Estimating the age of photographed bucks can be difficult enough due to less-than-ideal body alignment in the photos.
Age: 1½ Years Old
Resemble does with antlers
Do not have swollen necks and muscular characteristics
Often enter feeding areas earlier and tend to travel with doe family groups
Age: 2½ Years Old
The easiest way to describe this age class is to compare it to that of a mature doe on steroids. At this point in their life, bucks still appear to be all legs. But more mature attributes are starting to show up.
You’ll see minimal muscular definition. The belly will still hold a tight line across the bottom with no sag. Swelling of the neck will be minimal, at best. If during the rut, lightly stained tarsal glands are the last thing to look for in determining if a buck is carrying its second set of antlers, which likely won’t be greater than 16 inches wide.
If placed on a two-by-four, this buck would still tip backward the same as a yearling whitetail.
Age: 3½ Years Old
These bucks are comparable to that of post-adolescent males. Testosterone levels are really starting to kick in gear. So naturally, he believes he is the biggest punk in the woods. This is why most bucks never live to become a 4-year-old deer.
The neck will show a fair bit of swelling now. The chest and shoulders will appear to be much larger, too. However, there is still a defining line separating the conjoined neck and shoulder. This age class also exhibits a tight waistline. Using the aging trick, these bucks will most likely appear to tip forward, but could also appear to be balanced from rump to shoulder, depending on exact age.
Age: 4½ Years Old
During the rut, this age class will be most active. This is the appropriate age that hunters should begin harvesting bucks if quality deer management (QDM) is their goal. For the average buck, the skeletal and muscular system is reaching its prime. By this time in their life, bucks will display 80 to 90 percent of their antlers’ potential and are considered mature.
The neck and shoulder now appear to be one mass. The defining line between the two has disappeared since the previous year. Necks will also swell significantly from intense testosterone levels. The stomach will still be relatively flat. Legs now appear to be much shorter as the body mass increases. Expect heavy staining of the tarsal glands and slight sag to brisket.
Age: 5½ Years Old
Bucks in this age class sport 95 to 100 percent of their antler potential. The largest racks are generally grown between 5 and 7 years of age. Regardless of antler size, any deer that is taken this late in life is a trophy, though. Simply because deer this old have learned what it takes to avoid hunters. Anytime you wrap a tag around one of these big boys, savor it. It rarely happens. When it does, it was due to a meticulous and effective plan laid out by the hunter.
Once a buck hits 5½ years old, it will start to show some sag in the belly. It’s possible the back will be slightly swayed. The chest will now be much deeper and heavier. The brisket may droop as low as the belly line. Legs will appear very short for its body. Neck swell will be immense. Very heavy staining of the tarsal glands will be present.
Whitetails will seek the first available high-quality browse and green food in early spring to revamp their ravaged bodies from a long cold winter and the rigors of 2 months of rutting. The first new sprouting native vegetation has more high octane nutrition in it than it will have at any other time of the season. The protein and mineral content in the new spring/summer growth is toppled with nutrition. Whitetails turn to fresh new grasses, native browse, and flowering plants to gain back what was lost in winter. The new browse shoots from these native plants are highly nutritious, bringing high octane nutrition from 18% to 30% to lactating does and boosting muscle development and replenishing weight loss on bucks who are beginning the journey of antler development.
Annual and perennial forbs and native browse are the main tiers of a deer’s diet during the spring and summer months.
Well-Rounded Nutrition
Whitetail deer require different nutritional requirements at different times of the year; just like people, whitetails need a well-rounded diet. Growing bucks, lactating does, and newborn fawns require these nutritional needs: calcium, phosphorus, fiber, sodium, carbohydrates, and fat, as well as the baseline of protein and water. By providing a good chunk of these requirements on your property, whitetails will gravitate to your ground, and more times than not, spend the majority of their life on your property.
Nutritional Calendar Summer/Fall
Woody browse or deer browse is defined as the leaves, twigs, and buds of woody plants consumed by whitetails. Whitetail deer are primarily browsers. Eating browse is an important part of what deer consume especially during the late winter months and early spring months when food is hard to come by. Browse is likely the only food available to deer during much of the winter.
