Answer: Personally, I would not waste my time deer hunting a property that is stocked with goats, especially a ranch that is heavily stocked. And let’s face it, all ranches with goats are heavily stocked and offer poor deer habitat. If you are looking to put some deer meat in the the freezer then you can probably shoot some deer if you set up a feeder in one corner of the ranch. This will allow you to lure deer from the neighbors, but the neighbors won’t like you.

I looked at a lease several years back that was way overstocked with goats and every bit of forage they could get to was gone. You could see right through all the cover up to about eye level; even the ground was eroding. Of course, this is a severe example of too many animals and not a great example of deer habitat management–quite the opposite.

A white-tailed deer would have no natural reason to come there and stay. Little cover and almost no natural food because goats eat the same foods deer would want.

In short, whitetail and goats compete for the same plant species in just about every way. I suggests that you would be better off looking for another place for whitetail hunting and a better place to invest your time. Otherwise, you will end up spinning your wheels instead of enjoying a quality hunting experience.

Question: I am at a lose with regard to what I need to do for a deer hunting blind this deer season. I don’t know if I want to build a ground blind or just buy a pop-up blind. If I decide to go with a pop-up blind, do I need to leave it up or can I put it up the night before I am going to hunt and leave it for the weekend?

I just got on a whitetail deer lease and do not know if I will stay on it, so I do not know if I want to worry about building and setting it up to take it down. Also what are the benefits of a pop up and how far from my feeder should I set it up? I will be rifle hunting for deer and hogs.

Answer: There are a lot of choices when trying to select a hunting blind for whitetail hunting and it can be a little overwhelming. For your situation I would suggest getting yourself a good sturdy pop-up that is big enough to move around in and find a good looking spot and set it up. This will also allow animals in the area to become familiar with your blind.

Hunters can leave a pop up blind up all season if they take the necessary precautions. Those precautions would include making sure you have the pop-up anchored down and tied off to trees or nearby brush. Those blue northers will destroy a blind that is not anchored down and may even blow it into the next county–which happened to me once in North Texas.

To help conceal it you can also cover it with a cheap camo tarp or camo material. Just drape it over and tie it off.This will really help to protect your portable blind from the sun and elements. I’ve left them out all season and sometimes only for just a few weeks. Last year I left my pop-up deer stand out from a week before bow season until the end of bow season and then hunted from permanent stands for gun hunting.

Place the pop-up on either the east or west side of your deer feeder. The predominant wind direction throughout much of Texas is either from the north or the south, and putting your blind to the east or west will help prevent your scent from blowing towards the feeder. Most big bucks are not shot at feeders, but you don’t want to scare the other deer off.

Lastly, if you have cattle it’s best to place your portable stand inside some brush or trees to discourage the cattle from stepping on your blind. Trust me, it helps and keeps them from stepping or rubbing on your blind. You don’t want to show up one morning to a cratered blind, especially after you just bought it.

Which ever you choose–a permanent or pop-up blind–it will beat sitting under a tree on a cold, wet morning with water running down your backside. When it comes to whitetail hunting, there is no best deer hunting blind for every situation. But for your situation, go portable with a pop-up. Good luck!

Answer: First, let me say that the feeding of any wild animal by people should be considered purely supplemental. White-tailed deer should be no different. First, there are many arguments surrounding the feeding of whitetail deer, whether in rural hunting woods or in suburban areas such as the greenbelt around your house.

Whitetail are really neat critters that all sorts of people like for many different reasons. However, deer are fairly simple animals that require food, cover, water, and space. The food part is what we are talking about today.

It is true that soybeans are better than corn, but I don’t suggest you use either. I do not recommend any type of feeding, even protein pellets, in suburban settings, primarily because deer can exceed the carrying capacity of the habitat through the addition of supplemental foods.

I have seen and read about plant communities in housing developments and greenbelts destroyed by over-abundant deer herds time and time again. In almost every case it’s because of the addition of supplemental feed.

In nature, everything is about balance. Animal populations only grow when there is food to consume. However, any time food is artificially added to wildlife populations, particularly in the absence of active management, then problems can and will arise.

Deer populations are naturally limited by food availability. A whitetail population will continue to grow until it reaches the carrying capacity of the area, at which point it will reproduction will go to 0 because of a lack of nutrition. Population die-off will occur.

The addition of foods, even low quality foods such as corn, can cause deer populations to grow way beyond the ability of the natural environment to support them. As the population of deer grows so must the volume of supplemental food to support the increased number of animals. It turns into a nasty cycle and everyone, including the deer, suffer.

