Quote:
Originally Posted by walking buffalo
Remember that these animals are migratory. Many of our goats head to the US for the winter. During long/hard winters or a late spring on the prairie, many pronghorns will not come back all the way north. We've seen this trend for many years. A series of warm winters and the populations spread farther north, a long winter can keep them farther south for a while.
We'll have to wait until mid May to have a good idea of Pronghorn populations in Alberta.
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Yes, it appears that a lot of antelope from Alberta and Saskatchewan have made there way south. I live here in the Milk River Valley east of Havre and although a lot of antelope died this winter, the snow has now melted (althought it's snowing again this morning!) and there are several large groups of antelope here in the valley... I've seen several groups of 50 or more between Chinook in Havre recently.
The problem for the animals that want to migrate back to Canada is getting across the Milk River. It's near flood stage and is expected to be very high for several weeks and the vast majority of the antelope I've seen are on the south side of the river. The snow has melted here in the valley, but between the valley and the border and up into Canada there is still a lot of snow that has yet to melt. I'm no biologist by any means, but I'm thinking they are going to have their fawns down here and more than likely stick around for a while. When they make their way back north is anyone's guess, if they do at all.
We lost some deer here, but we have a terrible overpopulation problem so it was bound to happen sooner or later. We lost more Mule Deer than Whitetails, but we still have plenty of both around. I took this picture in the field next to my house a couple of weeks ago. You can't see all the deer in this photo, but I counted 106 and there were still deer coming out as it got dark..