Hard (Acorns,Hickory) and soft mast (Apples) are a whitetails main focus during the fall when antler development has finished and does have weaned their fawns, allowing deer to build up their fat reserves for the rigors of the breeding season and the upcoming winter. Acorns and corn are low in protein but have a huge high energy and fat content, so they are staple foods in areas where they are available.
Beech nuts
Blackberry
Crabapple
Grapes
Hazelnut
Honey locust
Oak (acorns)
Persimmon
Corn
Beans
Grasses rarely are a preferred food item of whitetails, except during the early growth stages when the grass shoots are more digestible, from April through June. Grains, such as oats, wheat, and rye, are preferred.
Bluegrass
Bromes
Oats
Panic grasses
Rye
Wheat
For a healthy whitetailed deer population, landowners and managers have to understand and provide whitetails their nutritional needs throughout the year. Although whitetail nutritional requirements vary by season, deer density, and physiological activity, a well devised plan like the ones from the QDMA management practices can be implemented to enhance habitats, providing a diversity of forages to keep whitetails on your hunting property.
Not many things in winter are more exciting than checking midwinter trail cams and seeing that some of our “Shooter bucks” made it through the deer season. this leads the whitetail gears to start turning as to where and when that buck was photographed this past fall.
One could say they are the legacy bucks, the heirlooms from the prior season, like monetary investments. There is something magical about survivor bucks, some of these bucks can jump from 30% to 60% of their total antler growth by making it through the first year. Survivors that make it through their second year average a jump from 60% of their antler growth to 80%. And then there are the special ones that jump from the third year to the fourth reach 90% of their potential antler growth and become what dreams are made of.
As February rolls on, more and more bucks drop their antlers
These older survivor bucks are amazing whitetails indeed to be able to make it through a couple of archery, regular gun, and muzzleloader deer seasons on hard-hunted properties.How these bucks elude so many hunters is a mystery and a testament to their uncanny survivor skills and reclusiveness. There’s a relatively short window of time to chronicle your survivor bucks, so running your trail cameras on video is key to see what shape these bucks are in going into winter, How many times have you found a bucks sheds and never see him again. Possibly injured, very difficult to gather that intel from a single trail camera photo.
Older survivor bucks are more difficult to capture on a trail cam because they seem to be ultra shy of trail cameras compared to other whitetails. But then, it could be my scent on the camera and card. Sometimes they know us better than we know them. That’s why getting in and out clean on our hunt’s is super imperative.
Yearling bucks and doe’s don’t seem to mind the camera as much, but some mature bucks display a negative reaction when they see a camera during mid-winter as they are not as distracted by the rut, estrus does, or other subordinate bucks.A good way to capture survivor bucks on trail cams is to monitor trails in the snow that lead from known bedding areas to highly pallatable winter food sources.Sometimes on years after a heavy mast fall, such as a bumper acorn crop, trails leading into and exiting from oak stands are best for camera placement.Other years, combined cornfields and food plots are deer magnets until the leftovers are cleaned up. And usually by then, bucks still carrying antlers are few and far between.
Images taken of older survivor bucks are often night shots in the early going of the winter. These aged survivors seem reticent to give up the nocturnal patterns that have helped keep them survive the last few months.As midwinter’s grip deepens, whitetails tend to move more and more in the warmth of the day, affording better photo ops, partly because of the paucity of human beings in the woods. Efficiency in a deer’s energy conservation is critical in midwinter. Winter stressed whitetails tend to move more during the warmer part of the afternoon and bed during the coldest time, night. Threrefore bedding areas during cold winters can provide many bedding area shed opportunities and keys to where they like to bed in these bedding areas.
While scouting, also keep an eye out for other deer signs (deer trails, scrapes, and rubs). This gives you a great sense of where to set up trail cameras, treestands, and hunting blinds.
It took me a couple of years of doing it the hard way, but once I started treating my food plots with chemical herbicides, I couldn’t live without them.
They keep your plots growing strong and can double (or even triple) the life of a perennial food plot like clover or a clover chicory mix. Basically, 90% of food plotters can get by with two herbicide products: Roundup® (Monsanto) and Poast® (SASF). Roundup is a nonspecific herbicide that will kill any growing (green) plant it comes in contact with, while Poast is a grass-specific herbicide that kills most grasses. They are both spray-on products and can be applied with anything from a handheld 2-gallon sprayer to a 500-gallon tractor-mounted sprayer.
