Buck Manager | Buck Manager

Mountain Lion Really Killed This Buck

Mountain Lion Dragging Buck

Have you seen the game camera photo of a mountain lion that killed a buck at or near a feeder? It seems quite amazing that the lion and his kill were caught on camera. However, the mountain lion dragging buck photo appears to be legit. It’s rather lucky photo for the owner of the game camera, but not as fortunate for the buck.

Readers of this site know that I normally write about deer management and anything related to hunting white-tailed deer. In addition, I do my best to get the facts correct before publishing content that I feel is accurate and helpful to hunters and landowners managing the deer and habitat found on their hunting properties.

Well, about a month ago I wrote an article that featured the photo below. It’s a perfect game camera photo of a mountain lion dragging a dead buck directly in front of a feeder. It seemed so perfect, I stated that surely the photo was a fake. As it turns out, the mountain lion dragging a buck photo is not fake. Rather, it’s an actual, amazing trail camera photo taken on a ranch in South Texas.

This photo caught a mountain lion near a feeder after killing a whitetail buck

Mountain Lion Kill Caught on Camera

Every deer hunter that has spent any amount of time in the woods, or more appropriately around a campfire with other hunters, has heard stories related to mountain lion sightings. This can include the alleged black panther sightings that your buddy/uncle/friend/nephew claims he saw, too. The stories always get better as the night goes on.

One of the best things about getting outdoors and into the wildlife woods is that you really never know what you are going to see. And speaking from experience (and the mountain lion photos further below), there are some amazing things going on outside all of the time. After all, nature never really sleeps.

Photos, like campfire stories, are not always truthful. Before writing the first article about this photo of a mountain lion dragging a buck, I did a little research regarding the photo. If this photo had been faked, it would not have been the first. To make a long story short, someone initially admitted that they had “made” the photo. Just to get some attention, someone actually claimed to have faked a real-to-life photo. Wow.

Mountain Lion Dragging Buck After Kill

As it turns out, the real owner of the mountain lion photo saw the article, contacted me, gave me the real story that took place on his South Texas property and even provided me with additional photos to corroborate the mountain lion kill.

The ranch owner even said he found the whitetail buck’s head and remains about 6 weeks after these game camera photos were taken. He confirmed that the buck had been killed by the lion.

The photos below are in time succession and show a deer fleeing the area prior to the buck being killed. You can even see the drag marks in the dirt after the mountain lion walks right in front of the game camera. A truly remarkable occurrence, especially since it was caught on film. A special thanks to Chet Markgraf for his story and these photos!

Photos Document Lion & Whitetail Buck

Mountain Lion Dragging Buck in Photo

Mountain Lion Attacks Buck

Mountain Lion Kills Buck at Feeder

Video: Mountain Lion Kills Deer

Increase Browse for White-tailed Deer

Browse for Deer

Deer and deer habitat varies considerably between the northern and southern parts of the white-tailed deer’s range. The available browse for deer can, too. In the southern U.S., starvation of deer is generally not a problem. Mild winters in the region means deer browse is often available. However, late-winter is still a stressful time for whitetail in terms of food quantity and quality. It’s more stressful when deer density is above the carrying capacity of an area.

When it comes to winter and native deer foods, browse plants are the most important ones on a deer’s menu. In fact, browse plants are of utmost importance during all stress periods, especially summer and winter. This article discusses habitat management activities that can increase browse for deer. Ideally, the information here will take your native browse production and deer management program to the next level.

Talking Deer Browse

Like us, deer eat the best foods they can find. Whitetail consume a plethora of plant species. In fact, one study alone recorded over 400 species consumed by whitetail in an area! However, natural forage is limited to browse, cool season forbs, and hard mast (such as acorns) in the winter. During years of good hard mast production, deer use this forage well into the winter.

However, hard mast availability varies from year to year. As a result, deer turn to alternative food sources. Cool season forb (tasty weeds) availability also varies by latitude and is almost non-existent in freeze-prone areas. Locations at the northern part of the whitetail’s range often come up short on cool season forbs. Likewise, southern latitudes suffer a similar fate during winters with low amounts of precipitation. So how can deer managers increase browse for deer?

Importance of Browse for Deer

Browse plants are the most stable component of a white-tailed deer’s diet. Year-in and year-out, browse is a reliable staple in a deer’s diet. Why? Well, browse consists of the stems, twigs, and leaves of woody plants and these species tend to be long-lived perennials. Think about trees, shrubs, and vines, all of which provide deer browse.

