Are today's deer management practices a legitimate means of growing big bucks or have we been fed a lie when it comes to management and food plots?... Read more... The post Unteaching Deer Management: Have We Been Fed a Lie? appeared first on Bowhunting.com. Continue reading...
I'd agree with the article's assumptions and assertions to some degree and I strongly disagree in some ways.
Oh man, I'm seriously not a good enough typist to thoroughly address that article. Let me just start with this: No matter what you've been told NOT EVERY HERD OR GEOGRAPHIC AREA IS ALWAYS EQUAL TO THE NEXT. Yes I yelled that because it is simply true. Not all deer act the same across a ,lets say a state. Not all Soils are the same and not all browse is either. I've been planting plots browse ect,ect WAY before it became fashionable. I was talking about plants to attract deer that no one heard of. Ones I was told ,your crazy deer don't like that. Then these started showing up in bagged mixes,go figure. I started planting because of pressure, I just wanted deer here,in the middle of my place after eating the illegal bait on others during the night. Guess what? My deer take weights went up. For some reason we went from good typicals to some crazy non. Then the farmers moved in and we have doe that look like Holstein cows. Went from single and twin births to triplets. Let me see what changed? Hhmmm soil fertility,browse and mast fertility. Hill country here, less energy expenditure to reap nutrient benefits. Guys that plot don't stop there they do general habitat improvement. From tree planting to woodland work and in areas of little water,watering holes. Now,what I have to say is some just don't leave enough untouch succession growth on there lands. Want to see great deer, get a good field of goldenrod and tall grasses going with an undergrowth of clovers
Most people I know who grow food plots and or put out minerals do so in an effort to attract more deer to their hunting area...not because they are under the impression it will make deer grow larger?
Well one only needs to queue up your county and or state soil maps. Infact do that for yours and the states taking the largest white tail deer. Compare them ,then make your own conclusions. Go to your local coop and find out what local soil tests are showing. It takes more than PH, and a balanced fertilizer to grow deer or any live stock. It takes micro nutrients macro nutrients and knowing which does what.
you have to put out an absolute $hit ton of plots, feed, and minerals to make enough difference to "grow" your deer herd. ("grow" referring to animal and antler size; not numbers) I'd say less than 10% of people putting out plots are doing so for any other reason than to have legal, sustainable bait piles.
The difference between livestock and wild animals is that you have total control of what the livestock are eating. One of the points the author makes is that even if you put out all of these minerals or plant food plots, they still make up a very low percentage of a wild whitetail's diet. If they still prefer to eat wild browse or agriculture then the impact of your minerals or food plot isn't significant enough to affect any sort of real change. Many people believe that they are seeing increases in health, numbers, rack size, etc because they want to believe their efforts are paying off in some form of fashion. However, it's nearly impossible for any hunter or deer manager to prove their food or minerals are the cause of any perceived changes. If a deer goes from a 3-year-old 120-inch buck to a 4-year-old 150-inch buck there is absolutely no way to prove that your minerals or food plots contributed to that growth. Science says he likely would have been a 150 regardless of what you fed him. I believe that nutrition plays a role in allowing a whitetail to achieve its maximum possible potential, however, most of that nutrition comes from the deer's natural environment and not what we put out for it. However, it all starts with genetics. A deer either has the potential to be huge or it doesn't. No amount of minerals or food will allow a buck with a max potential of 150 inches to all of a sudden grown into a 180. He's either got it or he doesn't. If growing huge deer was as simple as feeding them more minerals and proteins the captive deer breeding industry wouldn't be what it is today. The breed for genetics first, and then feed to maximize that potential. And I agree with noodles - most people are putting food plots out to attract deer into spots where we can kill them easier. Simple as that.
In mi here its not unusual to find deer that have obviously starved to death. In my opinion quality foood plots probably could have saved some of those deer. If deer are getting to that point where they are struggling to survive that is obviously bad for heath. A deer struggling to survive all of the winter is probably not going to express its complete antler potentail that summer. Right? It is also true we have to many deer for this area.
I'm fully aware the difference between wild and live stock. I'm in farm country ,worked dairy farms and raised live stock. I also own land in farm country and non farm country. Both properties in hill country with way different browse and mast. There is a huge difference in both body and rack size. Big difference in the size of turkey and bear. Difference in mineral content of soils thus the nutrients they receive in their respective diets. You can have the best genetics in the world ,but if the animals are not ingesting the correct nutrients, genetics won't help them achieve their full potential. Now if one doesn't want to compare soil maps then just go to any of the big buck sites in a state or your state. Check out the number of big buck taken in a county by county basis. Then see what type of land those buck are living on. I'll wager every single state has that one or two counties that produce monsters regularly. I know we do ,,it's documented areas of ag and deer management. BTW my first post I said I started out planting JUST to attract deer. That doesn't mean what I did then and now hasn't seen a marked increase. Because it has and the farmers coming in then produced an even bigger increase in less than 3 years. Those are just facts.
