Protecting isn't Managing | Deer Management


DeerManagement.com

This catches me at a bad time. I just got back from checking some of my fields. It has been a drought year here in the Midwest, and I was afraid to look at my cornfields, but finally got up the nerve. I have food plots and I have commercial cornfields, so I have real money invested in farming – deer farming and the regular kind. I about threw up when I saw the damage to the back ends of all my cornfields. The deer hammered the corn this summer – ate entire areas right to the ground. I’m sure it had a lot to do with the drought, but that little to ease the strain on my pocketbook.

Now I’m seeing red and I’m on a rampage to lecture any of my neighbors that “manage” for deer. The message is simple: what you are doing (protecting deer) is not beneficial in the long-term.

In the end, protecting deer will be the downfall of us all. You have to remove deer from managed lands at an aggressive rate every year or the population will hit a critical mass and then normal hunting won’t be able to control it. It will quickly become very hard to get the numbers back under control short of taking drastic measures.

I, for one, will not be very happy about that situation and I know my crop-farming neighbors won’t be happy either. Not only is a high deer population bad for public relations, farming cash flow and habitat, it is also bad for those who are trying to produce the highest quality herd and the biggest bucks possible. Here’s why you need to take your harvest responsibility very seriously.

I just attended a meeting hosted by Dr. Grant Woods that specifically addressed problems in the Midwest. There is so much corn here most of the year that when a farmer sneezes, corn comes out. Yet even in the Midwest, where everyone thinks deer never go hungry, Grant pointed out how a gap of just two to three months during the winter - when the deer are having to scrape for suboptimal food - can have as much as a 20% impact on the size of the antlers those bucks will grow the next year.

If that is possible (even likely) in America’s breadbasket, think how much more of a problem this is in areas with poorer soils and less available food.

Let’s say a certain mature buck scores 150 inches even though he doesn’t have prime nutrition for two to three months each year (usually late winter in most parts of the country). If he had desirable foods all year, he could well be approaching 180 inches instead. This is because deer grow their antlers from minerals stored in their bones. When their overall health is not optimum, they start growing those antlers from a weakened system. Eating brome grass for three months each winter is not going to produce the healthiest bucks.

Browse is also a big source of deer nutrition in all parts of the country, even in agricultural areas. Where the browse is good the deer will often spend much of their time feeding in the cover. They are selective feeders and will naturally go to the plants that supply their current needs. I have seen deer in the Midwest that fed heavily on browse until early June despite the fact that clover and alfalfa were nearby. It is obviously a big part of their diets. When there are too many deer, they quickly obliterate the best browse and if the numbers stay high for several years they so impair these plants that they simply die out.

When there are so many deer that they eat the entire supply of high quality browse as soon as it is available, clean up all the waste grain in the commercial farming fields and then wipe out the designated food plots well short of winter’s end, you have too many deer, plain and simple.

A lack of optimal food during the tough months will stress them. While they are unlikely to starve to death, they are also unlikely to reach their potential either in body weight or antler size. If you aren’t aggressively removing deer from the population you are hurting the future quality of their health, habitat and ultimately their antler size.

Research done by R.E. Hawkins into the dispersal of bucks from Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge showed that 4 % of fawns disperse, 7 % of adult does disperse, 10 % of adult bucks disperse, 13 % of 1 1/2 year old does disperse and fully 80 % of 1 1/2 year old bucks disperse. That’s right, 80%! The majority of buck dispersal takes place during the buck’s second fall, and more specifically during the rut.

Through study and numerous conversations with leading deer biologists such as Dr. Harry Jacobsen, Dr. Karl Miller and Dr. Grant Woods, I have learned that buck dispersal starts with the doe. Here’s how it works.

The young buck starts looking for a new place to live after the doe kicks him out of the family group. Presumably, this is nature’s way of preventing bucks from breeding their mothers and assures a greater degree of genetic diversity. The greatest pressure from the buck’s mother comes right before breeding begins, adding even greater credibility to this notion. Once these bucks start wandering, they may roam two or 20 miles before settling into their new range (if they live that long).

In 1992, S. Hölzenbein and R.L. Marchinton conducted a very interesting and important study. Fifteen buck fawns that had lost their mothers (orphans) and 19 buck fawns that still lived with their mothers were all radio collared. Of the 15 orphans, only one had left his home range by age 2 1/2 years and as it turned out, an unrelated doe harassed him into leaving. Of the 19 bucks that grew up with their mothers, fully 18 of them had dispersed from their original home range by the time they were 2 1/2 years old. Eighteen out of 19 bucks had left before they reached 2 1/2!

Maybe you are thinking that a dispersed buck is likely to return to his original range during the rut to breed. Sorry, but he’s probably dead. Dispersing bucks are much less likely to survive to maturity than bucks that don’t disperse.

The obvious conclusion, and the right one, is to orphan as many buck fawns as you can without causing your overall deer numbers to implode (which is almost impossible in most areas). Which would you rather see this season: 40 does and 5 bucks or 30 does and 15 bucks? You can keep the total numbers the same but have more bucks if you manage it correctly.

