Buck Manager | Buck Manager

Peak Antler Development in Whitetail Bucks: When?

It’s never too early in the year to start talking about bucks and antler growth for the upcoming hunting season. I have high expectations for some older bucks that should look very nice this fall, especially given the timely late-Spring rains that just soaked the area. That translates directly into additional high-protein forbs, new growth on browse plants and increased antler growth, not to mention better habitat conditions for hiding fawns. Things are looking up!

Today, we’re discussing antlers. We can still refer to them as “horns” while at deer camp.

Specifically, we’re looking at changes in antler growth in bucks, mature bucks. Every deer hunter has stories or at least game camera photos of some odd-antlered deer. And let’s face it, hunters enjoy talking about those deer as well as all the other wild things we’ve witnessed while out hunting white-tailed deer. There are an untold number of events that happen in nature that we never had seen had we not been sitting nearly motionless and scentless for hours on end. Ok, let’s focus.

When it comes to managing deer it’s really all about population (herd) management on a given property, although certain individuals (bucks) can be exceptionally poor or amazingly great. It’s also the outliers that we tend to remember, the ones way out on either end of the bell curve. Some recent and extensive research on antler development using known-aged bucks seemed to confirm some of the things we knew about whitetail bucks and antlers, but they also found some other interesting data about changes in marked, free-ranging bucks from year to year.

Mature Bucks and Changes in Antler Size

The general consensus among seasoned hunters, deer biologist and academic research suggest that most white-tailed bucks reach peak antler growth around 5 to 6 1/2 years of age. This is definitely the case for the overwhelming majority of bucks, so it definitely has management implications. That said, a few do some really whacky stuff:

Source: “Using data from 170 bucks captured more than once while they were mature, I constructed a distribution of the magnitude of change in antler size for bucks 5 to 8 years of age. The figure below shows the distribution of 211 instances in which antler-size change was measured in subsequent years.

For example, there were 47 bucks that gained 0-5 inches in antler size from one age to the next and there were 37 bucks that lost -5 to -0.1 inches. These data come from the South Texas Buck Capture project with captured bucks on 5 ranches in Webb and Kleberg Counties over a 10-year period.”

“From these data, it is clear that successive antler sets of individual mature deer vary by less than 20 inches in 90% of the instances. However, in 3% of instances, antler size changed by more than 40 inches. We will use 40 inches as our criterion to define an outlier in antler-size change of mature bucks.”

More on Antler Growth in Deer

Male white-tailed deer grow and shed antlers on an annual basis, typically starting a new set in late spring. Antler growth is regulated by hormones, which are controlled by day length (photoperiod). Throughout late spring and summer, antlers are filled with a rich blood supply and are covered with a hair-like membrane referred to as velvet. During this stage, antlers are quite vulnerable to injury, which many times result in deformed antlers.

Actively-growing antlers are high in water and low in dry matter content (phosphorus and calcium). Late in the summer, antler development slows and the antlers begin to mineralize (harden). When growth is finally complete, blood flow to the antlers stops completely and soon after all of the velvet is rubbed off (typically within a single day). Hunters often see a by-product of this effort, as rubs will be found on pliable saplings up to small trees that are 7-8 inches in diameter. This result is a buck with a brand-new set of hardened antlers.

Following the whitetail breeding season, de-mineralization occurs at the base of the antlers in healthy bucks and that causes them to shed their antlers. Early antler shedding can be attributed to deer that are not completely healthy, for whatever reason. Immediately following antler drop the entire development process starts over.

Habitat Management: Managing Grasslands for White-tailed Deer

There are numerous methods for land managers to improve the value of the wildlife habitat found on their property. Hunters and land owners often contact me to ask about ways to enhance habitat for white-tailed deer, but that is a wide-open question with an answer that will vary widely between properties. If the plan is to help deer and other wildlife on your land then the very first thing should be to take inventory of what you do have. What assets does the property currently provide for deer, other animals?

More often than not, the plant communities found on a farm or ranch offer more than one might expect. There is value in just about every plant when it comes to wildlife in general, but obviously some specific plants are better for deer than others. Before we get too far along, let me clarify a couple of the terms that I’ve already used. Plant communities and habitat are two different things. Most animals, whitetail included, require a number of plant communities to comprise the habitat that they need.

Plant Communities, Habitat and Deer

Examples of plant communities would be forest, grassland, marsh, riparian (river/creek) area. The collection of plants that comprises each plant community is often different from one another (though some plants can be found in different communities). We could even get more specific and have oak forest and pine forest or tallgrass prairie and shortgrass prairie.

