An easy 10-minute walk from Rheinstrom Hill Audubon Sanctuary and Center in upstate New York, a visitor can pause and take in two distinct forests. On the right side of a winding trail, the woods are lush. Crimson tips of sumac peek above a tightly woven bouquet of young oak, hickory, and aspen, and a tangled understory of blackberry and witch hazel conceals rummaging towhees and mewing catbirds. It’s a messy barrage of green, practically throbbing with life.
Not so on the left side, where the trees stand far apart, like the remains of a half-used matchbook. Here the eye travels easily to the horizon, past barren stems poking up from a thin carpet of dead leaves. Even at the height of summer, this area is brown and eerily quiet, its silence broken only by the occasional knocking of a woodpecker. The difference between these two stands of woods? Deer….