Buck Manager | Buck Manager

Time to Hunt for Shed Deer Antlers

Hunting for shed antlers means getting out in the woods at a different time of the year. If you’re like most white-tailed deer hunters, then you spend the majority of your time in the woods during the fall and winter of each year. However, the habitat that white-tailed deer live in — just like the animals themselves — are found there year-round. Shed hunting is a good opportunity to get out and explore the area you hunt, learn more about it, and possibly even find some nice shed antlers.

With spring just around the corner and whitetail bucks beginning to shed last year’s antler growth, there is a good opportunity to learn more about your deer hunting area as well as the deer that live there. Hunters get excited when bucks start growing their antlers each year because it’s a chance to witness the affect of past management activities and offers a look ahead to, hopefully, future harvests. It really is something to get pumped up about.

Shed Hunting Season

Then, on the other hand, there are some hunters that also get pumped up after the hunting seasons have already ended. Those guys and gals are the shed hunters. Once winter sets in, it marks the fact that soon whitetail bucks will be dropping, casting their coveted antlers. As it turns out, there are ways to get a huge set of antlers on your wall other than shooting the big boy. He may have eluded you during the season, but you can still find his shed antlers!

Finding shed deer antlers not only ends with great rewards you get to take home, but also with some valuable information you can tuck away in your back pocket for next season. Information such as the quality of bucks that made it through the last hunting season, the number of different bucks that were in the area, and specific areas that these bucks used while in your area.

Shed antlers also allow you to physically track bucks that you may have been keeping a close eye on. Measurements that can be taken from year to year include common measurements such as beam length, tine length, and mass measurements.

Shed Hunting Tips

Look in and around late-season food plots and other food sources.
Examine deer travel corridors, water sources and anywhere deer commonly travel.
Use a game camera to monitor the deer herd and ensure most of the bucks in the area have already shed their antlers before your start. More antlers on the ground ups your chances at finding them.
Don’t wait too long to hunt for sheds. Rodents will eat and destroy cast antlers due to the coveted minerals they contain. In addition, warming weather will spur forb and grass growth and make finding antlers much more difficult.
Keep an eye out for new hunting locations. This may inspire you to cover more ground, increasing your chances of finding deer sheds.

Deer Warts or Tumors?

When deer hunters head out into the field they don’t usually think to themselves, “Man, I want to harvest a healthy deer.” But we all do, even though we don’t really think about it. So., what if you harvested a deer with warts? Most hunters would be a little concerned because, after all, warts are not normal on white-tailed deer.

Although injuries and diseases are some things hunters and property owners serious about deer management try to avoid having in their herds, it usually can not be avoided.

These “deer tumors”, which are more accurately wart-like growths, and are formally referred to as cutaneous fibromatosis. The virus that causes such growth on the skin can be transmitted between deer, at least experimentally.

Deer fibroma occurs occasionally in white-tailed deer living in North America. Although the ailment is not common, it not extremely rare either. The cutaneous growths can vary in diameter, but usually vary from about 1/4 inch to 4 inches in size.

These wart-like growths can be found growing by themselves or in clusters, typically on the front-end of an infected deer. The whitetail buck featured in the above photos has warts caused by cutaneous fibroma on the underside of his neck and face.

Although these tumor-looking growths are not believed to directly harm the deer, the presence of these warts could cause additional stress or points for additional injury on an animal.

From a hunting or deer management perspective there is little that can be done once a deer contracts fibroma. In some cases the infection may not even be noticeable, but as in the example above, the warts may be very obvious. The virus has been successfully spread under experimental conditions from deer to deer, but the chances of this happening in wild deer herds is unknown.

Interesting Facts About White-tailed Deer

For those that work close-hand to better manage deer and deer habitat, we are always learning how we can improve the conditions of both. To better understand how we can enhance available deer habitat, deer nutrition, and the health of a deer herd, any information we can gather about deer help the cause. Here are some additonal facts you may not know:

1. White-tailed deer establish a home-range territory and will not leave it! It has been documented that deer will starve rather than leave their territory. Moral of the story — maintain adequate nutrition!

2. Wild white-tailed have been known to live at least to 11-years in the wild, but I suspect a very small percentage live even longer. Now those are mature deer!

3. With optimal habitat conditions, deer populations can double in size annually! Without regulated hunting and proper harvest management, deer will destroy wildlife habitat and suffer tremendous population die-offs.

4. If you took 2 white-tailed deer in the absence of predators, in just 7-years those two animals alone can produce a herd of up to 35 animals! I wish my savings increased at that rate.

5. In areas of overpopulation, deer cause an over-browsing affect we call a “browse line.” You do not want a browse line on your ranch! After a browse line is created, it takes years under a low deer density for browse plants to re-establish and recover.

Habitat Management and Mechanical Brush Control

Although browse plants are the staple of the white-tailed deer, too much brush can hamper your overall deer management program, particularly when it’s invasive cedar (ashe juniper) or nuisance regrowth such as mesquite. These woody plants are not targeted by deer and often times create problems with overly-dense canopy cover, preventing more beneficial forbs and browse from establishing. And too much brush decreases water infiltration.

However, with brush control comes brush control options: biological, chemical, and mechanical. The use of mechanical equipment to control woody plants will typically result in the initial growth of forbs and annual grasses and the resprouting of many woody species. As a result, woody species targeted for control may have to be stump-sprayed to prevent regrowth. Find out more about the life history of the plant you intend to control prior to investing valuable time and money.

The abundance and diversity of forbs and annuals found post-control results from soil disturbance. Soil disturbance exposes the natural seed bank found in the soil, increasing the quantity, quality, and distribution of plants beneficial to wildlife. For white-tailed deer and most game birds this is a very good thing! However, if hydraulic shears are used for brush removal the amount of ground disurbance will be minimized, but so will erosion issues. This is a good idea on sloped areas with erodible soils.

However, without periodic follow-up treatments of prescribed fire, additional mechanical manipulations, costly herbicides, and/or without proper livestock grazing management, these “cleared” sites will eventually become dense stands of regrowth brush and trees on again, especially if the plant you are trying to control is a root sprouter/resprouter.

Resprouting is good for when we are talking about high-quality deer browse foods, but for plants such as noxious mesquite or redberry cedar, it is not. In these situations, resprouting plants need to be revisited with a proper herbicide application.

Lastly, mowing areas of herbaceous plants with low-density woody plants is another form of mechanical treatment that could have merit depending upon the objectives. However, mowing should be postponed until after the peak of the nesting and fawning period (end of July) of ground-nesting birds and deer.

Pros and Cons of Aerial Surveys for Deer

Estimating the number of deer on your property is premium information for any deer manager. However, regardless of the type of census survey you use, some type of bias does exist. With this in mind, all surveys provide population trend data and some provide more precise data than others.

Today, we are going to talk about some of the pros and cons of performing aerial surveys for deer. In most cases when conducting aerial surveys for deer, helicopter will be used over airplanes (fixed-wing). With that said, helicopter and fixed-wing surveys allow the landowner and deer manager to determine the following: Continue reading “Pros and Cons of Aerial Surveys for Deer”