Deer management, etc.

I own 100 acres and my property is part of a 4100 coop where all property owners manage their properties in the same manner. We all use QDMA principles. We are either not shooting any does or only taking 1 doe per year and we are not shooting any bucks under 3.5 years old. I am also a QDMA Deer Steward, which I highly recommend to all landowners. There is a TON of researched based knowledge and information that will totally change the way you manage your property.

For me, I have owned my property for 5 years now. My property is all mixed hardwood timber. The first year I was able to clear two areas that are slightly larger than 1 acre each for food plots. I also put in a small wildlife water source, think very small pond. I have installed new fire break trails and did my first prescribed burn on 8 acres of woodland habitat. The biggest thing I learned from QDMA is that food plots are not always necessary. You can do a prescribed burn and get more generation of forbes and high-protein deer browse than you can from a small food plot. I've got a stand of large pines and I burned through that stand and you would not believe the amount of vegetation that has started to grow in that pine stand. It's no longer just a big open stand of pines. I highly recommend prescribed fire. You can set back woody plants and small trees and encourage more new vegetation that deer will eat.

I've also set up 3 mineral sites on my property. I also a HUGE proponent of mineral, and I don't mean the little buckets that you buy at the local farm store. Each one of my mineral sites gets 200lbs of mineral twice a year! So for my 3 mineral sites, I'm putting out 1200lbs of mineral each year on my property. My recommendation is to have 1 mineral site for every 20 acres on your property with a water source within less than 1/4 of a mile. If no water source, put one in yourself. The little buckets of mineral that you buy at Walmart or Academy work great as an attractant, but there is not NEARLY enough mineral to change the overall health of your deer population. I have my own mineral recipe and I can buy 200lbs for about $45.

I used to use feeders, but learned that corn has almost zero nutritional value for deer so I decided to spend my money on other things.

After season this year, I will be putting in more trails on my place to use as firebreaks so I can do more sections of prescribed burns.

I hunt on private land. The only problems I have that aren't equipment related (like keeping feeders filled) are coyotes and a pack of feral dogs that spook deer in the area. The plan to address this is eradication on sight.

I have 150 acres to work with but am not optimistic about making much of a dent in antler quality nor deer numbers. I had been in a 6600 acre lease for 23 years and came to realize that huge areas under the same management plan are necessary to appreciably change antler size for the better. A couple of adjacent leases or landowners who are not on board can throw a wrench into your efforts.

That being said, Olympus' thoughts on minerals are sound. Bucks need larger amounts of calcium, magnesium and manganese than mineral blocks or most deer supplements provide. The does need it too for good fawn production. Keeping deer density within the carrying capacity of your land is important too. Too many deer in an area overbrowse the land and it causes smaller body and antler size. On our 6600 acre lease the biologist demanded that we kill between 80 and 100 does every season. We thought he was nuts but did it anyway. We saw does with triplet fawns and a higher percentage of bucks after a couple of years. We didn't kill bucks unless they scored 115 B&C gross or better. After doing this for 10 years, we saw larger, healthier deer. The size of the antlers, however, topped out at about 140 B&C. Also, we never had many 10 point bucks killed .. almost all were 8 points. That was due to the inherent genetics of the herd.

The moral of the story is that you try to improve what you can and accept the end product. Without a high fence and introducing better genetics plus getting EVERYONE being on the same page as to deer harvest, you can't markedly change what is there to begin with.

I moved back to the old family ranchette (230 acres, mixed pasture and thick woods) near Austin, Texas, in 1968. Went jeeping around the pasture one night, spotlighting. Counted over fifty pairs of eyes. Way too many deer!

Texas didn't have any sort of culling program, back then. I instituted my own. After some three years, body weights were up by around 20% and the bucks had decent antlers. No more scraggle-horns or mature spikes.

But my grandfather had explained carrying capacity to me when I was just a kid. It holds for deer as well as cattle.

An example of too many deer: I was driving back roads while returning home from Luckenbach. Drove by an oat patch, just before sundown. I counted over a hundred deer, mostly does. No really noticeable bucks. None of them would have field-dressed over sixty pounds. Shame.

We lease 4,000 acres from a timber company.
We are surrounded on all sides by hunting clubs that do the same.
There is no real management plan in place. I wish there was.

