Rough Winter

I may be a Yankee but I'm not an eskimo. Michigan is indeed a northern state -- but I hail from the southern portion of the Lower Peninsula. This is farm country, accustomed to moderate winters where snow is common and the average temperatures are around 30 degrees.

Well, tell you what, a stretch of 30-degree weather right now would have me thinking about spending a day at the beach. We haven't seen 30-degree temps for about a month. As I tap this out, it's a balmy four degrees with a windchill below zero. Mr. Weather tells me that this brutal cold will continue at least through the week.

It started snowing here in late November. It hasn't stopped since. And we hardly have it bad. Minnesota, Wisconsin and the northern portions of Michigan are experiencing some of the worse winter weather we've seen in decades. The upper Midwest is at the northernmost range of the white-tailed deer. Sure, there are plenty of deer in Canada -- but those animals have the benefit of immense stands of cedar and hemlock as well as agricultural land. That's not the case in the northern reaches of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Questionable timber practices, poor soils and rough climates make life difficult on deer when the weather gets this bad. In the late 1990s, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan saw tens of thousands of deer die from harsh winter conditions. The herd has never been the same since.

I fear that this winter will produce substantial winterkill in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin -- and states like North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. Now, we should also understand that Nature's way is Nature's way. It may be cruel and brutal but it's also natural. There's a lesson here. For many, many years Michigan hunters have howled over the fact that antlerless deer permits are available in the northern reaches of Michigan where deer numbers are low. Well, there's a reason for that. The habitat can sustain only those deer which it can support.

Deer will undoubtedly die this winter. They are deer that could have -- and in many cases should have -- been tagged by hunters. Sometimes, our state biologists really do know what they're talking about.

Tony Hansen, Michigan Man