’t the sole reason for the resurgence of moose in this area. Rapidly increasing numbers of beavers (see chapter 1) helped, and the reduced number of white-tailed deer in areas of huge clearcuts may have played a role, as well. This will be explained a bit later.

Although growing numbers of moose have delighted many people, not everyone is thrilled. Undeniably, large numbers of moose can cause significant problems, owing partly to serious misunderstandings about the real nature of moose. As perhaps befits their great stature and bulk, moose tend to go right through obstacles, rather than ducking under or leaping over them in the fashion of their smaller brethren, the whitetails. This causes major headaches for maple syrup producers who find their sap pipelines knocked down by moose passing through their sugar woods; likewise, farmers quickly become weary of repeatedly chasing after cattle that have wandered from their pastures through gaping holes in fences torn by wandering moose.

As aggravating as these problems can be, they aren’t the most serious ones. As the numbers of moose increase, so do the collisions between automobiles and moose. Unlike collisions with deer, which can cause expensive damage to a car but mostly don’t seriously harm the occupants, collisions with moose are extremely dangerous. Because of its long legs, the body of a moose is higher than the hoods of most passenger cars. The result is that when car strikes moose, the body of the moose usually smashes into the windshield or comes down on the roof, flattening it. Often driver and passenger are seriously injured, and a number of people have been killed in these crashes.

To some degree, such collisions can be attributed to the highly erroneous idea that moose are ponderous and slow-moving. True, their extremely long, almost stiltlike legs and great bulk give them an awkward, ungainly look— but no one should be fooled by this highly deceptive appearance. Moose can sustain a ground-devouring trot of five to ten miles per hour for hours on end, and at full throttle they’re capable of going at least thirty-five miles per hour—nearly as fast as a whitetail’s top speed! Contrary to the expectations of those who think moose are slow and lumbering, they can intersect with a speeding automobile with astonishing rapidity.

My wife and I experienced a graphic demonstration of this fact four or five years ago. We were driving on New Hampshire’s Kancamagus Highway through a part of the White Mountain National Forest. It was broad daylight, and we were cruising at the fifty-mile-per-hour speed limit along the down-slope on the Maine side of the pass. There was a long, straight stretch at that point, the road was fairly wide, and beyond each shoulder was a ditch, with a cleared strip between it and the woods.

Suddenly I caught a movement out of the corner of my left eye. Something about the movement suggested that it was bigger than a bird, and the thought flashed through my mind that it might be a hiker emerging from the woods. All that consumed only a split second, and when I glanced in the rearview mirror, there was a big cow moose, her hindquarters sprawled across the centerline and her head pointed back to my left. I yelled, “Moose!” to my wife, and just as she turned to look, we both saw the animal leap to its feet and speed back into the woods in the direction from which it had just come.

It wasn’t difficult to reconstruct what had happened. The moose must have shot forth from the woods with her throttle wide open. She crossed open strip, ditch, shoulder, and part of the highway in a flash, nearly hitting the back of our car. At that point she must have slammed on her brakes and skidded on the asphalt surface. Her hindquarters went down, slid, and pivoted her 180 degrees. It was a remarkable and frightening display of this “slow” animal’s speed!

If this story seems unlikely, just consider the mathematics of it. Sixty miles per hour equals eighty-eight feet per second. A car traveling at fifty miles per hour moves at seventy-three feet per second, and a moose in a hurry covers ground at roughly forty-four feet per second. The flicker of movement that I caught out of the corner of my eye meant that the moose had started to emerge from the woods slightly ahead of our car. The moose would have covered the distance to the edge of the travel lane, approximately fifteen feet, in one-third of a second; meanwhile, our car would have traveled about twenty-four feet, so that the rear of the car would barely have passed the moose as it reached the pavement. Then the moose slammed on its brakes and skidded as it hit the pavement.

Just as I was printing the very last chapter in this manuscript, the phone rang. It was our daughter Suzy, who asked in a very shaky voice, “Can you come and get me? I just hit a moose!” A yearling bull moose had come charging out of the woods, directly into her path. Thanks to her quick thinking, she’d avoided injury; thoroughly indoctrinated with the knowledge that she could be killed in a head-on collision with a moose, she had slued her car sideways so that she struck the moose only a glancing side blow. Unfortunately, the moose suffered a badly broken front leg and had to be dispatched by the game warden, but there’s a long waiting list for moose meat, so the meat, prime at that age, was salvaged.

Suzy had heard time and again about the speed of a running moose and knew, in an intellectual sense, that they could emerge from the woods at a frightening clip. The reality, however, was a revelation that she summed up by saying, “I still can’t believe how fast they move!”

May is the worst month for moose-and-car collisions, at least in the more southerly portion of the moose’s range. Here there are plenty of paved highways where salt is used in winter to melt snow and ice. This salt ends up in wet areas beside the road, creating artificial salt licks. Such sites are easily identified: they resemble a wet barnyard just traversed by a herd of cattle, the water muddy and the ground a soggy mass of great hoofprints.