Food plotters use Roundup when they want to kill everything growing in a given area. It could be a 2-acre weed patch or a perennial food plot that is growing more weeds than deer forages. Food plotters wage an eternal war against weeds and invasive grasses, but eventually the undesirables prevail; you have no choice then but go back to bare ground and start clean. Its active ingredient glyphosate will typically turn green-growing plants brown in a week to 10 days. The dead matter gradually decomposes, leaving plenty of room for a seedbed to be prepared and a new seeding to be started.
Poast is a grass-specific herbicide. Unlike Roundup, which kills every green it comes in contact with, Poast is engineered to kill only grasses. Invasive grasses are a constant issue for food plotters. Mother Nature has designed them to invade a space occupied by less rigorous plants like the stuff we plant in food plots, and little by little invasive grasses will turn an acre of clover into a patch grass and weeds. A once (perhaps twice) per year, spraying Poast will keep most grasses at bay. The active ingredient in Poast is sethoxydim, which gradually weakens any grass species it contacts. Unlike Roundup, which
creates a large scale die-off, Poast is more subtle. As grasses gradually weaken and die, they are replaced by more desirable plants. You’ll notice the change in a few weeks and by a month you’ll wonder what happened to all the grass that was threatening to take over your plot.
There have been volumes written on herbicides but as far as food plots go, you
can get almost anything done with these two types (and some selective mowing). They will save you tons of money and the deer will thank you for it. Both are brand names that cost plenty. Using less costly products with the same active ingredients (that were mentioned above) is perfectly acceptable and a great way to save money. Do some homework on the Internet and take it from there.
If you aren’t keeping track of the fawns living on your hunting property it’s time to start, and that means now. Fawns are the life blood of your deer herd is like a killer winter, 3-year drought or outbreak of EHD. Late summer to early fall is the time to start taking a good hard look at your herd’s fawn production. The fawns have made it past the vulnerable new-born stage, have made it past the hay bines and can pretty much outrun most predators (sans those running the highways). The fawns you see today will probably be around come hunting season, and hopefully for years to come.
Wildlife experts refer to fawns that make it to late summer as “recruits”, they now are “official” members of the herd. A herd’s fawn production is typically indexed with a simple mathematical computation and reported as a “recruitment rate”. A herd’s recruitment rate can vary from year to year and is one of the key indicators of a herd’s health. Every time you squeeze a trigger you are making a deer management decision and chances are that decision will have something to do with your herd’s recruitment rate, or at least it should be. Recruitment rates are calculated by counting the number of adult does and comparing this to the number of “recruits” or fawns produced that year. If you can count you can keep track of your herd’s recruitment rate. Grab a 100 or so trail cam photos and for every fawn you can count an adult doe your recruitment rate is 1.0. If you count 10 does and for every 10 fawns your recruitment rate is also 1.0 Ten does to 5 fawns would give you a rate of .5 which for most areas of the country is on the low side. Ten does to 15 fawns comes to 1.5 or pretty high. Average recruitment rates are somewhere around 1. Low rates are a fraction of 1 like .3, .4, or .5. some areas with severe predation are severe winters can be even lower. High rates are 1.2 or higher, Populations tend to rise when the index is above 1.2 and begin to fall less than 1.
So why bother with all this counting and calculating, doesn’t the agency do that before they issue doe harvest quotas. The short answer for most regions is “no”, chances are the state you hunt in sets doe harvest quotas using data other than your property’s recruitment rate, they seldom if ever know what is going on your back 40, chances are also that the recruitment rate you calculate is better than the data used by your agency when setting doe harvest quotas. Establishing your recruitment rate will tell you how many does you should be harvesting this fall. An average to above average recruitment rate will typically will allow you put a few does in the freezer without negatively impacting the population of the herd. Keep in mind that too many deer is as big a problem as too few. With an average recruitment rate of 1.0 you can remove roughly 30% of the adult does in the herd without significantly lowering the population of the herd. Remove 50% of the does and the population drops. Remove 5% and it will increase. Remember too many deer are just as harmful as too few. Basically, the math is pretty simple, if you can count and do some simple division you can get to the recruitment rate.
Grab a 100 or so trail cam photos and for every fawn you can count an adult doe your recruitment rate is 1.0.