I have a ~250 acre property with my brother and father. It is pretty rugged for middle Tennesse with all the ridge tops having been timbered out about 15-20 years ago. The bottoms are still wooded with a lot of mature hardwood. Since buying the property a bit over 6 years ago we have put in ~4 acres of small scattered food plots. Our biggest is .85 acres most are .2-.4 acres. We put feeders out in the off season and have created several salt/mineral licks. The improvement has been slow and steady. The first year we hunted the place my bother took one of the largest bucks we saw in the cameras and it was a scraggly 7-pt that weight 150 lbs live weight. Last year we had several larger heavy-beamed 8-points and two really nice 10 pts on the property. My father killed two 200 lbs live-weight 8-pts. We are still a ways from Boon and Crockett trophy bucks but we have seen a respectable increase in the quality and health of the deer herd just with what little we have managed to do on out modest piece of property.

ETA: This was a picture from early last season

After thinning does on 800 acres we are now putting food plots and mineral stations in. These deer have had a high protein diet for years eating cattle feed that runs over 15% protein. The gene pool produces mostly 8 pointers with several on camera that will score 110-130". I had one on camera 2 years ago that might go 140 and took one 11pt that was in the 120" class. This year I get help from the owners son. It will be fun to see what this 14 year old can do. He has taken bigger deer than any of mine on his grandpa's other farm but gramps had a deluxe stand set up and no one else hunts the place. It is a set up if I have ever seen one. Now I get to teach him to "HUNT" them.

Arkansas Paul said:

We lease 4,000 acres from a timber company.
We are surrounded on all sides by hunting clubs that do the same.
There is no real management plan in place. I wish there was.

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Will the timber company owner not allow you to make any kind of changes to the property? What is keeping you from putting together a management plan?

Own 320 acres in Iowa, mixture of crops, CRP, pasture, and 20 acres of timber. Impossible to do any kind of QDMA herd management unless all the surrounding neighbors participated. Biggest accomplishment was when all the adjoining neighbors agreed to keep their gates locked and only let their family hunt the properties.

Added about 30 acres of CRP some years ago, that's been been a big help.

Rembrandt said:

Own 320 acres in Iowa, mixture of crops, CRP, pasture, and 20 acres of timber. Impossible to do any kind of QDMA herd management unless all the surrounding neighbors participated. Biggest accomplishment was when all the adjoining neighbors agreed to keep their gates locked and only let their family hunt the properties.

Added about 30 acres of CRP some years ago, that's been been a big help.

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You can still do a lot of management practices on 320 acres. You may not be able to make changes to the overall deer herd in your area, but you can definitely do a lot of different things to pull deer from other properties to yours. You've seen the CRP be a big help. I think you'd be surprised at what several dedicated mineral sites would do for you also. And if you don't have cattle to feed with the pasture areas, you could let those areas grow into early successional habitat and then burn them every other year and I think you would see a HUGE different. Just my opinion.

Pulling deer onto the property isn't an issue, mine is a natural funnel from the surrounding properties. In "highway terminology", mine would be the equivalent of two intersecting Interstate Highways. Traffic's not the problem, managing buck-doe ratios and letting the bucks age longer is the challenging task. Pastures are managed for the cattle.

Olympus said:

Will the timber company owner not allow you to make any kind of changes to the property? What is keeping you from putting together a management plan?

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Well, they will allow food plots and such, and we do that.
What keeps us from putting together a management plan is that most people shoot any legal deer that crosses their path.
Also, about half our lease is dog runners, and when that happens, you shoot whatever legal deer they're running.

I certainly have no stones to throw at those who shoot any legal deer, and I'm guilty of it in this lease because I know I may as well fill up the freezer because that's what everyone else is doing.
And that is fine.
I could join a lease that is more selective and has a management plan in place, but I would drive further and pay a lot more money, so I choose not to.

Arkansas Paul said:

Well, they will allow food plots and such, and we do that.
What keeps us from putting together a management plan is that most people shoot any legal deer that crosses their path.
Also, about half our lease is dog runners, and when that happens, you shoot whatever legal deer they're running.

I certainly have no stones to throw at those who shoot any legal deer, and I'm guilty of it in this lease because I know I may as well fill up the freezer because that's what everyone else is doing.
And that is fine.
I could join a lease that is more selective and has a management plan in place, but I would drive further and pay a lot more money, so I choose not to.

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That certainly makes things difficult. I've not had any experience with running dogs for deer hunting. I've never hunted anywhere that is legal. I can see how that would make management difficult for sure.

If a timber company owns the property, maybe they could be talked into some Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) plans. Essentially, TSI is cutting down "junk" trees to make room for more high demand trees. So where this would be mutually beneficial is with oak trees. Timber companies pay good money for tall, straight oaks and if the smaller oaks are being shaded and crowded by junk trees around them, they tend not to grow as straight because they're growing toward whatever sunlight they can get. Where that helps a hunter is by thinning those junk trees around around the oaks, it opens up the canopy where the oak can spread out and get bigger. Bigger oaks mean more acorn production. It's a win-win for the hunter and the timber company. Especially if the timber company can be talked into doing the work since it's ultimately going to benefit them when it comes time to harvest the trees.

