deer hunting | Buck Manager

Nice Buck from Redneck Using Only BBQ Sauce

We all like deer hunting and eating BBQ, right? Yes! So this video caught my attention right away and immediately brought a smile to my face.

Anytime I get to deer camp I make sure to barbecue some sort of protein over a fire — and, in my own way, produce an, arguably, edible art. However, the guy in the above video takes his BBQ meal to the next level!

Watch him enjoy his ribs, then create a nice buck out of merely BBQ sauce! Pull a similar feat off in camp and you will elevate your social and campfire status!

Grape is Good White-tailed Deer Browse

Deer Food: Grape (Vitus spp.)

Class: browse; preferred by deer

Description: There are many species of grape throughout the white-tailed deer’s range, but all species seem to serve as good sources of deer forage. In areas with high deer populations, grape leaves will not be found within the reach of a deer, but foliage can be found higher in brush and tree canopies. Common grape species include mustang, post oak, and muscadine.

Grape is deer browse

Grape plants are vigorous and clump forming or high-climbing woody vines occurring on moist sandy soil and loose clay soil in both bottomlands and uplands. Most grape species are very aggressive, often outcompeting other vegetation in an area.

Grape plants are usually found along fence rows, adjacent creeks, and within forested areas. Growth can be encouraged on properties managed for white-tailed deer by loosely stacking brush piles so that small, protected grape plants can establish with the physical protection of the pile and then grow outward where deer can consume the leaves.

The fruits are also eaten by many birds and mammals, including deer and wild hogs. These animals will plant the seeds of the highly sought after fruit directly into the areas they frequent, such as brush piles!

Grape Photos:

Mustang (2 photos above)

Post oak (above)

Muscadine (above)

Habitat Management and Supplemental Feeding Work Together

Managing for proper nutrition in white-tailed deer is important for good body condition, good fawn production and recruitment, and maximum antler growth. Good nutrition can be accomplished by doing three things that involve proper habitat management, supplemental feeding, and the planting of food plots. If you want to kick your deer management program in to high gear, I recommend sound habitat management practices in addition to supplemental feeding through either protein pellets or food plots.

Most everyone is familiar with the benefits of supplemental feeding (high-protein food, often pellets), but it can be expensive and it promotes the urge to artificially maintain excessive numbers of deer. With that said, supplemental feeding is not a bad thing, but it must be combined with other sound deer population management practices. Continue reading “Habitat Management and Supplemental Feeding Work Together”

White-tailed Deer Hunting – Know Their Senses

White-tailed deer populations span from from the Atlantic to the pacific, north into Canada, and as far south as Peru. In every area white-tailed deer live, something is out to get them. Hunters will hunt and predators must eat, but deer have adapted to the endless pursuit of predators, including humans, and here is how.

Whitetail deer are mostly active at dusk and dawn (crepuscular) and will often feed at night, becoming totally nocturanal. This may be an adaptation to the habits of man because humans, of all animals, rely most heavily on sight to find deer. Deer, especially mature bucks, go nocturnal counter our limitations.

Sight, however, is not the whitetail’s keenest sense. Deer often can not distinguish between a motionless object and its background, but deer are quick to respond at the slightest movement. Just a twitch is enough to warn a deer that something is not quite right and set the animal on high alert. Deer hunters know this well.

If a deer is suspicious, but there is no movement, the deer will approach and stomp with its front leg in an attempt to make the out-of-place “thing” move. Without a reaction, a curious and smart white-tailed deer may also call into duty their sharpest sense – smell. A deer may circle downwind and analyze the wind with its nose in an attempt to detect danger. If things don’t smell right… goodbye!

As good as their senses are to sight and sound, there is no denying that a deer’s keen sense of hearing is their most effective weapon to ward off would-be predators and hopeful hunters. This is why hunting buck scrapes and using doe urine can be highly effective when used properly. Their ears are designed to collect sound waves, the eyes to collect colors, and their nose to smell danger. They all add up to one heck of a crafty white-tailed deer!

