JUST DEER by Ralph Bice   August 8, 1973

In spite of the fact that a few places have deer, not many but some, they are still very scarce back in the woods. Have been told of several areas close to settlements where there are a few. Some have been seen back in the woods but in spite of the fact a poacher was caught with a fawn born this year it looks very bad for the deer hunters next season. They may still show up but time is going and unless there is a migration of sorts the success will be even less than in 1972.

Several times I have mentioned a magazine published in Ontario that carries a lot of information about the wildlife in this Province. Have noticed the last several issues that many sections are getting worried about the declining deer population. Some of their arguments were used more than ten years ago but the arguments groups from the Northern parts presented were not given much credence.

A widely represented meeting in Eastern Ontario came up with a lot of reasons for no deer and also a lot of hoped for cures. Again they are putting a lot of blame on the beaver for causing so much flooding and killing a lot of deer pasture. This I cannot go with for when we had the heaviest and best hunting was when the woods, and I am speaking of the eastern side of Parry Sound District and the western part of Algonquin Park, also had the heaviest crop of beaver in the almost sixty years I have been in the woods. So I cannot go along with the idea that deer are affected in any way by beaver.

One thing was quite noticeable and it would make a lot of hunters smile, that no mention was made of predation being any part of the reason for deer scarcity. I have sat in conferences with at least three of the groups attending the meeting and I know they would have mentioned wolves. But there was not one mention made of that in the press report. They did suggest stopping non-residents from hunting but if the deer herd keeps on declining there will not be any need of any regulations as it is a long ways to come with no deer to hunt.

It is odd the idea people, some of them in responsible positions, have about the wildlife conditions in the woods. When the deer population fell off so fast after those two bad winters in the late fifties I talked to a man at Queens Park ad he took it quite lightly even to saying I must be wrong when I told him that the deer were away down in the Park. He told me his information was that they had just moved back from the road and there were still lots of deer back in the woods. The fact that I had been on several canoe trips did not matter. The biologists in the Park said there were lots of deer.

There are two men in our neck of the woods studying the creeks as to vegetation, soil, etc. Something to do with trout fishing. The fact that there has been good trout fishing in these little rivers for forty years does not matter, they have to see if they are suitable for trout. We have had a few discussions about wild life and they would hardly believe me when I said we have very few deer in the woods. They went to different colleges but at each place were told that there were still plenty of deer back in the woods.

So we who live in the woods will just have to accept the fact that non-academic woodsmen know very little about the woods they live in. But I wish some of these very learned people (and I use that adjective very loosely) would come up with some idea of bringing the deer back and put it into action.

I mentioned a few issues back about loons producing three eggs. This may not be so unusual but it is the first time I have heard of it. All of them hatched and a bird man has the shells. The three young loons were seen but now there are two. The one egg was slow in hatching and the little bird may have been weak.

 

A pair of Golden eagles were seen last week in McCraney Township (not in the Park). They were quite close to these people who also had a good pair of binoculars. Up to three years ago we saw eagles in that general area every summer, sometimes even three at once, but they have not been reported since 1970. Our pair of ospreys has not been seen for ever so long.