Many woody plants lose their leaves in winter. Then, these deep-rooted plants consistently grow new leaves each spring and summer. This makes plants such as elm, hackberry, poison ivy, green briar, and other small trees and shrubs important browse for deer. They serve as great emergency summer time forage if a lack of rainfall fails to produce warm season forbs.

Perennials, such as trees and shrubs, with established root systems have an advantage over short-lived forbs. Woody plants can access water deep within the soil. Annual plants need consistent rainfall at very specific times of the year. In addition, some browse species–such as important juniper species in the north and live oak in the south are evergreen. These browse species are available for deer during the winter as well as the summer.

Enhancing Browse for Deer

Habitat management that increases browse availability is not very expensive or time consuming. As such, the practice should be a component of every white-tailed deer management plan. Increasing available deer browse is a simple, straight-forward task. It only takes a little work to increase the best trees for deer on your property. In turn, those new browse plants produce additional foods and attract more deer.

Thinning small, 2-5 acre blocks in forested areas is one way to increase browse production and availability. Removing some of the older trees or hinge-cutting them allows sunlight to reach the ground. And blocked-shaped openings are the way to go here. Narrow strip-thinning will not permit enough sunlight for optimal browse growth. Sunlight is needed to allow browse seeds and tree seedlings to take off. This favors some of the best trees for deer and creates more forage for local whitetail.

Alternatively, dense woodlands with totally enclosed canopies offers little for deer in terms of browse, except along the edges. Instead, open up the canopy and allow increased sunlight to spur browse plants and forbs. This increases plant growth, food availability, and ups the number of deer the area can support.

Enhancing Deer Browse

Thinning for additional deer browse is just the start. Another way to further increase browse production is through the use of fertilizer. Adding fertilizer to recently thinned patches substantially increases the productivity of browse plants. Imagine a garden with fertilizer; it does much, much better! In addition, use fertilizer along wood line edges to boost established browse plants, too.

In fact, fertilize the edges of wood lines, along roadways, and even along utility easements. Not only will plants be much more healthy and produce bigger, darker leaves, but deer find fertilized leaves more palatable. It’s just like an unfertilized food plot versus a fertilized one. Deer prefer fertilized areas because they can literally taste the increased nutrition.

In closing, browse is an important food source for whitetail, especially during stress periods. Use these habitat management tips and techniques to increase native forage and browse production on your property. Managing plant communities to increase browse for deer is an important part of a deer management program. Healthy habitat means browse plants that produce year after year, and especially when the deer need them most!

Sudden Impact is a Huge Whitetail!

Deer management involves manipulating the habitat and animals found on a property to improve body condition, increase fawning rates, and enhance antler quality of a white-tailed deer herd. Overall, deer management has been fueled by the desire for healthier bucks with larger antlers. And although herd management works well, it does not work over night–it takes years of work and selective deer harvest.

A spin-off of deer management has been the selective pen-breeding of deer which has resulted in the commercial white-tailed deer breeding industry. Love it or hate it, this has allowed line-breeding and the rapid concentration of genes supporting abnormally-large antler growth.

Here enters the deer known as Sudden Impact. Not only is he a big buck, he is an absolutely, insanely, monstrous whitetail buck! After glancing at his antlers, you are probably thinking that this buck has reached maturity and has grown its biggest rack ever. Wrong. The video above features Sudden Impact at only 2 years of age in 2008! Yes, at 2 1/2 years old his shed antlers scored an eye-raising 406 5/8 Boone and Crockett inches.

This buck is already the largest pen-raised whitetail ever and he looks to blow through that mark later this year. There is no doubt that he is impressive, but would you really want to shoot him?

Hunting Land in Texas is Shrinking

The popularity of white-tailed deer hunting in recent decades has not only spurred an increase in deer management, but also a greater demand for deer hunting lands. And since everyone in the United States lives in a supply and demand economy, the price of whitetail hunting has continued to rise year after year. Unless a hunter owns his or her own property, they either know someone who does (that lets them hunt) or they are forced to lease private land for deer hunting.

If you’ve looked for a lease lately you know that quality hunting leases are getting harder and harder to find. In addition, many have found themselves priced-out of deer hunting. So what if I told you that the amount of huntable land in Texas could decline because of new legislation?

Well, Senate Bill 1742 and House Bill 3766 could do just that, to some extent, by increasing the buffer area between hunting lands and “occupied” areas. In short, this legislation proposes to increase the minimum size of a huntable tract with a rifle from 10 acres to 50 acres. Not only could this legally prohibit some hunters from hunting their own property because of suburban sprawl, but these new laws would also inhibit the ability of landowners to control white-tailed deer numbers, particulary in the Texas Hill Country. Continue reading “Hunting Land in Texas is Shrinking”

How to Manage Whitetail Deer: Don’t Count Natives Out

Want to know how to manage white-tailed deer? Deer management is about herd improvement coupled with habitat enhancement. Although many hunters doubt the antler potential for native whitetail bucks in their area, in every area where white-tailed deer exists bucks exceeding 170 Boone and Crockett inches can be grown.

