DEER MANAGMENT TIPS
Before anything else, the most important key to bigger bucks and larger deer is creating a plan to incorporate deer management practices into your property. If you are a property owner and you have a larger property deer management practices will be easier to manage and enforce but not everyone is that lucky. In this article we aim to provide you with different tactics that will help make your property more attractive all season long. Keep in mind, every property is different, its important that you take the time to learn your property and how the deer travel your property before coming up with a property management plan.
- Age
- Nutrition
- Genetics
- Sex Ratio
AGE
Nothing will take a 2 year old deer and make it a 6 year old deer. This means the only way to get bigger bucks is to let them grow older. In a bucks life the largest antlers typically occur around 4.5 to 7.5 year mark. After around seven years antlers may grow smaller each year as the deer is in a downward slide as age creeps up. You should always aim to harvest mature deer on your property and leave the younger 2-3 year old’s pass to see another year. There are some scrub bucks that may not make the cut, maybe they have an ugly rack which could be carried by bad genes. It’s ok in this case to get them out of the gene pool so they do not pass on those bad traits down during breeding season.
NUTRITION
Nutrition is vital to not only antler development and body size but its also important for the overall health of the heard. A healthy heard will be more productive as well. You can achieve this by ensuring deer have a broad spectrum of food sources at their disposal. Deer eat roughly 5-7 pounds of food daily per 100 pounds of body weight and each plant has different phytochemicals, vitamins, and minerals required to balance a deer’s diet. Larger deer may even eat up to 12 pounds of food per day! Deer are known as rhythmic feeders, they feed roughly five times a day. They have learned to adapt to the common habitat changes of the modern era and they don’t really need our help but there are things you can do to help the heard and create a more successful hunting area. Food plots are a great way to add more nutrition options to a property. This helps not only deer but many other types of wildlife as well. We will discuss food plot tips later in the article. Minerals can also help to provide deer with a centralized location where they may get additional minerals that could be harder to find in some areas and will help give them a little boost. During the later months of the year after vegetation dies off deer will live mostly on woody browse. With this being said hinge cutting a few trees may help. This will provide them with fresh woody browse year round and may even help make your property thicker allowing them to feel more comfortable. We will discuss hinge cutting later in this article.
GENETICS
Genetics is a common talking point with the ranches that have a fenced in population. Genetics in these areas are much easier to control and you have very little control in the wild. It’s important to note that antler genes can be carried by both male and females. It’s easy to see what bucks have quality genes but with does you really cant determine that in the wild. The only way to determine whether or not a doe has good genes is by looking at the overall health of the doe. I have shot bucks simply to get them out of the gene pool but its hard to manage this when hunting around public lands where you do not have control of your heard.
SEX RATIO
The sex ratio of the heard is pretty important. Shoot for 1 buck per doe but realistically that’s almost impossible to achieve so shoot for 1:2 or 1:3. A balanced heard helps with overall heard health as well. The more bucks that are out there during the breeding season means the more does that were bread during their first estrous cycle. This could shorten the rut time frame in this area too which removes a lot of stress from the deer in the area. As long as those levels of estrus are detected the bucks will stay in the rutting phase and could run themselves ragged right before winter when they need that energy the most. Bucks can loose up to 30-50% of their body weight during the rut due to mating behavior which can cause higher then normal stress levels.
FOOD PLOTS
Many people who study deer will say the quality of your deer starts with the quality of the soil. A study was done in Mississippi that showed in areas with richer soil there were larger racks. Food plots and kill plots can be an awesome addition to your hunting area but they take a lot of money, work and commitment. Soil samples are a great way to prepare the ground and help with food plot success and they are fairly cheap. It’s also important to choose crops that are available when you need them most during the season. For instance once the temperatures get colder bean fields will begin to turn yellow. Deer will typically stop hitting bean fields once they turn yellow because the nutritional value has left the plants and there’s usually more palatable options at the buffet for them to enjoy. This is just one of the many examples of why its important to pick the proper crop for on your plots that will last through the entire season and will benefit the heard when they need it most. Beans would also not be a good choice for those who have smaller kill plots. You should not plant beans in areas of less then 2 or more acres because it could become a subject of overgrazing and there are plenty of better options for you to utilize in plots of this size. Food plots seem to work better when the native foods start to diminish and become more scarce later in the season and often times summer plots can be a major waste of money. Deer have more food then they could ever eat during the summer months. If you are competing with other ag fields in the area this is another thing to be mindful of. If the local ag field has 30 acres of soybean, its likely your little 2 acre soybean plot will be more of a disservice to them and they may not even hit your field as often because the tonnage in the nearby ag field is much greater. In this circumstance it would be better to plant something different to provide them with additional options instead of trying to compete with the other ag field. This will hopefully pull them to your plot instead whether that’s a plot 500 yards away or a small staging plot close to this ag field. Check out our food plot success article for more facts about creating a quality plots that will help you pull deer into your property when its needed most. Remember, the quality of the soil is your biggest puzzle piece and will make or break your plot. Higher quality soils will produce higher quality foods typically containing more vitamins, minerals, and crude protein. This in turn determines whether your plot will be of importance to them throughout the season. So if you are going to skimp anywhere in this process skimp on the fertilizer part and get your soil ph right. Without proper soil ph the fertilizer means nothing as your plants can’t soak up the vital nutrients they need without being in the proper ph range anyways.
CREATING BEDDING AND THICK POCKETS
Deer like a little diversity in their habitat. Many people call them creatures of the edge, if you have a diverse habitat with thick pockets it could help your whitetail property greatly. Hinge cutting which we will discuss later can really help with this in wooded areas. For fresh new dense growth to grow it is important to let sunlight in. A good way to do that is with hinge cutting and removing the unhealthy and low value trees.
HINGE CUTTING
Hinge cutting trees can be a great way to help your property and the local heard. If done properly this brings the woody tops down to a deer’s level and provides them with woody browse and fresh chutes not only in the winter time but all season long. This will also allow more sunlight in helping younger trees and shorter growth to occur.