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Limited out in Dimmit this morning

Limited out in Dimmit this morning

Limited out in Dimmit this morning

Limited out in Dimmit this morning

Limited out in Dimmit this morning

Dr. Deer has a study showing that deer can have a range of only ~50-60 acres if everything they need is in that area (food, water, visual cover, thermal cover). That’s something else to consider with your layout as well with small acreage - you can minimize the deer’s range (and potentially keep them on your place more) if you have all of those ingredients in enough quantity and close proximity. On our 200 acres, we basically have a “southern herd” and a “northern herd” that each have the cover, water, and food elements in close proximity. There is some crossing over, but I can recognize individuals that spend the vast majority of their time on one side or the other.

This is great advice. I use Google Earth to measure my plots and plan blind locations, etc. and get an idea of what’s going on over the fence at the neighbor’s regarding brush, feeder/blind/water locations, etc.

Those are some fantastic bucks Reagan1k! especially for low fence Hill Country. I would have thought it was impossible 30 years ago. I really feel like we may be entering a new “good ole days” period for whitetails in Texas. Better hunter education, trail cameras, better range management, etc.

From what I’ve seen, it varies based on the ecology and populations, etc. I’ve hunted south Texas places where things are much more like your experience, the deer don’t camp on the feeders. Stocking rates come into play here I think as well. We are way overstocked (approx 40-50 head) on the ranch at any one time. This will be our challenge going forward. My dad doesn’t want to shoot does, and I’m having a hard time keeping up with the numbers. Also, low fence conditions somewhat limit our ability to control numbers, i.e. we can shoot a bunch of does, but more from adjacent properties will come in to backfill, and since those deer haven’t been on a higher nutritional plane, I’d kinda be starting over trying to get to genetic potential. Hard to know what to do, and the land isn’t showing signs of over grazing yet; but at some point soon we’re going to have to work more on the doe population.

Some thoughts on feeders and results from our management efforts. These are all just one man’s opinion, based on my experiences. I grew up in the 1980’s hunting on low fence Central Texas deer leases. We’d fill corn spinners sometime in the summer/Labor Day and then top off a few times during the season and let the feeders go dry after the season. We were on places with little to no tillable dirt, and my family didn’t know enough about farming even if there was some to try and food plot. We almost never paid for leases and got on by doing heavy equipment or construction work. I didn’t shoot a buck for probably 10 years of hunting, only does. Mostly because I never saw mature bucks, and even a kid I wasn’t interested in shooting little fork bucks. We never saw Turkeys either. Fast forward and my folks bought their own place in 2006, and I wanted to try and increase the antler inches on the little low fence ranch (100ac) and bought my first protein feeder. It was a double barrel free choice feeder; about 700lbs capacity. I learned from trail cameras that the deer could drain this feeder in 10 days in the summertime and they would “camp out” on this feeder at night even though we were running three other corn spinners and eventually a second small protein feeder. So the issues in my mind were: A. I don’t make it to the ranch often enough to keep free choice feeders from running dry unless they are big B. I’m feeding free range deer here, and we have at least one little shit neighbor that will shoot anything that crosses the fence; so I’d like to keep the expenses reasonable I didn’t have a good solution, so I would feed as my budget allowed and usually let the feeders run dry in Jan-Feb. I did see results though; we only saw 8 pointers for years, but finally in year 5, I got a nice 10 pointer. My folks sold that ranch that year and a few years later bought the 200ac place in Lampasas. We’ve been running 3 corn spinner setups and two protein feeder setups in Lampasas. I bought a 1300lb timed protein feeder. This is a Krivoman feeder with The Hammer timed unit; basically a gate valve that I can control the open/close times. I usually only leave the valve open ~10 minutes morning and evening, which would help ration the protein out and stop deer “camping out” on the feeder at night. As you can see, the bucks figured it out and would loiter waiting for the valve to open. We only had 8 pointers on camera the first year, but we have had a few 10 pointers ever since. About 4 years ago I wanted to build two bigger times protein setups, so I had a fab shop make these up for me. I used The Hammer again, and have been very happy with them. These will hold 3000lbs each, so we only have to fill a few times a year, and try to run them year-round. The only time I may let them run dry is when the pasture conditions are good and the deer are in the food plots (they prefer the food plots to protein). I designed these so that they are loadable both by bulk trailer and from the bed rail of a pickup truck. We have bulk delivery available from a local feed store, but sometimes I’ll put 30 bags of feed in the bed of my truck and load it to save a little money and boost my ego. Other than the timed protein feeders, we run three corn spinners, two 55 gallon drums with “The Timer” and solar panels, and one ~350lb All Seasons unit. All Seasons makes first class feeders, and I really like the unit, I just wish I’d gotten a bigger one. The Timer is also a great unit, and feeder maintenance is a lot less for me now than it was years ago. Between the food plots, brush management, and feeding, our bucks have added noticeable points and inches. We have moderate hunting pressure from adjacent properties, but this is another aspect where I think the timed protein and food plots are helping - the loiter time for deer in our pastures is a long time. The longer they’re in our field, the less likely they are to get shot by the neighbors; and I know a lot of deer that hit our feeders bed down over the fence. Here’s a couple bucks from the last few years. We’ve got a nice ~4 year old this year with several splits and another ~4 yr old mainframe 10 with symmetrical drop tines. They’ll be nice if they make it to next year. I’m really looking forward to the next few generations. I think Dr. Deer says it takes 3-4 generations living at a consistently higher nutritional plane to really start to see the genetic potential, these bucks we’re probably born the first year after we started managing. As stated by Reagan1k above, I’ve also gotten more into the management aspect and enjoy watching the game grow more than shooting it.

