Since the winter carrying capacity of our deer yards is the true limiting factor when it comes to the size of our deer herd, I've got a real interest in what is going on there. I feel if we send too many deer into the yards during winter, we will be doing more long term harm to the herd, then if we were to harvest some extra does. When more deer go to the yards, than the yards can support, the deer will eat themselves out of house and home. Even a year or 2 of this can cause habitat damage that takes years and years to come back from, and the only way to bring it back is through an extreme lowering of deer numbers. So I'm starting to think that the best way for us to judge how our deer population goals are doing is by looking at the condition of the winter yarding areas.

If any of you own property in the general Grace Harbor area, where our deer winter, can you let us know what kind of shape the yards are in? Does the habitat regenerate every year, or is it going down hill? Do you find any dead deer in the spring time?

I heard "rumors" that there were a bunch of dead deer in the spring of '09, which was a little tougher winter. Is there any truth to that?

Forgot to add that the Grace Harbor area is the only local yarding area that I know of. Seems like there would be another area around us, maybe to the north in some of those swamps. Does anyone know of other areas that our deer yard in?

i dont know of any large yards that the deer migrate to in our area just a few small ones that some of the local deer used to stay in. i dont have permision to be on that land anymore so i cant check them. i do know that we lost half the herd in our area about 15 years ago after a really hard winter. i have been wondering what has hapened to all the deer that used to be back behind the main gates when the clubs were back there.from what some people are saying the numbers are down. there could have been a big die off after everybody lost there leases and the food supply droped dramaticly.there were clubs back there that were dumping out gravel trucks full af bait. those giant piles that u see at the feed stores were all over the woods . im sure all that food made the herd bigger than the yards could support. and i know of 1 club that always got doe tags and never used them. my friend who was part of that club said that they had over 100 does on there lease property.iam not a wild life bioligest but i think that between the maturing of the timber since abitibi cut. and the sudden loss of a food supply that the deer relied on for 20 years. could have played a part in the lower numbers. but now that almost every body back there is putting in food plots and doing some cutting the herd should grow again we just have to keep it in check. and some winter carry over plots next to the yards would help. so if we can wack a bunch of preditors and work together we should be able to have great results back here.

Too many deer ? We hunted every day for 3 solid weeks and I saw 5 deer. I don't think we need to worry about reducing the size of the herd.

gwatson are you in cheboygan or presqilse county?just wondering what part of the area u are in? we are in the nortwest part of the co-op in cheb.there may not be a need to reduce the herd .but there may be a need to not let the herd grow to big. some how as a group i think we need to figure out how many deer the habitat can support in the winter .and make sure we just dont end up with more deer than the yards can support . the yards are the only reason most of the deer up there survive the winter.of the five deer you saw how many were bucks or does? did you or anyone from your camp harvest anything? i missed the second meeting so i dont know what was discused but mabye we could all bring last years harvest data and deer sightings to the next one.