Times Advocate, 1994-11-16, Page 17900 deer
Second section - November 16, 1994
verpopulate Pinery Park
One official says there is only enough natural food in the park for 250 deer
Story and photos by
Fred Groves
T -A staff
GRAND BEND - Drive through
the Pinery Provincial Park this time
of year and you can get within five
feet of the nearly 900 wild deer that
roam the park.
But it shouldn't be possible.
Deer are plentiful in the park- too
plentiful. According to Tom Purdy
of the Pinery Provincial Park, there
is only enough natural food to keep
about 250 of the deer properly fed.
The deer are naturally suited to
the Pinery's Oak Savanna environ-
ment.
"Deer are creatures that have to
have a disturbed environment. It
can be fire, logging...deer can not
live in an old-growth forest," said
Purdy.
But a fresh look at the dwarf oaks
and red cedars that normally thrive
in the area reveals a browse line --
about three feet above the ground,
all of the trees in the 3,000 hectacre
savanna are stripped of their
growth.
Each one of the sleek -footed an-
imals needs about two kilograms of
food a day. At this time of year,
that consists mostly of twigs picked
from the lower branches of dwarf
oak and red cedar trees.
Saturday afternoon, Purdy led a
group on an educational deer walk
along the Park's Cedar Trail. While
no decr were spotted on the walk,
the evidence of the browse line
wasn't hard to miss. Purdy pointed
out how much of their winter food
the deer have already eaten. And
it's not winter yet.
He compared the twigs on the
branches to the interest in a bank
account and the branches them-
selves as the principle.
"When they start eating the prin-
ciple, we're in trouble and that's
where we're at now," said Purdy.
Count is pretty accurate: Over
the past few years, the park has
done extensive study on the white -
One of the very friendly deer at the Pinery Park gets a nibble of food.
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tailed deer. Through a count of
their droppings they can estimate
the numbers.
Just to be sure, Purdy says they
have had as many as 300 volunteers
walk through the woods and actual-
ly count the deer.
But that's only half of the equa tion.
"We have plots where everything
is the way it should be except for
one exception -- no deer. It's a way
of studying how much food is in
the cupboard."
"When they start
eating the
principle, we're
in trouble."
Inside these fenced deer "ex -
closures", the undergrowth is un-
disturbed. Its lush growth com-
pares dramatically to the razed
underbrush outside the fence.
Purdy explained that of the 900
deer in the park, about 600 of those
arc does. The females are more
plentiful because they arc a little
smarter than the males --they stay
together and don't wander off to fall
through the ice or get hit by ve-
hicles on the roadways.
While the Ministry of Trans-
portation puts salt on the nearby
highway, which attracts the deer
bccasue of the sodium, there also
reflectors on the highway to keep
the deer back. -
"Many of the does die within
1,000 metres of where they were
born. They don't travel much."
- This time of year, visitors are en-
couraged to come into the park as
mid-November is the peak of deer
mating or rutting season. The males
call the females by scraping their
antlers along a tree and leaving a
scent. The scarred bark is easy to
spot from any trail.
By its first birthday, every doe
will have a fawn. Every year after
that, each will have twins and
sometimes triplets.
Pressure on nature's cupboard
doesn't affect their reproduction ei-
ther, says Purdy. Wolves, for ex-
ample, only get pregnant when,
food is plentiful and they have a
high content of fat stored inside of
them. Deer have no such natural
birth control.
"They all get pregnant whether
there is too much food or too little.
That's why they have the ability to
overpopulate."
Two hundred days after concep-
tion, the doe gives birth. One of
every three fawns will die before its
first birthday.
No need to warn: Today, the dcer
in the park have few reasons to
flash the, warning of their white
tails. Only humans and the occa-
sional coyote get to see the display.
"That white flag (tail) has two
t neat purposes," said Purdy. "It
alerts other deer and it says to the
predator, 1 see you."
But except for a photographer
getting too close, the deer don't
have much of a reason to fear hu-
man contact. The park is closed to
hunters by law.
Throughout the tour along a trail,
Purdy pointed out how the natives
used to hunt the deer for food. To-
day, controlled hunts or culls have
been suggested to get the numbers
down.
"There is some poaching, it docs
happen. We've never had an or-
ganized hunt," said Purdy.
A cull would bring a great deal of
controversey to the Pinery Pro-
vincial Park. Rondcau Provincial
Park near Wheatley had one and it
was met with a grcat deal of op-
position.
But Purdy says its hard to find
another viable altemativc. Birth
control simply doesn't make ec-
onomic sense. It costs up to 5400 to
medicate each doe.
Letting nature "takc its course"
doesn't really make much sense ei-
ther, says Purdy. Man has already
driven away the wolf the natural
predator of the dccr. While it's
likely disease will eventually drive
the numbers down, its hard to con-
trol when or how extensively it will
hit. In the meantime, the plant life
gets devastated.
Tom Purdy shows how much food one deer eats per day.
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