Ben Moyer: Will winter-kill of whitetails return to Pennsylvania this year?

The complexity of managing white-tailed deer in today’s world has become apparent to all stakeholders. But deer management may be about to become even more complicated because of the possible reemergence of a variable we haven’t thought about for decades in Pennsylvania – winter mortality.
Readers who lived through the 1960s and ‘70s recall deer winter-kill was a continual concern among hunters and wildlife managers. In northern mountains, trout anglers then often reported dead deer along streams as the snow melted in April.