You may fear that reducing dispersal among bucks will increase the likelihood of inbreeding and have unfavorable affects on herd condition. According to Grant Woods, this is not an issue. There is enough genetic diversity in deer herds that the degree of inbreeding that results from reducing dispersal does not hurt future genetics.

I held a meeting at my house a couple of years back in which a dozen angry landowners and six or eight deer managers met with four top DNR agents to resolve the issue of crop damage. Some of the farmers didn’t own any timbered land so there was really no way for them to shoot the deer (legally) that were preying on their crops. The deer came off neighboring land, ate their crops at night and then made it back to sanctuary before daylight the next day. If I was one of those farmers, I would be even angrier than they were. The meeting was surprisingly civil given the group’s makeup.

The DNR personnel offered workable solutions but any solution takes effort. One thing came out of that meeting that was very significant. Most of the farmers stated that the deer hunters they let hunt were not interested in shooting does. They just wanted a buck – preferably a trophy buck. They wanted to shoot that buck and then get back home in time for the Michigan vs. Ohio State game on TV. Buck hunting is not going to solve anyone’s problems.

This brings up a very important point. Every hunter has to take the stewardship of the herd seriously. In my experience, the only people likely to hammer the does as hard as they need to be hammered are either angry farmers or deer hunting landowners who really understand deer management. No one else has the incentive to spend hours on stand trying to shoot one more doe or to exert the energy needed to drag another one out and deliver it to the locker plant. That has to change. Landowners need to find incentives that will turn hunters into stewards and not just consumers.

One famous quote has been handed down from deer biologist to deer biologist and it is worth repeating here. When asked which doe was the best one to shoot, whether it be the older doe or the younger doe, the one with the twin buck fawns or the one with the twin doe fawns, the biologist stated, “Whichever one stands still long enough for you to pull the trigger.” In other words, it is much more important to get with it and put serious heat on all the does than to try to be clever by targeting certain ones.

Most states now offer the tags that will help you do this work. But, you are very likely to need lots of help. In some of the areas where I hunt, even the deer managers are waking up. They will let responsible local hunters shoot a buck as long as those hunters are willing to buy the tags and shoot every doe that comes past within range. If the guests start trophy hunting (hoping to shoot the best buck on the farm) of if they start waiting until the end of their hunt to shoot does, they lose their privileges. A guest hunter’s number one responsibility is to shoot what the landowner wants him or her to shoot.

That type of program can have an impact and it improves public relations by including other responsible people in your deer management plan. The bottom line is this: you need help. If you think you can shoot all the does that you need to shoot by yourself, you are likely to fail miserably and soon your management area will fall victim to the critical mass principle. There will be too many deer and it will take an act of God to thin them back down to where you can manage them again.

Always remember, if you have a decent number of deer to start with, it is always easier to bring the population back up if you shoot too many (very unlikely) than it is to bring it down if you let it get out of control. Managing deer numbers is like going around a corner on an icy road. You definitely want to keep the car below the speed limit so you have a little margin for error (which is analogous to keeping the deer herd below the maximum carrying capacity of the land). When you fear you have overshot your doe herd, you are probably just about where you ought to be.

Every situation is different; that is why private consultants, like Grant Woods, are so popular now. However, it is a basic rule of thumb in areas with adequate nutrition that you can shoot 40% of your deer every year without creating a drop in deer numbers.

Too many deer is too many deer even if most of them are bucks. While it is rare to find an area with too many bucks, it is possible. Once you start shooting does aggressively to can produce a herd that has a high number of bucks. At that point you need to ramp up your buck harvest. Again, protecting is not managing – even when it comes to bucks.

I have received a growing number of questions from people recently who asked my why they are seeing more deer, and more bucks, but the size of those bucks is going down. The main reason is simply that there are too many deer reducing available food at all times of the year.

The second reason is not quite as obvious. When you are protecting bucks, you are protecting all the bucks. Most bucks in any herd don’t have the genetics to be a Shaquille O’Neal. They are more likely to be a Rodney Dangerfield. Yet it is amazing how often the mature bucks with the smallest racks tend to be the most aggressive and the most dominant. Just like in a street fight, dominance comes down to attitude more than anything else. Some bucks are simply meaner so they rule the roost – it seems that they usually have smaller antlers.

A bully buck with an ugly rack can monopolize a ridge for several years keeping all the other bucks away during the fall that might have better genetics and be more desirable to hunt. In areas with some hunting pressure, the bully bucks tend to be easier to kill because of their aggressiveness making them natural targets that will quickly disappear. However, in protected buck herds, they thrive. Removing these bucks with a controlled strategy is a great plan. A buck with better antlers will hopefully take their spot on the farm.

In most areas of the country that I have hunted, the biggest problem is not poaching, CWD or some other disease (at least not yet). The biggest challenge facing deer managers is the need to shoot more does and keep the herd numbers in check. When that happens in a controlled setting, the results are much better herd health, a better buck to doe ratio, more enjoyable buck hunting, more opportunities for non-landowners to get involved and better relations with neighboring farmers.

It is every deer hunter’s responsibility to help keep the herd under control. Remember, protecting is not managing. Protecting is easy; anyone can do that. It takes someone with a real commitment to the future to manage deer properly.