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CONTRIBUTED PHOTO -- Zachary city building inspector Scott Masterson rescues a fawn from being swept away in floodwaters over the weekend.

Kenny Ribbeck and Johnathon Bordelon are wildlife biologists — and realists.

In their jobs — Ribbeck is the chief of the state’s Wildlife Division and Bordelon is the State Deer Study leader — they know there will be questions about the massive flood’s effect on south Louisiana wildlife, especially deer.

Deer in areas around Baton Rouge and in the Atchafalaya Basin are unique among the state’s whitetail herds. They breed much later in the rutting season than others around Louisiana, which means the females give birth — it’s called “dropping fawns” — in August.

Long-retired Wildlife and Fisheries’ biologists reasoned years ago the deer along the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers adopted this timetable so their young-of-the-year would be born after the threats of spring floods from these two giant rivers.

So what’s good most years turns out to be horribly bad timing this year.

“A lot of people saw pictures of fawns picked up, some abandoned (by their mothers), and that could signal some mortality of fawns,” Ribbeck said, adding the separation of a doe and a fawn could have been caused by so much activity in rescue efforts.

Bordelon said it’s likely, because the water came up fast and receded within a day or two that 6-week-old fawns could have survived.

“It’s all about timing,” Bordelon said. “The older fawns are more mobile, but fawns 1-2 weeks of age, well, we expect fawn mortality. Some of those animals perished.”

Both men agreed that the impact of this flooding event will be felt next year, not during the approaching season.

“In areas affected by the flood, hunters won’t see the  1-1/2-year-old deer. They won’t be there,” Ribbeck said. “That’s when we look at the biological data from hunter harvests and possibly make adjustments in next year’s harvest opportunities. I guess it was good that we saw all those fawns. It indicated a good breeding year. That was encouraging.”

Floods and the effects of late-summer storms forced the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries game biologists and managers to take a hard look at the Atchafalaya Basin. Years of data showed the need to manage deer herds in the country’s largest overflow swamp in a special manner, and the 2016-2017 hunting season heralds in a new Deer Area 5 — the Atchafalaya Basin — on the up-to-date state’s deer area map. There’s a built-in call-it-quits Atchafalaya River level for Area 5 hunters.

Otherwise, because floodwaters didn’t remain on the land for extended periods like flooding from hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Isaac (2012), the massive flood’s effect likely will not affect a deer’s ability to find food.

Retired state biologist David Moreland who held the same jobs as Ribbeck and Bordelon, said browse, the variety of vegetation on which deer feed, was not impacted by the flood.

“Browse above water continues to grow, and will grow after floods recede,” Moreland said. “While you don’t expect fawns not yet weaned to survive, especially if they’re separated from the mother for 2-4 days, floods like this usually don’t impact adult deer. The food is still there.

“I have a (trail) camera set up a half-mile from the Amite (a major flooded river), and I’m getting pictures of fawns, so maybe it’s not as bad as we might believe,” Moreland said. “I expect the situation is worse in the lower East Baton Rouge, Ascension and St. James (parishes) where water stayed up and the deer were confined to small areas in the swamps. Those areas are places where we could see the loss of an age group of deer.”

For Bordelon, that’s for next year’s seasons.

Today, he’s looking at what’s ahead for this year’s deer hunters, and knows last year’s numbers, because of the vagaries of weather and location, might or might not be as good as last season.

“Statewide, the deer harvest was up by 12 percent from the previous year,” Bordelon said, noting the northwest parishes, like Union, Bienville, Vernon and Claiborne, came through with the usual numbers, and “accounted for a large portion of deer.

“Those parishes are 80-90 percent forest and has more deer habitat than other places … but some of the River Parishes, the ones along the Mississippi and Atchafalaya (rivers), were below average,” he said.

It’s important to know Bordelon and fellow biologists rely on some they call “lactation rate,” an observed percentage of 2-1/2-year-old female deer producing milk for their fawns.

“We had issues in the bottomland hardwoods, not all bottomland hardwoods, but certain locations,” Bordelon said. “For the first time in some places, we found lactation rates below 50 percent (more than half the females did not produce a fawn), and that’s a concern.”

What worries him even more, Bordelon said, is there was no rhyme nor reason to explain why one area fell below 50 percent while another location a few miles away showed lactation rates in the 70-80 percent range.

“It’s a measure of reproductive success and the (lactation) rates we found couldn’t be traced to any single factor,” he said, adding the rates come from observations on Wildlife & Fisheries’ wildlife management areas and lands enrolled in the LDWF’s Deer Management Assistance Program.

Lower rates translate to the same predicament as losing fawns to floods, Bordelon said. It means the loss of a year's class of bucks and does.

“At Grassy Lake (WMA), it’s usually a 70-80 percent rate, and it was down in the 30 (percent range),” Bordelon said. “Since the biggest cohort of deer is the year-and-half-old deer, and those are the deer most taken by hunters, we anticipate the harvest will be down next year because there were fewer fawns the previous year.

“When you look at Buckhorn and Thistlethwaite (WMAs), lactation was at 80 percent and we expect a good year next year,” he said.

“I know it’s on our radar to study this in areas with lower rates to determine if it’s related to deer density, increased density or decreased food resources,” Bordelon said. “That’s when we can retool and adjust what we’re doing on those lands.”

That done, Bordelon spent time looking at what hunters might find this year.

“For parts of the state, (deer hunting) will be a plus year,” he said. “The northwest parishes came through floods earlier in the year and have good conditions. The vegetation is lush in late August — it really looks like early June there because it’s so green.

“Deer in the coastal areas are stable mostly because there’s a more stable and longer growing season than up North," Bordelon said. “That’s barring no hurricane hits between now and the start of the season.”

He said herds in the upper reaches of the state’s Mississippi Alluvial Valley are “in pretty good shape. There was some flooding up there, but that happens every year. There are good (deer) populations there, but there will be some good areas and some down places.

“It’s the lower area of alluvial area that’s unpredictable,” Bordelon said. “The unknown is the flood. We can hope for a stable year. The flood impacted so many acres.”

For Ribbeck, floods have become the norm in his years on the job, and he’s come to know that the quarry, the deer and other critters, encounter fewer hunters after a major disaster.

“When thinking back to Hurricane Katrina, there was a definite dip in hunter participation, and it took a couple of years after the storm before numbers built up,” Ribbeck said. “The flood impacted a lot of families in the Baton Rouge community and the North Shore area, and lots of folks will focus on restoration of their homes rather than hunt.

“All we can do on our end is to definitely provide hunting opportunity,” Ribbeck said. “By doing that maybe we can bring some joy to life that’s been turned over right now.”