White-tailed deer are very adaptable animals, but good deer habitat usually includes a mixture of trees, shrubs, vines, forbs, grasses. High quality deer habitat will also contain important foods such as fungi and even sedges. Of course, specific plants within each of these categories benefit deer more than others. If you really looked at a deer’s mouth, you will notice that it’s quite small and relatively pointed. This is because deer are highly selective with regards to their diet.

Palatable plants should be well interspersed throughout an area, so that the whole area functions as deer habitat. Over much of the whitetail’s habitat, adequate woody plants should be present to provide food, shelter and concealment. The enroachment of woody plants into areas that were once dominated by grasses is an important reason for the expansion of the whitetail deer. In addition to browse plants, some sort of water source should be available about every mile for deer watering. Put all these habitat requirements together—food, cover, water, and space—and you’ve got whitetail habitat.

When it comes to deer habitat, plant diversity is an important because deer require a variety of plants to provide their various needs. Many plants are utilized during only one season (when they are growing/available) or a portion of a season. Keep in mind that each plant that is eaten provides only a portion of a deer’s nutritional requirements. However, many plant species are not consumed by deer. These plants are also important, serving as cover and concealment for traveling and loafing animals.

In short, deer need a variety of plants to have high-quality, year-round food and cover. Plant diversity is generally adequate where native plant communities are emphasized and managed for a variety of successional stages. This means having plant communities that range from “young” in age to “old,” or climax communities. Often times, good deer habitat is about 50% tree or woody cover and about 50% open. This interspersion of plants provides browse and forbs, which comprise the bulk of a whitetail’s diet.

I mentioned plant succession in the above paragraph, but what is it? Well, plant succession is the natural progressive change of plant species and communities on a site across time. Habitat management practices that encourage disturbances such as tilling, clearing, flooding, mowing, grazing and burning set back succession by various degrees. And trust me, deer love freshly disturbed areas because of the diversity of high quality forbs they provide.

With time, however, plant diversity in the disturbed area will decrease. Rest or lack of disturbance allows succession to progress forward toward more mature, stable plant communities. Deer need these areas as well as early successional plants, so good habitat will offer high diversity within and between plant communities.

Answer: First, everyone always emphasizes the importance of providing optimum nutrition throughout the year. This is important so that the bucks in your area can reach their genetic potential. However, there is much more to whitetail management than nutrition, and there is more to whitetail hunting than just pulling the triger. It’s true that hunters make a number of important decisions with their trigger fingers, so what you shoot and what you pass up has a big affect on future hunting.

You face a common question: Which bucks do I shoot and which ones do I let go? Most hunters make that decision based on antler size (as in the biggest), but this is typically a bad decision. Using this technique, the best bucks tend to get shot first, leaving the inferior bucks to sire the rest of the herd. WRONG.

A buck can not be considered mature until is is at least is 4 1/2 years old. It is at this age that a deer manager can really see the kind of antlers and body size he is capable of producing. Getting bucks to this age is not always easy because they are much easier to kill when they are a year younger and right on the verge of becoming great trophies. This is the age (3 1/2) when most hunters simply can’t pass up a “trophy” buck. Little do they know that the buck they just shot would have been a real monster a couple of years down the road.

When a hunter starts making management decisions based on age rather than antler size, you get a good idea of what bucks look like. When a lot of hunters head out hunting, they see a buck and shoot it—never really studying the deer they see. Instead of learning of the buck’s body characteristics that help them to age the deer, the simply shoot it. DONE.

Next time you shoot a buck, look at it before you pull the trigger. Study the jawline, the neck, and the relationship of the front shoulders to the belly to the hindquarters. Then, once the animal is harvested, remove the jaw and age the deer deer using the teeth. This will give you a better understanding of the relationship between the physical characteristics that you see and the actual age of the deer when you’re out whitetail hunting.

Once you begin to manage and harvest bucks by age, you will become very proficient and aging deer on the hoof. This ability, of course, is critical for managing bucks by age. In closing, to keep a good age structure of bucks on your property, I would recommend that you and your fellow hunters harvest no more than 20% of the bucks off the property in any single year. This includes culls at all age classes as well as trophy bucks. NOW YOU”RE TALKING!

Answer: Do it! I’m always surprised at how hesitant many folks are to seek professional advice when it comes to managing their property for native habitat and wildlife. It’s almost as if people think that because managing land has to do with whitetail and trees and wildlife food that they it should be easy to figure out.

If you have never assessed and managed wildlife habitat before, there’s no reason why you should know anything about deer habitat management, so don’t be afraid to ask for help. You, of course, bring the local knowledge about how deer use or don’t use your property, and your knowledge about hunting, deer behavior and deer habitat requirements are invaluable.