Deer Hunting: Work Not Done After the Shot

It’s time for on-the-ground deer management and that means taking advantage of hunting season. Three cheers to all who elected to use the days following Thanksgiving to be seated in their stands deer hunting rather than corralled with strangers outside retail stores to save a dime. Deer season’s busiest weekend dropped tons of meat all across Texas. You may have bagged a nice buck or a good-eating doe, but now what?

Hunting is a clean and simple exercise. It’s squeezing the trigger and making an accurate shot that adds time to the back end of any trip into the woods. First order of business is to field-dress the animal and, if temperatures are mild as they have been lately, cool the meat. In surprisingly short time, heat can manifest itself in a host of undesireable effects on fresh venison.

“If it’s 70 degrees outside,” said Michael Cruz, of Pete’s Fine Meats on Richmond, “I wouldn’t leave a deer (undressed) for more than an hour.”

Handle With Care

Whether you prefer to hang your deer from trees or leave them on the ground for unzipping, be careful and patient throughout the process. Elementary as it sounds, keep the fingers of the hand that isn’t holding the knife away from the hand that is. Even with an extremely sharp blade, pressure must be applied during certain aspects of the field-dressing job, and you’ll be working in a slippery environment. Move slowly and carefully avoid a painful slice.

According to Cruz, one of the most wasteful hunter mistakes is poor field-care that contaminates good meat with other things inside the animal. There’s no need to be graphic here. If you don’t understand the message or the procedure, ask someone who does to observe and instruct.

Some things within a deer are supposed to be cut in preparing it for the professional’s blade and paper, and some are not. Confusing the two taints immediately upon contact; processors have to discard everything that’s suspect, then hack away a little more, before they can package remaining venison for consumption.

Also unnecessarily wasteful is sloppy shot placement. At a range inside 200 yards with good lighting through a properly sighted, scoped rifle, there is no reason to miss the intended mark by more than a couple of inches. I made this point in another column recently after hearing a “professional hunter” on video proclaim that we’re ready for the field when we can hit a dinner plate at 100 yards.

In addition to being woefully disrespectful to the animal, such casual marksmanship also ruins prime meat. Bullet strikes too high may rip through backstraps. Hits too far aft rupture some of those aforementioned bits and pieces that can ruin an otherwise prime piece of meat.

Incidentally, if you don’t know where to settle the crosshairs on a deer, you can learn quickly from Mike Kasberg’s Aim for Success laminated poster, just $7 plus incidentals at his Web site. I’d like to see each of his aim points lowered a couple of inches, frankly, but cannot argue with the placements so long as the bullet hits where the rifle is pointed.

Cool It Down

For the sake of argument here, we’ll presume a clean shot and prompt, careful field dressing. Next logical stop for most hunters would be the processor, but Cruz suggested otherwise.

“Once it’s gutted out, put it on ice right away and keep it there for a couple of days,” Cruz said. “Let it bleed out. That keeps the meat tender and nice and colorful.”

Hanging a deer in a cooler for the same length of time before processing, said Cruz, who has 46 years in the meat business, tends to dry it out.

Texas hunters have the option on most ranches of adding a wild hog to the meat locker. Same ranch, same temperature — but different strategy.

“With hogs, you want to do everything (in the field) in about half the time as for deer,” Cruz said. The “other white meat” apparently is that much more fragile than venison.

Larger hogs produce bigger, thicker chops, said Cruz, which some hunters prefer, but the meat of a smaller pig is more tender and a better complement to venison when mixed in sausage. Of equal size, sows make better eating than boars.

Basic cutting and wrapping for deer and hogs costs less than $50 at Pete’s, but extra services and special processing, such as smoking the meat or having some of it made into jerky, can jack up a tab in a hurry. Wherever you process your venison and wild pork, be sure to ask in advance exactly how much you’ll pay for what you want.

Texas deer hunters have much to be thankful for this time of year. A herd of nearly 4 million whitetails comes to mind, as do winters cool enough to keep venison from spoiling quickly but not so cold as to be bitterly uncomfortable while we wait for a big buck to step clear. Read about sausage making tips.

Doug Pike covers the outdoors for the Houston Chronicle and hosts Inside the Outdoors from 6-9 a.m. Saturdays on 790 AM. doug.pike@chron.com