Trail cameras are a major plus when counting and don’t ignore doing plenty of woods field counting. Knowing your fawn recruitment rate and having a well-educated trigger finger will help you keep your deer herd in line with the habitat they depend on.
======> Here’s a little bonus – from our friends at Stealthcam:
Although the name isn’t entirely appetizing on its own, you should know that the word “garbage” in deer camp food terms refers simply to abundance and variety, and there is no actual garbage involved.
The plate consists of a foundation of baked beans and/or macaroni salad with either home fries or French fries. On top, a choice of two: venison cheeseburger or hamburger, venison or venison Italian sausage. The crown jewel on this mountain of food: onions, mustard, and your favorite hot or meat sauce — which is a ground meat chili like you’d prepare for a week at deer camp.
Each deer camp puts their own spin on it—there are some who have created healthy versions and upscale versions. Names also vary; at some camps it is called a “Trash Plate,” or a “Trasher Plate.” Other clever names include the “Compost Plate,” “the Deer Camp Deluxe,” and the “Junkyard Plate.”
The crown jewel on this mountain of food: onions, mustard, and your favorite hot or meat sauce.
The Plate
The garbage plate has multiple delicious layers and parts, all of it usually served on a plate with raised edges to keep the mound of food from falling off the plate while shoveling it in your mouth.
First, there’s the base. At the bottom of any garbage plate there should be a healthy serving of few different foods: french fries or home fries, macaroni salad, or baked beans. Usually, you pick one or two of these, the most common and acceptable choice being the home fries/mac salad combo.
Next, there’s the protein. On top of the base you can put venison hot dogs, venison hamburger or cheeseburger patties, or wild turkey tenders and venison sausages. It can be whatever your heart desires as long as you can cut it up pretty easily, serve a bunch of hungry hunters at deer camp, and it’s something you personally find tasty for the family.
Finally there’s the toppings. Ketchup, mustard, and onions are all optional, but there’s one essential ingredient that ties everything together: hot sauce or venison chili. The traditional garbage plate uses a flavorful, meaty hot sauce that you can easily make with onions, garlic, ground venison, tomato sauce, vinegar and a handful of spices including cayenne pepper and chili powder.
Once the three layers are assembled, it’s encouraged to mix all of it thoroughly so that you get a little piece of everything in every single bite. And don’t forget the side of bread and butter, just because. Thus we have the hunting camp garbage plate.
An at-home version will likely work best using leftover venison from a big event. If you have leftover pasta salad, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, or other similar items, simply pile them on a plate, and top them with a protein like a venison burger or venison hot dog, and then top that off with venison chili sauce, onions, and mustard. Enjoy the homemade version (if you can) and make sure to have some heartburn medicine on hand for afterward.
The main decision when choosing food plot forage is whether you want to attract deer for hunting or provide year-round nutrition for deer and other wildlife.
Food Plot Forage for Whitetail
Forage is something grown for an animal to eat. In the hunting game, it is typically a food plot grown to feed and attract deer. Twenty years ago, purchasing food plot seed was simple; there was clover and there was, well, clover. Not so today; there are literally hundreds of food plot forages out to choose from. You can make it as easy or difficult as you want–we choose easy. The central question when selecting a food plot forage is “What do I want my food plots (forage) to contribute to the overall property management program? Do I want something green to hunt over or do I want something to nourish deer and wildlife all year long?” Once this question is answered, the rest is easy.
If you’re just about attracting deer for fall hunting, more than likely you will be planting an annual forage in the late summer or early fall. Annual plants grow for a few months, mature, and then die. On the other hand, if you want to attract and provide nourishment for your deer all year around, you are talking about growing both annuals and perennials.
When considering foot plot forage for whitetail deer, we generally recommend planting at least 60% of a property in perennial forages, which leaves the other 40% for annuals. If you are just starting out, you may choose to run late-season annuals for a year or two, but if you are serious about developing a property that holds and nurtures high-quality deer, your property should offer high-quality nutrition 24-7-365, and that means planting both annuals and perennials.
Both annuals and perennials provide great nutrition with protein levels in the 25-35% range (depending on the season). The average white-tailed deer consumes 6-8 pounds of food per day and feeds approximately 6 times per day. An acre of food plot forage can provide 4 tons of high-quality forage per year. Good deer forages are highly digestible and a real boon to wildlife.