However, the first thing you should always do prior to implementing any type of habitat management practice is to determine what your goals are and then set objectives, which are linked to results within a given amount of time.

Even if you have been managing your land for years, almost every landowner will benefit from having a professional wildlife biologist on their property. Most everyone finds it useful to hear someone else’s ideas about how their property could be managed. In fact, a trained biologist may very well suggest management approaches you may never have considered—or knew about, for that matter—and they could really improve your whitetail hunting.

Before you dial up the first private biologist in the phone book, keep in mind that most states already have biolgist on staff that are paid by by your hunting and fishing license sales. They can help you free of charge!

In addition, they can also inform you about financial assistance programs to help you pay for your management activities. Not all wildlife management activities qualify for free money, but it never hurts to ask because there are many federal and state cost-share programs available to help fund habitat management projects on private land.

Lastly, a biolgist can assist you in writing and implementing a wildlife management plan for your property. This plan will serve as a formal guide for the long term management of your property to achieve your goals and objectives. Keep in mind that before you see improve whitetail hunting you will likely have to create better habitat for them to live.

As I understand it, any new buyer would have no obligation to honor a hunting lease, and I cannot see him making it a requirement of the buyer. Any deer hunters ever been down this road before? No money has exchanged hands at this point, and I just want another opinion before I even think about moving further. It could be a good opportunity, but I don’t want to lose a bunch of money on a would-be deer lease. What would you do?

Answer: First, it’s difficult to trust anyone in the world we live in. With all the bad things we’ve all heard about in the past, it’s made us more than a bit skeptical. However, you also don’t want to give up a year of deer hunting if you don’t have to, particulary if you think the place provides good deer habitat. Let’s face it, deer leases are not as easy to find as they once were. However, keep in mind that if you did in fact lease this property you are talking about, you would likely only be hunting there one year.

Most property sold today is purchased by people with recreation in mind, which means there is a 99% chance that they will give you the boot and turn to hunting the land themselves. First, ask yourself if the whole deal is worth the risk right now, and then decide if you are willing to get set up for a single year of hunting and then move again when deer season is over?

If you really want the lease: The guy leasing the land wants you to trust him, so tell him to trust you. Let him know you want the lease, but will not pay until deer season gets closer. This will not allow you as much time to set up your gear, but it will keep you from investing a bunch of your hard-earned bucks into something that may not yield any whitetail bucks. Besides, the money he makes of the lease will mean less to him and more to you, especially if he sells.

Whitetail hunters sometimes encounter deer with warts or lumps on the skin. These bumps do not hurt the deer since they are usually non-cancerous tumors called either fibromas or papillomas. In both cases, the warts or tumors are caused by viruses. The difference between the two is that fibromas grow either from the skin or from the layer beneath, while papillomas grow only from the skin.

To a hunter, both lumps will look dark-colored and hard to the touch. These external warts generally do not cause problems for afflicted animal, but they are not pretty to look at. Deer hunters often think the meat is inedible because of these tumors, but that is not the case. Since lumps are usually found only in the skin, not in the muscles, there is generally no problem.

However, there could be tumors located inside a deer’s body, such as on it’s organs, that could be cancerous and the venison should be discarded. While whitetail hunting, do not be overly alarmed if you come across an animal with external tumors because they are not uncommon.

In the end, for those landowners and hunters that are serious about managing deer populations, we should want to create the best whitetail habitat. For this is where quality hunting opportunities are literally born. The real secret that I’ve determined when looking at properties where individuals want to improve the deer herd is finding and enhancing the most limited habitat element. It’s easy to concentrate on one single facet of habitat and provide a whole lot of one thing, but they need it all!

Although food plots have their place in the whitetail hunting world, we can’t destroy needed habitat just to plant food. For the most part, I believe the whitetail herd found in America is now better fed than ever. In some cases, though, some have planted food plots with foods that deer won’t consume. A landowner may have good intentions, but sometimes enthusiasm must be anchored with a little research.

There are many reasons why food plots are planted, but the main reason is sometimes overlooked—nutrition. Food plots are often confused as places to just shoot deer. That should never be the case. If so, you have a hunting plot, or simply bait. Yes, whitetail hunting is good around food plots if they grow, but food production is the primary goal of those interested in improving their deer herd.

Food plots can help, but they are not a fix-all for better deer or deer habitat. More healthy deer populations can result from food plots, but it’s more important to pay attention to the habitat that you provide as a whole. It’s impossible to ingnore the requirements of whitetail and also expect to improve a deer herd. If you build it, they will come… and get big!

Answer: Interesting. Someone else also emailed me today about their 9 year old son doing a similar project on antler growth in whitetail. You can use these photos showing antler growth in deer from this site that show the stages of antler development.