In fact, I have seen native 190+ inch bucks come from every region in Texas. And Texas is not alone. Of course, in free-ranging, native deer populations the majority of bucks will have their antlers max-out anywhere from 120 to 150 inches at maturity (5 1/2+ years old). These are good bucks. At maturity, most bucks will be good deer.

How to Manage Whitetail Deer

With that said, most deer hunters have never harvested a whitetail buck exceeding 130 inches. Why? For starters, most hunters are hard-pressed to find well-nourished bucks. Often times, habitat is in poor condition from livestock operations or there is simply a lack of deer food/habitat. This is often the case in farming communities where the only available habitat is low-lying land, untillable areas where woodlots have developed, or along creeks and rivers.

Deer Management: Managing Native Whitetail Bucks

Deer can forage on most row crops, but only during certain stages of growth or at maturity. The remainder of the time the crops are not consumed or the alleged “habitat” is plowed dirt. Well-nourished bucks need good habitat throughout the year.

Manage Whitetail Bucks for Maturity

Maturity. Show me a mature buck and I’ll show you a deer that more than one hunter is willing to put on a wall. Age, nutrition, and genetics combine to determine the potential for any whitetail buck’s antlers. Without a little age, a buck will never reach his true potential. The short answer for this maturity phenomenon is that it takes 3 years for a buck to complete his long bone growth. After this time, valuable minerals can be put toward antler growth, not skeletal growth. Bones also help store minerals prior to and during antler growth.

Mature bucks are easy to talk about, but few hunters will let a potentially great deer walk. And it’s not because deer hunters do not have patience, it’s simply because most of us do not have enough land to ensure that the buck we pass this hunting season survives into the next season or the hunting season after that. It’s difficult for anyone hunting on 30 acres, 100 acres or even a few hundred acres of land to let a young 140 inch deer walk through.

Sure, that buck may end up being over 200 inches at maturity, but what are the odds that your neighbor let’s him walk, too? And your neighbor’s neighbor? This is why the best thing small landowners can do is form deer management cooperatives with their neighbors, form some bylaws so that everyone is one the same page, and stick to them.

Managing Whitetail Deer Nutrition

So proper deer nutrition and age are very important, but genes, of course, play a part. I mentioned earlier that most native bucks will likely never exceed 120 to 150 inches, even at maturity. However, habitat that provides proper nutrition with or without supplemental feeding can add another 10 to 20 inches, but genetics still determine how big a whitetail buck can get.

A buck with “superior” genes for antler growth will outperform bucks with “normal” genes for antler growth under the same conditions. Exceptional bucks are just that, exceptions to the rule. This is where the management part must take place for the whole deer management concept to work.

Whitetail Management: How to Implement

Take any group of bucks on any property in any part of the country and some deer will have larger antlers than the others. Regardless of the bucks a property owner has to start with, the best whitetail bucks on the property are the very deer that a hunter should be managing to increase the quality of the bucks found in the deer herd. And in this case, management involves NOT shooting them young, rather providing them and their offspring with good habitat to survive and thrive in.

The other bucks should be culled, harvested, and removed, if possible. Culling is not a must. A property can still produce good bucks in the absence of culling. How to manage whitetail deer on your property is up to you. As mentioned earlier, most mature bucks are good deer. Culling is best applied to deer herds when excess deer need to be removed to keep the population in check with the habitat that is available.

In short, if a bunch of deer need to be removed from a property during a given year or over a series of years do not shoot all of the best deer or all of the mature deer, but focus on taking some trophies and then cleaning up some of the “lesser” bucks found throughout the age classes.

Managing Deer Takes Time

Repeating this process methodically year after year while keeping the herd size at an appropriate level for the habitat will SLOWLY improve a deer herd. It’s difficult to change the genetic composition of a deer herd but culling will allow the native bucks that reach maturity to be the best bucks that the property can produce.

It’s a mistake to over-focus on the culling of bucks as THE way to manage a deer herd. Managing for good deer herd nutrition and allowing bucks to reach maturity will go further towards reaching your goals. Research has shown that fawns that start off in good shape end up being bigger, more healthy deer. For that, you need healthy does with plenty of food. And as for bucks, with proper nutrition and a little bit of age, most hunters would be quite surprised at what a native white-tailed buck can do. And more than happy to put it on their wall!