Perennial Blends
We like perennials because they green up early in spring and produce well into the late fall and early winter. That way lactating does and bucks growing antlers will always have something nutritious to feed on. Perennial food plot mixes are generally clover-based plots, which are just fine with whitetails. Clover is the staple of the food plot industry and shows no signs of weakening. It is relatively easy to grow, easy for deer to digest, and very nutritious at 25% protein. Clover likes moist conditions and can tolerate “wet feet” to some extent. However, it does not like hot dry temperatures and generally goes dormant at about 85 degrees. Chicory, on the other hand, has a deep taproot and likes it hot and dry. Blending chicory with clover is a very sound approach to perennial food plots. Evolved Clover Pro does a very nice job with their clover blends.
A Disc Harrow doing it’s work to get the plot ready for clover.
Annuals
The main objective of planting fall annuals is to attract whitetails to hunting locations. Sure, late summer and early fall plantings feed deer, and some food is better than no food at all, but (especially in poor habitat areas) unless the seeding carries over into winter (like a few acres of brassicas or high sugar oats often will), the deer are getting a free lunch just when they need it least.
All kinds of annuals are available for food plotters to choose from, grain-based annuals like winter wheat, rye, and high-sugar oats are easy to grow and will generally stay green well into the winter. Whitetails love the tender young sprouts they put out and stay on them until they reach 8-12 inches in height. After that, they generally seek other forages (provided there are any around).
Brassicas is a favorite of northern food plotters. Its wide leafy plants are rich in protein (35%) and are highly attractive to deer after a hard frost or cold spell. Deer come to them like magnets during the late hunting seasons and unless totally consumed will be used well into winter. They hold up well to snow and provide excellent early winter food.
Seed manufacturers do a big business blending annual mixes for specific purposes. They bag blends for poor soils and hot dry locations, for folks without any cultivating equipment, and just about any need a would-be food plotter would have. Specialty seed mixes vary by manufacturer but it’s hard to find a need that hasn’t been addressed by someone.
Balance Your Blends
We prefer a mixture of high-protein forages that stay available all year, from early spring through winter. We want to meet the nutritional needs of lactating does, nursing fawns and bucks growing antlers, so clovers, chicories, brassicas, and some alfalfas are hard to beat. We only plant brand-name forages designed for deer. These blends grow low and dense, and are low in stem material (except brassicas stalks) or lignin. Their density keeps down competing weeds. They’re designed to be grazed, and as such, mature at different times of the year. These forages have been thoroughly researched and engineered to perform as advertised. They save you huge amounts of money and time, and your deer will thrive on them.
with protein levels often over 20%, and it can be a particularly good choice during the spring and summer when deer require high levels of protein for growth and development
Avoid Cattle Forages
A note of caution: we recommend staying away from cattle forages like some red clovers, tall white ladino clover, and timothy grass. Cattle forages like these are grown to be chopped or baled and fed dry to cows and horses. They are high in coarse stem materials and lignins, which deer do not digest as well as cattle do. They don’t stand up well to constant grazing as deer are apt to do. Cattle forages are often blended and sold at local feed and seed stores at prices 10-15% under what brand-name seeds sell for. Buyer beware, they will no doubt grow but you will do much better with blends designed expressly for whitetails. Developing and blending deer forages is nothing simple or easy, but staying away from cattle forages is an easy way to avoid disappointment.
In Summary – our advice on each topic:
Annuals and Perennials:
If you’re primarily interested in attracting deer for fall hunting, you’ll likely plant an annual forage in late summer or early fall.
For year-round attraction and nourishment, you should plant a mix of annuals and perennials.
It’s generally recommended to plant at least 60% of your property in perennial forages, and the remaining 40% in annuals.
Perennial Blends:
These green up early in spring and produce well into late fall and early winter.
Clover is the staple of the food plot industry. It’s easy to grow, digest, and highly nutritious.
Chicory is a good complement to clover, as it thrives in hot, dry conditions.
Annuals:
The main goal of planting fall annuals is to attract whitetails to hunting locations.
Grain-based annuals like winter wheat, rye, and high-sugar oats are popular choices.
Balance Your Blends:
The best food plot strategy involves a mix of high-protein forages available all year.
Clovers, chicories, brassicas, and some alfalfas are recommended.
