For Tony Evans, cold weather isn’t a sign of winter; it’s the beginning of a four-month fight to keep wild deer and elk away from his precious stacks of hay.
Evans said that last year he counted 400 elk in the hay stack on his farm near Spirit River, Alta., and in the past four years, deer, elk and moose wandering through his property have cost him more than $10,000 worth of damage in lost hay, damaged fields, broken fences and veterinary bills for horses caught in the broken wire.
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“The losses have been too damn great,” said Evans, who added he has a long list of neighbours who have also lost hay and grain to wild animals roaming the area.
“When hundreds of elk and moose descend on your feed supplies in the midst of the winter, your supplies are gone in short order,” said Evans, who believed conservation-minded government officials are to blame.
Evans has hundreds of photos documenting the damage to his hay and livestock and pages of photocopied letters and petitions he’s sent to his local MLA and the local fish and wildlife division of Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, the government department in charge of wildlife.
“Our pleas for something to be done about this seem to fall on deaf ears.”
This year, through an Ungulate Damage Prevention Program, Evans has fenced his bale yard with 2.5-metre high wire designed to keep wild animals away from the hay. Through the program, Evans paid $3,500 for the posts and installation and the fish and wildlife division paid for the wire.
At a nearby farm, Barb and Larry Wallin have also fenced their haystack through the feed protection program. Last winter the couple counted more than 100 elk in their haystack.
“They were quite the problem,” said Barb Wallin. Most of their neighbors are fencing haystacks as the only way to protect their feed, she said.
In northwestern Alberta, roaming herds of deer, elk and moose are a “chronic problem,” said Lyle Fullerton of the fish and wildlife division in Peace River.
Evans isn’t imagining the larger herds. The past few years of mild winters have seen an explosion in deer and elk populations. It isn’t uncommon for females to have twins and triplets because of the ideal feed and weather conditions.
When weather is mild, the numbers of animals increase, but when snow is deep and the weather is cold the animals migrate to where the food is easiest to get, such as farmers’ fields.
“If you have a few deer eating a few bales it’s not a big deal, but when you start to get dozens and dozens of deer and elk, we’re getting a huge problem,” said Fullerton, who works with farmers to help limit the damage.
Farmers who have built fences around their stacks say they seem to keep the animals out, but they add it has just shifted the elk to the neighbours’ haystacks.
As well as providing feed stack fences, Fullerton’s department has doubled and sometimes tripled the number of permits to shoot the animals to reduce numbers.
But there’s a shortage of hunters.
In an area west of Grimshaw, south to the Peace River and west to the British Columbia border, 1,432 deer licences were available. There are still 150 licences left that allow hunters to shoot two antlerless mule deer on a single tag.
“We can’t get enough hunters,” Fullerton said.
“We’re certainly trying to do our best to manage the population and we need hunters to help.”
Elk are also cagey animals. When they are being hunted during the day, they change their movements to feed at night when it’s illegal to hunt.
“It makes it very difficult to control the numbers effectively,” Fullerton said.
Tips to reduce wildlife damage
- Move bales from the field to a storage area that can be monitored.
- Place round straw bales two tiers high around feed to act as a protective barrier.
- Create a permanent stack yard site by using fences, or pound posts in the ground before it freezes to facilitate wire fences if necessary.
- Chase deer and elk from stack yards when they first appear. Don’t allow them to become conditioned to humans or dependent on the site as a food source.
- Store grain in secure granaries or storage bins and clean up spilled grain.
- Allow access for hunting.
