What if...?
Whitetail Deer
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What if you owned 10,000, contiguous acres. You have one deer per 1.75-acres. It has never been hunted. You have no idea what the age or sex strata are. There is no agricultural land You can do no supplemental feeding of any kind and cannot alter the habitat. No food plots, no feeders, no salt. What your short term and long term goals be? What would you set as season one hunting regs?
Sounds like this place exists. This will be interesting.
I have 2000 acres in one block and it's fun but takes a ton of time and money to manage. I always wonder if what I am doing is right.
Make it into a guided meat hunt with one buck and the rest doe so the numbers can be brought down if that's even possible. Sounds like these deer would be not very healthy with those numbers. Then go from there.
One deer per 1.75 acres. I'm thinking along spike's line... I'd invite some Bowsiters over for doe hunts. A lot of venison steaks... venison fajitas... venison kabobs... venison tacos... venison stew... venison gumbo...
As far as long term hunting regs and directions for my mythical property, I would speak to some real biologists and do a lot of research.
I am curious about the restriction on altering habitat. No sustainable logging? Even if this "hypothetical" property were state or federally owned, I'd think that logging would still be on the table.
Shoot plenty of doe and if you get the chance a trophy buck. Everything else walks the first few years. Everyone I let hunt it I want to shoot a doe. In three years we can determine "cull" bucks. I'm always going to assume the ratio is skewed toward doe and I want to thin them first.
I'd put it on the market, sell it, and buy as big of a farm as I could in Iowa so I could start putting in food plots, habitat improvements, etc. That's half of the fun to me.
Short term goals - build a nice camp. Long term - Start some traditions! Invite all my good friends and family and have a lot of fun every fall. I would have a strict "no naming deer policy". I wouldn't get butthurt if someone shot a yearling 8 point or 3 year old with "potential", whatever floats their boat. I would do some informal browsing studies and try to balance the deer herd with the habitat but no scientific methods in my camp. Crossbows are welcome, rifles to a lesser extent. No reason you couldn't manage timber or do managed burns, that's a silly theoretical. Might even plant one of those danged food plots or two if I had spare cash and time. Basically our family camp now with 9,750 additional acres to ourselves.
Me personally,
A few close friends, you must kill a doe before taking a buck If permitted. HAVE FUN!
Oh, and if you draw blood, your done. you could do a cull thing for small inferior bucks, but a few properties I know of don't have good genetics. small deer, but a lot of them. you can't grow big bucks by magic.
Hunt it, enjoy it with limitations but from one's own self the first year then see where it goes from there.
My short term goals would be to get as many stands as I could. My long term goals would be to hunt it as much as I could :) Regs? How many tags can I have in this state?
T-roy nailed it....lol
My first thought was buy another freezer and eat really really good the next year....
I'd set aside around 400 acres for me and my buddies to hunt. Then lease parcels from the remaining 9,600 acres and let them do as they wish.
Well, a couple of you came pretty close. There is one "key" piece of data that a couple "danced" around but did not nail. I'll give you a hint. To some extent, this is a trick problem. But this is 100% factual. In the 80's, I leased a 2,100-acre tract that was quite similar in many respects. I had a ball with that land for five years. I totally controlled it and others could hunt it by invitation only. I spent over 200-days a year either scouting or hunting it. That place became the foundation for my practical education in deer/habitat management. It laid the groundwork for truly understanding, the many myths and fallacies of much that is written and believed by hunters about deer management.
Now here are two things to consider about the above land. (1) It has never been hunted. That tells you volumes. (2) Look at the deer/acre figure. That too, tells you a great deal.
My first impulse would be to rehabilitate the natural browse with hinge cutting and bush hogging while shooting every deer that walked by.Your probably 8X over carrying capacity but this property is so over browsed you are 12X over capacity.Short term, I would get as many tags and guns on the place and shoot every deer I saw up to half the herd roughly 2,500. I would continue pounding numbers while watching recruitment rate (probably very low) making sure I don't go too fast .Years of natural buck mortality should have the ratios skewed female heavy so indiscrimate harvest should yield an ok result. Fawns as well as you have to reduce the number of mouths dramatically over the next 4 years.
Using lactation,recruitment ,breeding dates and body weights as I proceed.
After the second year would move to a more female heavy harvest (still very heavy ) while introducing more ways to increase browse with fertilization and edge development
Once carrying capacity matches population (constant battle)then I would begin a quality buck program with restrictions palatable to the common goals of my clients,a continued program of browse and edge improvement and heavy doe harvest
That's my stab at it anyway
So there's only one right answer?
It's worse than that...:)
I'd sell it. If I couldn't alter the habitat, what would be the point. I'd sell it and buy a place that I could do what actually needed to be done.