Avoid Cattle Forages:
Stay away from cattle forages like some red clovers, tall white ladino clover, and timothy grass.
These types of forages are often coarse and don’t stand up well to constant grazing.
Remember, there’s nothing simple or easy about developing and blending deer forages, but the right choices can lead to healthier deer and more successful hunting.
It’s been said that antlers are made of soil. While that may not true in the technical sense of the word, it makes a point that should be understood by deer hunters: soil is the key to growing good deer, deer that have large massive racks and tip the scales at 25% heavier than most.
Ever wonder why so many record-book bucks come from the Midwest? It’s not the corn or the soybeans or other high-quality food that grows in that country. It’s soils that grow them. Soil is the reason a Pennsylvania 3-year-old buck will score 115 inches and weigh 150 pounds while a 3-year-old buck from Illinois will score 150 and tip the scales at 200+ pounds.
Deer eat more than corn, soybeans, and other crops; they eat forbs, shoots, and just about anything. They eat anytime they are on their feet, and everything they eat starts with soil. When it comes to deer nutrition, it is all about the soil. Plants take up the vitamins and minerals from soils and transfer them to deer. Poor soils don’t have the minerals found in good soils. It’s about that simple. A deer eating clover grown in poor soil will not get the same quality nutrition as deer eating clover grown in good soil. The same goes for browse species and any other plants deer feed on.
One needs to only overlay a soils map on a Boone & Crockett record book map to see the connection between soil and antlers. Great soils grow great deer. It’s about that simple.
But everyone can hunt in Iowa, Illinois, and Buffalo County, Wisconsin. Yet everyone reading this article hunts somewhere and wherever you hunt, it’s all about the soils that feed your deer. Too often we limit our thinking to food plots or planted fields when it comes to deer nutrition. It is important to remember that deer consume plenty of foods not grown on food plots. Most food plots generally are able to produce cultivars at the most for only 6-9 months before they become dormant. Planted agricultural fields like corn and beans are available to deer for only a few months per year. So, what do they eat when the planted stuff is unavailable? Native vegetation.
Studies show that even in areas of high agricultural production, roughly 60% of what a deer eats is comprised of native vegetation. Watch a deer sometime. Anytime he is on his feet, he is pretty much eating. He eats on his way to food plots or agricultural fields, and he eats on the way back to his bedroom. He eats when he is hanging out in social areas and when he gets up to take a stretch. He chews his cud when he beds and occasionally sleeps, but by and large, when a whitetail is on his feet, he is chowing down on something. That’s why native vegetation (and the soils that drive it) is so important!
You don’t have to live in the Midwest to have good soils. They can be found in most parts of the country. “Bands” of high-quality soils are frequently found among areas dominated by lesser soils. We are familiar with a number of them in New York that routinely produce bucks that are 15-20% larger than surrounding areas of lesser quality. If you want big bucks, hunt where they grow them.
It is not uncommon to find hundreds of square miles of sweet soil with an ideal pH for growing right next to 10,000 square miles of acidic soil. Rich deep loam can be found among rock outcroppings and ledges. You can also have variations within a given soil category. Our 500-acre property could be best depicted as “high and dry” at 2,500 feet. Most of it sits 1,500 feet or so above the river that runs through the valley we overlook. Being high and dry, we are not blessed with much in the way of topsoil; in fact, some of our fields and food plots have less than 6 inches. Drop a thousand feet or so to the river
flats below and it is a different story: three-foot-deep soils with plenty of rock-free topsoil. The farmer below us is now the proud possessor of dirt that belonged to our property a scant few million years earlier. Good dirt flows downhill and it will be his until the river floods and washes it away for someone else to enjoy.
While we are predominantly high and dry, it is not without some good spots to locate a plot or 3-acre field. There are any number of flats and draws tucked in among our steep slopes and ridges. These areas have accumulated 6 inches or so of organic, rich topsoil over the years and do nicely when planted.
A good deal of our consulting work is “finding dirt” on hunting properties to work with. You don’t necessarily have to live in Iowa to have a decent patch of soil to grow some clover in. It might take some looking and a little track hoe or bulldozer work but good soils can be found if you are willing to put in some time and effort.
And by the way, how you plant and what you plant can also affect soil quality. But that’s a separate article in-and-of-itself.
