BANGOR, Maine — For those of us left plowing and shoveling more than 20 inches of snow, the snowstorm that dropped more than 20 inches of snow on much of Maine Tuesday and Wednesday has been a bit frustrating.
For critters that live in the woods, some late-winter storms can be life-threatening. Luckily, however, the state’s deer biologist says this most recent storm shouldn’t prove too troublesome to the state’s whitetail population.
“We’ve had a really mild February for the most part, so I think a big storm coming after all that mildness is not going to be that big a deal for deer,” said Nathan Bieber of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
Bieber explained that “winter severity” isn’t a mere guess for state biologists. Instead, biologists monitor conditions around Maine for 20 weeks each winter, from December through early April, in order to understand how severe the winters are for deer, and to quantify those conditions.
“We come up with a monthly winter severity number that comes from an equation that incorporates snow depth and temperature,” Bieber said. “It relates back to how deer are affected, so the higher the winter severity number, presumably the more difficult the winter is for the deer.”
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “Recent blizzard shouldn’t pose a major problem for Maine’s deer,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer John Holyoke, please follow this link to the BDN online.
