Winterkill and deer kill

Just wondering if people have seen much winterkill on any lakes after all of the snow?

And has anyone noticed how many deer are on the side of roads? Last weekend I must have seen 20 of them all in one area in the Starbuck/Benson/Spicer area. Was this just because of more movement as they searched harder for food this year? Or was it normal amount but just kept getting covered up by the plows all winter and we just see them all now?

i have noticed waaaaaaay more deer in the ditches too? the shallow lakes all over the state will be hit hard i have a feeling.

I think the dead deer on the sides of the roads are common, come spring. They’ve just been getting covered up by 6″ of snow every 3-4 days this year.

As for other deer found dead, a buddy of mine was out shed hunting two of his hunting properties and found 6 dead ones on a little more than 100 acres.. He said every one of them looked to be last years fawns.. No rhyme or reason. Guessing they just didn’t have the fat reserves that the larger deer had and this winter was tough because of the snow depth.

This was a tough winter on deer, especially in the northern half of the state where the population’s already struggling.

As for fish winterkill, saw a video on facebook of Lake Elysian in southern MN east of Mankato hundreds if not thousands of dead carp. There may have been other fish mixed in but carp were the VAST majority. might be a good thing?

I haven’t seen any suspect deer in the 10 or 15 miles of woods I’ve put on lately. But I have heard about alot. I think the side of the road deer are mostly road kills. As for winter kill in lakes, especially south lakes in our state, I hear that can be a healthy thing for them

Found way too many deer in the woods and turkeys. Last week in NE one lake had severe winter kill we where checking out. Crappies and bass floating everywhere.

I’ve many deer so far on my places I hunt north of the cities and south of Cannon falls I’ve even found more.

IceNEyes1986 wrote:

As for other deer found dead, a buddy of mine was out shed hunting two of his hunting properties and found 6 dead ones on a little more than 100 acres.. He said every one of them looked to be last years fawns.. No rhyme or reason.

I have some buddies in Stearns County that have found about a dozen across about 300 acres, and same thing all this years fawns with no obvious cause of death.

But at least we didn’t feed them so as to minimize transmission of CWD /s

Probably bumped into about 5 torn apart deer bodies over the past few days in the woods looking for turkeys south of cannon falls. Looked like we were in Wisconsin at one point driving down the road with how many we saw dead in close proximity to one another.