A couple other note on pasture management: Our pastures are a little wider/lacking in occasional trees than optimal for my taste/for deer cover and we’ve been planting a dozen or so every year. Cedar elms have the highest survival rate. At some point I’d like to run an irrigation line from the well down to a close by field and put in a few dozen fruit trees. Great wildlife food and I like tending fruit trees as well. Anna and Ein Shermer are good varietals for Texas that I’ve grown at the house. My dad hates prickly pear. He/we went on a spraying blitz a few years back and really knocked the pear way down. The upside is obviously improved grazing, the downside is, in our area, big pear plants are quail habitat. Side note (warning, graphic): we were clearing some land about 30 years ago, my dad was loading a huge prickly pear plant into a dump truck with a skid steer loader, and didn’t level the bucket fast enough as he was raising it, and the pear fell over the back of the bucket and into the cab on him. It was a fucking horror show. It took me and two other guys several minutes to pull the cactus out of the cab and off him. His arms were pinned down by the pear. So many needles it was just insane. He had one go in the top of his knee and come out under the kneecap. So, I can excuse his hatred of the pear.

Regarding food plotting: After doing some exploratory digging to ascertain soil depth, I moldboard plowed the areas I wanted to plot. These were old pastures. Deep plowing isn’t a necessity, but I wanted to try it and learn some of the old ways. When my folks were under contract buying this place, I had taken some soil samples and sent in for analysis to see what they’d need amendment wise for fertility. Luckily, one ton of fertilizer from the local feed store fixed me up, so not a big hurdle. I had a fab shop build me a cultipacker and I assembled a get-r-dun all-in-one arrangement for planting: I like Turner Seed Fall Deer Mix, but It’s a little hard to get, so this year I just planted winter wheat, oats, cereal rye, and clover. I usually mix in fertilizer with my seed when planting 50-50 to dilute the seed and add a little kick every year. I usually plant in October. The deer really have taken to the plots. I haven’t done exclusion fencing around the plots in years past, but I will probably start in some areas going forward to help the plots get going before letting the deer in. These pics are from February a few years back. The winter-early spring nutrition supplied by plots is very helpful. Once the plots bolt in late spring would be a good time to turn cattle in on it, this is an April pic: The deer and turkeys use these plots a lot, it’s nice to watch them graze on something you planted. We have two plots you can watch from the porch of the house. I’ll post on feeders next.

This can’t be overstated.

From what I’ve seen, both exemption paths are doable, it really just depends on the ecology of the tract and you want to do with the property. The way we’re managing our place, I’m confident we could have changed from Ag (cattle/grazing/hay production) to wildlife without much additional effort to satisfy wildlife requirements (maybe a few bird boxes and reveg with native grasses in lieu of Klein; etc.). The dilemma is messing with grass/cattle or not. If our place wasn’t so setup for cattle, we might have changed to wildlife, but we’ve got some good sized grass pastures that are setup decently for grazing, and rotational grazing/getting the grass down will actually help forb production/antler growth for whitetail (per King ranch studies). Additionally, with beef prices the way they are, a low maintenance cow/calf operation can offset some expenses. If we didn’t have improved grass pastures with some cross fencing, plenty of stock tanks for water, a corral, etc.; we’d have leaned toward wildlife a lot more.

I’ll play. We’re on 200 acres, low fence in Lampasas county. Our place was the original Storm ranch (as in Storm’s hamburgers in burnet and lampasas). It was in serious disrepair when my folks bought it 6 years ago. My dad got with the county Ag extension office and we’ve been under contract to remove cedars and reveg with Klein grass the last few years on about 100 acres. The Extension money barely pays for the diesel and some equipment maintenance but it’s something. We’ve taken down over 10,000 cedars easily. We’ve used skid steers with a grapple bucket and a dozer mostly. My dad made his own custom root grubber from grader blade: On a kick ass day I can take down 500 cedars with this machine: The cedar was so thick in the back that I found a bus completely hidden in a thicket while tracking a deer. The previous owners hadn’t said anything about it, they might not have even known it was there. The hardest part of the clearing is burning. We’ve probably set over 100 burn piles off. The next season after we burn a pile I’ll spread the ash and plow and seed. The spot where this pile was is now a food plot: We’re almost done with the “initial” clearing. A ton more forage has sprung up in the areas where cedar was removed, and an old seasonal spring started flowing again. We have some useable soil in a few areas and I’ve been doing fall food plots for about 5 years. I’ll post more on food plots and wildlife impacts later.

I think this is the most Christmas-y thing to ever happen at our house. This and a lump of coal I got a few years back are by far my favorite ornaments.

Is that Quigly’s special lady on the right side in front of Jedediah Nightlinger?

Big body on the buck with the broken left beam

I had a good week in Colorado last week. Didn’t get an elk, but had a good time. Had a young bull almost run over us; stopped at about 20’ away as he was running on the trail we were on. We locked eyes and he wheeled around and was gone in less than 2 seconds.

Nice work! Is that a Sako?

It’s really fun to see people finally “get” hunting - awesome that he had such a great day too! Nice of you to let him hunt your spot and shoot a 10 point as well!

Hunting the third elk rifle season in Colorado with a friend. Saw three bulls today but couldn’t get a shot on one. Rained a lot this afternoon, supposed to snow tomorrow.

That’s awesome! I had an opportunity to buy one of the original Mateba Autorevolvers about 15 years ago and I really regret not doing that.

For it to be full 2020, he would need to push the feeder over, stomp on the mechanism, and then take a shit on it.

RIP