Other than that, Genesis is probably on track. Shoot shoot shoot. Dramatically lower the population, and do everything I could to increase browse production.
Bake
First I would build a high fence around the property. Then I would get the state to pay for paving the road to it. Next I would invite Dick Cheney to come hunt with me after which I would be magically gifted a government grant in the exact amount of the purchase price of the property. After that I would get a TV show and act like a drunken hick while I shot deer with a crossbow. To top it all off I would hunt my high fence deer after I lost my hunting privileges for poaching in another state. Oh I almost forgot, I would also get my buddy the governor to reduce my property taxes by 75 percent!!!
Genesis nailed it. The first shore would be to determine carrying capy. Second chore would be get a census count. Obviously, with that deer density, you are starting with a real mess. I was just curious to see if anyone would catch the two factors. First, with no hunting, Mother Nature would have balanced sex and age structure and second, most of your deer have already starved to death and it may be browsed beyond recovery.
If most of your deer have starved to death and there's still one deer per 1 3/4 acres, how many dang deer had there been on the property earlier?1?
That many deer, shoot everyone I see unless they are a real good 2.5 year old buck or older then leave them bucks alone but any inferior buck gets shot too. Although if a giamy steps out, then shoot him.The problem is a giant for that property may be a 120" deer. My goal would be too reduce overall population. Scooby
Bowriter - How do these famished deer taste compared to a healthy one? Ever notice any difference? You seem to have some experience thinning out the overpopulated areas. Just curious if you ever notice a difference.
Also, on all these properties you've managed over the years, have you ever played with fire? Like, literally, prescribed burns to attempt to increase the "carrying capacity"? PA has recently started doing more and more of them, and after seeing how effective they are at regeneration out West, they seem to be just as effective here. Much more so than clearcuts from my subjective analysis.
Fence it and introduce wolves!
The sad thing about John's scenario is you aren't in a vacuum. The neighbors are as bad or worse off as you are very possibly. The large contiguous tract will an advantage but it will be war for a longtime.
I'd find a yankee friend and tell him it is a deer paradise with one behind every tree and head to the Midwest .
So this one plot of land told you everyone else was wrong everywhere else in the country? This actually sounds like very different than most people deal with where they hunt. Tell us what it taught you that makes us all wrong. I'm seriously curious.
"Bowriter - How do these famished deer taste compared to a healthy one? Ever notice any difference? You seem to have some experience thinning out the overpopulated areas. Just curious if you ever notice a difference."
On the culling operations with which I have been involved, I have never eaten any of the meat. usually, it goes to a soup kitchen or jail. However, since all meat, tastes in accordance with nutrition, I would certainly assume there is a difference. As for controlled burn, all we have ever done is some small burns and then, not with the deer in mind. I am certain, when terrain and habitat permit, it could be a serious management tool. This would especially true when combined with soil enhancement. However...and this is a big however...I am somewhat leery of getting into that type of carrying capacity program because the wildlife will become dependent on it. I know this will make some mad, but I am not a huge fan of food plots IF THE PLOT IS GOING TO BE HUNTED. Scattered plots that are not hunted are fine. And, I am 100% opposed to supplemental feeding.
"So this one plot of land told you everyone else was wrong everywhere else in the country? This actually sounds like very different than most people deal with where they hunt. Tell us what it taught you that makes us all wrong. I'm seriously curious."
Sorry 12-yards, I am totally confused and have no idea what you are talking about. You do understand, the 10,000 acres is totally fiction and completely impossible. It cannot happen. A couple caught that real quick.
"It laid the groundwork for truly understanding, the many myths and fallacies of much that is written and believed by hunters about deer management." I guess this is what I wanted you to explain. What are the hunter myths and fallacies you learned from this 2100 acres you managed?
If that were 10000 acres where I live, with 5700 deer. Assuming a 1:1 ratio id start by killing 2000 does in the first year, 1000 the next year and about 600-800 every year after that until I reached 400-600 does on the place. By the time my doe numbers were good my buck numbers would only be lagging a year or two, of course I would have been killing a pile of bucks each year as well but the focus would be on getting the doe number down to 4-6 per 100 acres. Of course finding 10000 acres without crops on or around it in my neck of the country could be tough. The other thing would be with a deer density like that you would probably have to kill nearly twice as many to account for the deer moving onto the property to replace the reduced herd. It would be a massive meat operation to try to harvest that much meat.
I do not see how it is totally fictional, there are places that have 10,000 contiguous acres and that do not get hunted. The deer numbers, yes that would be crazy but not I wonder where some guys get their math skills. Someone said 600 deer, well that may be a good number to work with. you actually would have close to 6000 as a few mentioned. Scooby
500 deer would be over 30 per square mile on 10,000 acres. 6000 deer would be almost 400 per square mile. I think the habitat would look like a desert if there were that many deer.