An estimated total of 17,834 deer were bagged by bowhunters in northwestern counties last fall compared to 18,937 the year before. The buck kill was down 5.2 percent (9,528 versus 10,055) and the antlerless harvest declined by 6.5 percent (8,306 compared to 8,884).

Archers in counties that comprise the northeastern Lower Peninsula -- Iosco, Ogemaw, Roscommon, Crawford, Oscoda, Alcona, Alpena, Montmorency, Otsego, Antrim, Charlevoix, Emmet, Cheboygan and Presque Isle -- tagged 10,496 bucks and does last fall compared to 12,792 in 2003. Counties in that district where bowhunting with bait is still legal such as Antrim, Charlevoix, Emmet, Cheboygan, Iosco, Roscommon and Ogemaw should offer the best chance of success.

Deer sightings will probably be lowest this fall for archers who try their luck in the Upper Peninsula due to higher-than-anticipated losses during the winter of 2003-2004. Spring breakup arrived later than normal during 2004, and even after the snow melted, cold temperatures and rain slowed the growth of new green vegetation that deer needed to recover from winter. Consequently, many fawns died after the snow was gone.

I saw one example of this type of mortality on April 18, 2004, in Menominee County west of Stephenson. A cousin of mine owns 80 acres there and he has a camp on the property. He was at his camp on April 17 and encountered a weak fawn that had difficulty walking. I returned to his camp the following day to photograph the winter-weakened whitetail. I found it close to where my cousin last saw it. The doe fawn had died in the meantime, and ravens had started scavenging the carcass.

Thousands of fawns in the U.P.'s low snowfall zone -- Menominee County, along with southern portions of Dickinson, Delta and Iron counties -- suffered a similar fate. The DNR estimates that 30,540 deer died in the southern U.P., where snow depths are normally low, during the winter of 2003-2004. Winter loss in the medium snowfall zone was estimated at 10,500, and an additional 13,000 are thought to have died in the high snowfall zone.

That's a total of 54,040 deer lost during one winter, which exceeds the number of deer that have been killed in the U.P. during firearms season in recent years. And even more newborn fawns were lost when malnourished does gave birth in June. Many stunted fawns, due to poor development, are dead when they are born or die soon afterward. Hunters reported seeing far fewer fawns with does than normal in the U.P. during the fall of 2004, and the effects of the previous winter are primarily why.

Many deer hunters have been blaming wolves for low fawn numbers in 2004. There's no doubt that wolves and other predators such as black bears, coyotes and bobcats do catch and kill some young fawns, and that's part of the reason for fawn mortality. But those predators don't have as much effect as winter does. It's amazing that more hunters don't understand the impact winter has on whitetail survival in the U.P. because it's been happening for ages, and wolves have only been present in significant numbers over the past five years.

The number of newborn fawns that were lost in 2004 due to the previous winter could have easily been 50,000. One owner of a captive deer herd reported losing 30 percent of his newborn fawns, and the fawn loss was probably higher in the wild where most does don't have access to supplemental food. DNR wildlife biologist Craig Albright from Gladstone said up to 70 percent of the 2004 fawn crop could have been lost in the southern U.P.