Random 8 said:

The other thread got me thinking. What management techniques are people using on their land. What do we all hunt on...private owned, leased, hunting club, public, mix, etc? What problems have you faced and how have you overcome them?

Looking at the long game here, save the immediate prep for the other thread on that subject.

I own 40 acres in Northern MN, and just this year have gained permission on another 120 adjacent. I can manage my own with a free hand, but am mostly limited to stands and discreet shooting lanes on the adjacent parcel. Haven't broached the topic of clearing some undesirable timber yet.

On my own, I've been working on establishing some openings and trails to encourage the deer to move in a more user friendly pattern. I've basically only had time to manipulate the naturally occurring vegetation to be more deer friendly. I need to get the clearing situation under control before I can contemplate adding some perennial forage plantings. My parcel is heavy on the conifers, so establishing more deciduous cover, and encouraging browse species has been my priority. Hopefully I can make a bigger dent this winter. I am looking into the possibility of doing some logging in one of the mature pine stands.

Time is my limiting factor. I work in the utility industry, and in the North, thawed ground season is overtime season.

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There are lots of MN guys over at http://deerhabitat.freeforums.net/ if you want to know what people are doing in your area. Warning, they can be a rough bunch but they know the whole deer habitat game especially in MN and WI

There is also an app called Powderhook that is great for hunting and management.

Olympus said:

If a timber company owns the property, maybe they could be talked into some Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) plans. Essentially, TSI is cutting down "junk" trees to make room for more high demand trees. So where this would be mutually beneficial is with oak trees. Timber companies pay good money for tall, straight oaks and if the smaller oaks are being shaded and crowded by junk trees around them, they tend not to grow as straight because they're growing toward whatever sunlight they can get. Where that helps a hunter is by thinning those junk trees around around the oaks, it opens up the canopy where the oak can spread out and get bigger. Bigger oaks mean more acorn production. It's a win-win for the hunter and the timber company. Especially if the timber company can be talked into doing the work since it's ultimately going to benefit them when it comes time to harvest the trees.

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I would think most Timber companies would already have a TSI plan. Since they own the land and planted the trees in the first place, what are they odds they don't have an active plan to make the most of it?

As for the management of deer, I see many different forms practiced around me. Some are to manage deer for horn, some are to manage for meat and some are to manage for all the wildlife in the area, just not for the deer. Sometimes property is managed to provide food, sometimes for Sanctuary, sometimes both.

Hard to manage what you have, until you know for sure what you have to work with. Hard to say you will only shoot one doe a year on your property, if you do not actually know the approximate number of deer in the area and the buck to doe ratio. Hard to hold out for a 160 inch buck, if there isn't one to be found. While one can make more impact to themselves with larger tracts of land, one can do things to help on small parcels and also on public land. For the last 25 years, I have been planting apple trees, Wild plums, Highbush cranberries and Red Osier Dogwood in a large parcel of public land near me. Started out with whatever apple trees were left on closeout at Tractor Supply, Walmart or other local nurseries. Then I became acquainted with the local county forester and have been buying more appropriate fruit and berry plants at dirt cheap prices. Some of the first trees I planted are now bearing fruit and are not only food for wildlife, but also provide a snack for me and other hunters while out in the woods. About 25-30% survival rate is all I get, but it's still a way to give back to ma nature for what she has given me. I also have been doing the same on private land I hunt. Not just my own and that of family members, but on other parcels I have been given permission to hunt. Other land owners get asked if and what they would like from what I can get. Most are happy to have something planted. Seems to work better to keep access to those parcels than just a Christmas card. Food plots are short term solutions, where planting apple trees, fruit trees and mast trees are long term. Young aspen provide good browse for deer as well as for grouse. Cutting down and thinning older aspens/poplars gives access to buds too high up on the tree normally for deer. This also open ups shooting lanes.

What I shoot for antler-less deer is based on what I personally see on the properties I hunt as well as in the immediate area. The state issued me 8 antlerless tags this year. Odds are I won't fill them all, but I may not fill any, depending on what I see during early bow season and out in the area fields at dusk and dawn. Same goes for what I take for a buck. I'll take a 1 1/2 year old scrub before I take a 2 1/2 year old with a lot of potential.......altho I will wait as long as I can for some of the more mature bucks I have seen on trail cams. Deer hunters need to take some lessons from fishermen. Leave your breeders, leave those that have potential and take the little ones to eat.