Wikipedia: Plant community is a collection of plant species within a designated geographical unit, which forms a relatively uniform patch, distinguishable from neighboring patches of different vegetation types. The components of each plant community are influenced by soil type, topography, climate and human disturbance.

Now that we are on the same page, let’s talk specifically about grassland communities in terms of habitat management for white-tailed deer.

Managing Grasslands for Deer Foods

Whitetail are not cows. Grass does not make up a large part of a deer’s diet. Whitetail really only eat grasses when the grasses are very young, palatable and often most nutrient-rich. This is even the case in food plots that are planted to small grains such as oats an wheat. Deer use them readily when the plants first begin grow. As long as deer continue to feed in the plots they are steadily provided with new growth, but will shy away from them once the plants become more mature.

So grasslands are of little value, right? Wrong. Although grasses tend to dominate grasslands (that’s obvious), grasses are not the only plants found there. Forbs (weeds) are also found in these areas and are typically in high supply during the spring and fall or just about anytime when there is enough rain. When we see deer in a pasture it is often the forbs they are eating, not the grass.

Deer habitat management should include manipulation of native grasslands and pastures to promote more foods. Plant succession is the change in species structure of an plant community over time. Low succession plants offer a higher food value for deer and other wildlife, namely seed eating songbirds, Bobwhite quail and doves. Managers can promote early succession forbs within un-grazed grasslands by disking and/or mowing at least 10 percent of their open land each year, either just before Spring or Fall.

Managing Grassland Habitat for Whitetail Cover

If deer do not eat grass then why have it at all? Well, it does provide decent screening cover for adults and it’s used heavily by fawns. Grass is a commodity that is, unfortunately, not always readily available on on properties. On lands that graze cows using a continuous grazing system composed of one herd and one pasture then often there is just not a lot of grass cover at all. A rotational grazing system is best for the habitat when it comes to the management of white-tailed deer.

Cows are an automatic, biological mower and disk combined. Not only do cows consume much of the grass but their hooves disturb the soil, both actions that promote forb growth. As long as the cows are rotated off the forbs have their day in the sun and then the grasses grow back.

The problem with a pasture that is only a few inches tall is that it neither provides screening cover for adults nor resting cover for fawns. In some areas, tall grasses (~3-feet) can provide a significant amount of screening cover for deer. Think of areas like the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma and western Kansas. This is also true in farm country, especially during the winter months, when deer need just a little cover to facilitate movement.

Grass Cover, Fawns and Deer Hunting

It’s mid-May and there have already been a number of reports of fawns on the ground. Good grass cover is critical for their survival as well as future deer hunting opportunities on your land. Proper management of grassland communities should be a part of an overall habitat management plan. Deer need a little bit of everything and healthy grasslands add both food and cover. Small changes can make big differences when it comes to managing for white-tailed deer and other wildlife species.

Contraception for White-tailed Deer Management in Developed Areas

Contraception for Deer Management

Much of what we discuss on this site concerns managing white-tailed deer populations for optimal health, which leads to increased fawn survival and improve antler growth. That’s great for hunters and sustainable, rural deer herds, but people living in suburban areas that chock-full with overabundant deer have a completely different perspective when it comes to whitetail management—and the number one objective there is to decrease the deer population.

It’s interesting that deer herd reduction is the common prescription for two goals that are just about 180 degrees from one another; managers are aiming to produce more and healthier deer while deer management in developed areas is strictly about reducing deer numbers, deer reproduction.

Deer Birth Control?

A lot of the people that live in suburbs are a bit different than the folks that live out in the country. I understand that plenty of deer hunters find themselves living in the ‘burbs, but it’s important to realize that only about 5 percent of the US population actually hunts. That means the overwhelming majority of Americans, which could be you or the bulk of your neighbors, do not. Nothing wrong with that (because there is already a lot of competition for hunting lands), but since we are in America everyone gets to have their say, right or wrong. Case in point: Birth control for a free-ranging deer herd.

Source: “My decision to pursue this is ultimately a practical one. If it works, we will finally have accomplished what other communities have failed to do and found a non-lethal approach to the deer issue that would work in a dense village like ours,” Swiderski said.

Swiderski said the five-year study, which also involves the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in North Grafton, Mass., will cost the village about $10,000 this year and possibly less next year.

Researchers hope to treat 60 deer this year and during the next two winters, and to continue to monitor them. Captured does — tranquilized first with a drug-filled dart — will have a numbered ear tag attached, blood drawn for a pregnancy test and an initial vaccine dose. Known as PZP, the vaccine uses a doe’s immune system to stop her eggs from being fertilized.

