METABOLIC REALITIES
In a recent Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA) article titled “The Myth of Whitetail Metabolism,” the author posed the following question: “How do whitetails survive the harshest time of year?” He continues, “The truth is a whitetail’s metabolism varies extremely little across the seasons.”
The author presented a graph with the title “Whitetail Metabolism Across the Seasons” that shows a flat metabolic rate from January to July, based on fasting metabolism measurements at the University of New Hampshire. The problem with the graph begins with the title. (Read the title in the sentence above again.)
Given his description of the conditions deer are in when basal/fasting measurements are made, the title of the graph should be as follows: “Whitetail Metabolism Across the Seasons for Deer in a Big Enclosed Box.” The conditions that he described in a “big enclosed box” (his words) are: “no food for at least the past 48 hours, inactive (bedded), and exposed to temperatures within their thermal neutral zone.”
Deer do not live in boxes. And metabolism measurements on any mammal in a box under the conditions listed above were never meant to be applied to any free-ranging mammal, including deer, across the seasons.
Physiologists know that.
What myth is that being perpetuated then? The myth is metabolic rates of deer in boxes can be applied to free-ranging deer in their natural environment, and that metabolism does not vary across the seasons.
Instead, let’s take a real-life approach by looking at the behavioral, physiological and environmental characteristics of wild northern deer when meeting their metabolic needs through the seasons (what Dr. Aaron Moen refers to as “ecological metabolism” in his 1973 text,