Bottom line, soil matter. Great soils are found in the Midwest but pockets of good growing soil can be found almost anywhere you find deer. Study your soil maps, talk to your local taxidermist, and most importantly, pay attention to the ground you are walking on.
When it comes to having a great deer property, it comes down to three simple words: habitat, habitat, and habitat. To be more specific, a good deer property will have plenty of food, cover, and security.
Nutrition Matters
All deer food is not created equal. On average a deer needs about 19% protein in their diet in order to prosper. Commercially available food plot forages are generally protein-rich as are fresh spring forbs, sprouts, leaves, and all the other native vegetation species deer use; however, winter browse is not very nutritious, especially in our far northern climes. Most winter browse is nutrition poor and is often in short supply.
A good clover food plot will produce a couple of tons of highly nutritious (25% protein) and easily digestible food (digestibility matters, too); an acre of brassicas is even richer. So, should you cover your property with food plots? Well, not unless you are a millionaire, and I have yet to see a food plot grow under a foot of snow.
Deer properties with 10% of their area planted in plots are superstars, though 1-2% of the land in plots is more average, if at all. Bottom line—most deer properties are in the woods and most woody browse produces only a fraction of the nutrition (3-6% protein most seasons of the year).
Woods Work
That leaves us with a preponderance of natural vegetation for deer food on most deer
properties. Now, make no mistake, deer have existed on natural vegetation for some 40,000 years so it can’t be all bad, but natural vegetation varies greatly on most deer hunting properties. The trick is to make the most of it.
An overstoried mature woodland will produce 50 or so pounds per acre (remember, deer live in a world 6 feet from the ground and below); abandoned weed fields and clear-cuts can produce 1,000 pounds per acre, while a well-thinned patch of woods produces 300 pounds to 500 pounds per acre. Nutrition varies with the species growing and soil. Natural vegetation seldom, if ever, has the nutritional content of a quality food plot, especially in winter.
The key to producing deer food in natural vegetation areas is to get the sun on the ground for at least four hours per day. Sunlight grows plants and deer eat plants, lots of them. Most of what grows under an overstory (if anything) is useless to a deer.
No wonder “a chainsaw is a deer’s best friend” is the most frequently uttered phrase at deer management meetings, not food nor deer.
Spring bear hunting is incredibly exciting and even better when part of a combo hunt. Most bear hunters and outfitters concentrate on evening hunts which allows the first half of the day for other activities like bowfishing. Bernie Barringer speaks to the fun of a combo hunt in this post from the Bears and Bulls website and describes the incredible bowhunting action.
If you are new to spring bear hunting or have a hunt schedule for this year, you know how exciting and suspenseful an evening hunt can be. As the sun reaches the horizon, things often get quiet as you scan the bush for the slightest sound of an approaching bear. Despite your best efforts, they suddenly appear and your heart skips a beat. Chattering squirrels are one of the best clues to a bear’s presence as bruins usually walk silently to a bait.
Carp Galore
Fishing and bear hunting make a great combo adventure.
Carp fishing can do double duty. Whether you are a rifle or bow hunter, tucking a recurve and fishing reel into your duffel can generate hours of fun and shooting excitement. Although European carp are often considered “trash” fish in the US and Canada, Europeans cherish them to catch and eat. Bow-fishing gear is inexpensive, but don’t bring your standard arrows. You’ll need fiberglass shafts with special fishing tips to succeed.
Carp are an invasive species and have contaminated almost every water system in North America. You can shoot them by the ton and no one will mind or have environmental concerns. Although black bears probably don’t feed naturally on carp, adding a couple to the bait pile may prompt a normally reluctant bear to approach more quickly. Since raccoons and scavengers love fish, you can plan on replenishing the bait each day and continuing the morning carp-fest. Carp naturally spawn in shallow water eliminating the need for a boat. You can shoot from shore or use waders to get in the thick of the action. This is an unusual combo hunt, but one that deserves attention:
Ask any bear hunting outfitter across central Canada about the most asked questions they get from prospective clients, and they will tell you that near the top of the list is the query about what to do during the day while waiting for the evening hunt. Most hunters like to fish, so that’s the number one option offered by outfitters. But there is another option available in central Manitoba. Several outfitters have been offering bowfishing combos with bear hunts as the interest in bowfishing is growing across North America.