But after about a week of looking for deer, Naugle and Grams had tagged and treated just one. They can fire at deer no more than 20 yards away with their air-powered rifles, and they are still learning where the animals spend their days.

“It’s a slow process. But next year, by the time we come back here, we’ll have everything figured out,” Naugle said.

Contraception for Free-Ranging Deer

To get to the point, contraception does not work on free-ranging white-tailed deer herds. It barely works on captive deer herds because of either the inability to get an appropriate dose of birth control to the deer on a daily basis or because enough of the deer can not be “treated” within a short enough period of time (i.e. more females are added annually). In this case, I’m going to have to claim insanity for this town because the most telling words in the entire article were these, “If it works, we will finally have accomplished what other communities have failed to do…”

It’s a shame to throw away good money. If anyone who reads this lives in an area with overabundant deer, whether you are a community leader looking to control the deer population or now simply an informed citizen, stand up and let your neighbors know that contraception for deer does not work unless you are willing to build a deer-retardant fence that is at least 8-feet tall around the problem area, then drastically reduce the population through either deer hunting or trapping, and then maybe there is at least a chance that some type of birth control can work.

If all of that is not an option, then the most cost-effective way to control suburban deer populations is through regulated hunting. Unless you have unlimited resources, hunters are your only hope. Be nice to them.

White-tailed Deer Management: Habitat on the Edge

White-tailed deer do quite well in a variety of areas. They’re always found in association with forests or woodlands of some type, but the plants that make up their habitat vary quite substantially across their range. While out searching for sheds this morning, I noticed a family group comprised of an old doe, a middle-aged doe that was probably one of her fawns from a few years back and a couple of last year’s fawns (now yearlings). They had a fair amount of plants at their disposal, but they were feeding at a point where the woodline butted up against grassland, an edge.

We all know that a huge component of deer management is creating, having and maintaining good habitat. Habitat is kind of a big idea. Although property owners and hunters that manage for deer want to have good habitat for the animals in an area, I’m not sure deer think about it the same way we do. Habitat is made up of a variety of plant communities, such as woodlands mixed with pastures or grasslands, riparian areas and maybe even agriculture fields and the such. No matter the types of plant communities, white-tailed deer are always attracted to the edges. Continue reading “White-tailed Deer Management: Habitat on the Edge”

Deer Hunting with Drones

Deer Hunting with Drones?

The use of drones for all sorts of things continues to increase. But, what about deer hunting with drones? Like me, I bet most think deer hunting with drones is a bad idea. However, some think drones add an exciting element to finding and hunting deer, especially big bucks. Starting to sound sketchy yet? I see some legitimate applications for using drones for deer surveys and other wildlife management activities.

If you’re like me, then at least part of the reason you head out hunting is to get away from technology, not to use it while out in the field hunting deer. Admittedly, I do use motion-triggered game cameras to document deer using the areas that I hunt. That sounds like an unmanned, immobile drone.

In case you missed it, the Boone and Crockett Club release their official position on the use of of unmanned drones for hunting white-tailed deer and other big game animals. As you may have already guessed, B&C is not in favor of hunters using advantageous, real-time views from the sky to bag their bucks.

B&C Club: No Drones

Source: Trophies scouted or taken with the assistance of drones/unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are not eligible for entry in Boone and Crockett records, the Club announced today. “These highly sophisticated, remote-controlled aircraft have no place in fair-chase hunting,” said Richard Hale, chairman of the Club’s Big Game Records Committee.

“The Boone and Crockett Club stands with state wildlife agencies, the Pope and Young Club and hunter-conservationists everywhere who are discouraging the use of drones in hunting.”

In the early 1960s, the Boone and Crockett Club barred trophies taken with use of aircraft. “Spotting or herding game from the air, followed by landing in its vicinity for the purpose of pursuit and shooting” was deemed unethical. The Club’s policy spawned regulations in Alaska and elsewhere designed to protect the integrity of hunting and
conserve game.

Hale said Boone and Crockett is always on alert for new technologies that could erode the time-honored traditions of fair chase. Fair chase is defined by the Club as the ethical, sportsmanlike and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild, native North American big game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper advantage over such animals.

No Deer Hunting with Drones

Hunting in it’s purest form has always been about trying to kill something to eat. Deer hunting with drones seems far removed from such a simple idea. The thought of scouting with drones makes sense on some level, but it also sounds weird. Envision the western skies full of drones looking for the biggest mule deer, elk or pronghorn.

A lot of value gets put on the largest-antlered or largest-horned animals by recreational hunters. Here’s a thought: Do we blame hunters or B&C?