A family of deer visit the Landa Park Golf Course on Wednesday evening to graze. Drought conditions are making finding food a challenge for the large white-tailed deer population locally.
New Braunfels residents know deer are as commonplace in Texas as Ford pickups.
They walk through lawns, meander around country roads and often can be found as road kill. Then it comes as no surprise that deer, like other animals, are being affected by this year’s drought.
“It’s been a tough year for them, much like 2006,” said Mitche Lockwood, Texas Parks and Wildlife White Tailed Deer Program Leader. “Conditions are tough and nutrition is limited.”
Lockwood credits the plentiful rain that the area received in 2007 as limiting the effects of this year’s rain shortage.
“Don’t expect to see a large scale die off, but we probably won’t have as good a fawn crop and antlers will be impacted,” Lockwood said.
How affected deer have been by this year’s drought will be determined when Texas wildife biologists conduct the annual regulatory survey of fawn crops and deer population in a few weeks.
Last year, parks and wildlife marked a 40 percent fawn crop, which means there was fewer than one fawn for every two does. An ideal fawn crop is 100 percent; meaning a one-for-one fawn to doe ratio.
Lockwood said the reason for last year’s low fawn crop, even with a wet summer in 2007, was because many of the fawns counted were conceived during the fall of 2006, when the area was still dry. For there to be a 100 percent fawn crop there must be good weather with plentiful moisture from the fawn’s conception to its gestation period. This year’s crop may not be as high as some expect because of the recent drought.
Lockwood also said the drought’s effect on deer are not as noticeable because of the increase of private ranch owners successfully managing their ranches wildlife and because of the use of deer feed.
“People know deer are struggling, so they feed them and it compensates for lack of natural nutrition,” Lockwood said.
But people feeding deer are having to contend with higher prices.
Alan Rompel, manager of New Braunfels Feed and Supply, said deer corn prices have risen 80 to 100 percent in the last six months.
“I’d say it has to do with the floods up North and the increase in ethanol production that’s got prices high,” Rompel said.
He said even with high prices, deer corn is still selling.
“The drought’s evened things out,” Rompel said, “we have dry grass and the deer need something to eat, so people buy feed.”
Lockwood says feed as nourishment for deer during a drought has both its positive and negatives.
“Deer won’t die off, but we have to remember that droughts are Mother Nature’s way of keeping populations under control,” Lockwood said.
“We do discourage feeding in suburban areas, because overpopulation in an area can lead to disease being spread among the deer,” he said.