This is why I like hunting free range 120 inch big woods bucks. Keep it simple. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
I'm not going to disagree with any of this, but you're talking about nutritional availability on a MASSIVE scale. When you compare different regions of the country in terms of soil fertility, mast crops, types of browse, etc you're talking about entirely different ecosystems. No amount of man-planted food plots or minerals would be large enough for a long enough period of time to cause a noticeable change in body or antler size of an entire herd. Quite simply, you can't hope to make a nutrient and agriculture poor area produce the same size animals as a nutrient and ag-rich area just by supplemental feeding, minerals and food plots. I would agree with everything but the deer management part. The places that produce the biggest deer on a state-by-state basis have typically been doing so for many years. Long before "deer management" was a thing. Deer management, in most cases, simply allows deer to age more before they get shot which by its very nature is going to produce more big deer.
We may be looking at "big" deer from a different perspective. I'm not talking just rack or age. We are seeing way bigger fawn, doe, yearlings. Also when I stated deer management I'm talking groups planting hundreds of acres. These guys arent doing little plots or series of plots. They are liming and fertilizing tracts of land. Look up some of the "white tail" realitors. They have been buying large tracts of land and selling off hunting " lots" they have these places preset in food plots. This type of stuff is increasing and or expanding. So yes guys with smaller plots can see an increase, why? Simple,they aren't the only game in town. Remember age class in deer doesn't explain increased size and weight of say ,turkey and bear. I'll agree to disagree for all things aren't equal.
It's a pretty complicated and multi-faceted issue. I agree with some points on both sides. My opinion is that a deer herd can be impacted by nutritional management. It doesn't always work because of a lot of variables limiting deer potential, some are hard to identify, some are hard or maybe impossible to impact in some cases. It's like having a bucket with a hole in it, the lowest hole in the bucket is going to be the limiting factor of how much water you can carry and if you can't find the hole to plug it then everything else is a lost cause. The guys that say it doesn't help period, I disagree with. If you can identify the limiting factor and counteract it then you can impact your deer quality. There are a lot of ranches that have been able to increase their deer herd quality through management including nutritionally based management in free range deer. Studies have shown that wild deer are often limited by nutrition more than genetics. There was a study just a couple of years ago proving it. So that's undeniable fact. As far as getting that nutrition to the deer...there's where the naysayers have a point. What I would say to that is that they are missing a key element and that is stress. Stress can be a huge limiting factor to a bucks potential body size and antler size and they crave what they need to lessen stress on their systems. If a landowner is supplying good year around food sources with healthy soil then he is simply going to have more deer and healthier deer than if he didn't. If you can lessen the peaks and valleys of nutritional stress then those improvements will stack over time and through generations. A fat healthy fawn hitting the ground and a doe who can provide milk without stress is going to outperform deer that are the opposite, it's simply how life works. For that to not hold true, you would have to have the worst set of wild genetics in the nation or severe weather swings like drought or flooding or disease. One issue is that you cannot prove an alternate outcome. If you manage then you can't prove what you would have had without the management and if you don't manage then you cannot prove what would have happened if you had managed comprehensively. So it's easy for someone to say well you did this, this and this and you completely wasted your time because I don't see a big improvement in average inches on your place. Never mind they cannot prove what the outcome would have been without the management. There could be an endless amount of what if scenarios to go along with it. What I can attest to through experience of managing our lands for years is that our deer are in better shape year around than they were before the management, numbers are up verified through camera studies, weights are up...verified through annual kill weights and average antler inches by age profile has risen again proven through kill measurements and camera studies. Sure I have a lot of ground to manage, more so than many...it's an advantage but results are results and anyone that says nutrition cannot impact a wild deer herd, period, is just flat wrong. I have a house full of deer heads and you can actually track the progression of improvement over the years based on pre and post management. Same age class of bucks, same farms, same hunters the only variable was the management aside from weather, neighbors, etc...
Great thread and article, first off. I supplemental feed a 16% protein pellet with all the goodies, do I think I am growing bigger deer bc of it? Probably not. Does it help me hold them on the property? I hope but it's a wild animal so.. However, when it comes to food plots I think the big advantage is being able to pattern a little easier. That being said I hunt in a non agricultural area so I do believe it may give an advantage but in the end I would have to admit I just really like planting stuff. And I think Justin makes an excellent point about deer management, I see bigger deer more frequently bc I quit shooting them when they were smaller deer that just needed to grow. I could have shot a great looking buck this year, multiple times but couldn't bring myself to do it bc I know the dude has a lot of potential. So to me that's more of a management aspect than what you feed or grow. Genetics plays a bigger role than anything imo. And then their is all my management stuff that I have to do throughout the summer, aka my wife doesn't enjoy going out there and I need some peace and quite.
I plant the fruit trees and food plots for one reason to feed the does, I feed the does to draw the bucks. I have no interest in herd health I am there to thin the herd.
what part of Michigan, Layne? Have you had any of them tested for CWD? A deer that dies from CWD usually appears starved (because it is.) I find it hard to believe other than in very isolated instances that any non-diseased/non-injured deer in MI south of say Houghton Lake would starve to death. Plenty of crops + browse. North of there or maybe deep in the Huron forest maybe; but I don't know that anyone would say there are "too many deer" up there anyway. With the number of hunters+natural predators that Michigan has; the land supports the herd it can support. More than would be "too many;" which could lead to starvation. No feasible amount of dedicated food plots would make a difference.
