Palo Pinto Deer Population

This year has been pitiful and worse than last year that was bad. I'm sure the drought has something to do with it but I'm hunting one of the bigger pieces of property in the area that provides decent cover but just not getting deer to show up. We run corn year round but no protein/food plots. Water situation got very bad this year for us but we had plenty of water last year.

While with acorns dropping I figure deer won't hit corn but not seeing them cross pipelines to get water or moving up some draws etc. I figure if there was any density then we'd accidentally see more deer but haven't.

Game warden came by last week and said no one around had killed much.

So is it the area that isn't holding deer/doing it wrong/little bit of everything? Or?

I recently drove down to San Antonio down 281. I saw more deer on the side of the road in one trip down than I had ever seen at the farm the past 8 years.

The drought has a lot to do with. There has to be water I noticed when we did our spotlight surveys that the pastures with no water had no deer and the pastures with water had an abundance of deer. The population on the ranch is good .I hunted Wednesday night and saw 19 doe and only 3 little bucks. The ranch is big several thousand acres so we have cover water and food ( feeders and wheat fields) the only thing I have noticed is the amount of big antlered bucks we have this year is off a good bit. We have killed one high 130s buck and that's unusual . I have seen some nice bucks but it's when I'm feeding cows and they have been chasing does.

The place I hunt in Palo Pinto co was great last year but is dead this year we had plenty on cam until October but that ended abruptly on opening day of bow season. We do the same as yall on this place corn year round but due to livestock it's almost impossible to do plots or protien without a fence around it which is not an option. Between the drought and the poachers to our south the deer have left we heard a lot of rifle shots during now season and know where they came from but all we can do is tell the game warden and the rest is up to him/her.