Question. Our deer lease is pretty laid back when it comes to who kills what and what guests shoot. We are in Stephens County, which is a 2 buck (1 trophy and one spike) and 3 doe county. Each paid hunter is allowed this max amount for the paid hunter, his family, and any guests. I'm certain one of our members went over this quota, but I can't prove it.

So, how does your lease keep track of who killed what? How do you implement it? How do you hold hunters accountable for this method?

We have a book that we write down what we shot and the tag number. Thats what a warden told us to do since we have a walk in cooler it is considered a processing place(don't know how true that really is). The book stays at the ranch and a new page is started for the year. Its actually a good way for us to track what we are harvesting.

I just started a log when we first got on it. Date, name, which blind, trophy buck(w/# of pts.) or cull (+pts.) or doe. Some put total score. I think everyone's pretty honest, including any wounded animals.

Although our LO is a fretting sort of guy, I think he convinces himself he has too much to do to ever look at it himself. Plus, I think he trusts us to abide by the rules.

I was all prepared to take a picture of everything I shot and share it on email with everyone, including the LO. No one else seemed to give a crap, so that's one less thing to worry about.

Yes, I'd like to have a log of the deer we shoot. That's what I was thinking.

A log will keep the honest people honest.

We keep a book in the house. I think between seven guys we killed two bucks and two does last year on 2000 acres.

Always true.

Happened to me. I called his hand and confronted him. Didn’t go over well. I didn’t care. A mans word means a lot to me and at that point I wanted him to know that I knew. We are still very good freinds however my trust with him is virtually non-existent when it comes to harvesting animals. I can sleep at night, I don’t know how he does. Some people have no concern for breaking rules, being dishonest or being deceitful. Those that are, I don’t do business with. I’ll be your friend, but I’ll keep a close eye on you as well.

You will need to make the log part of the lease agreement. That way it is a contractual obligation.

Our lease document requires us to keep a log of all game animals killed throughout the year, except for birds and ducks. We kill those, just haven't seen them on the log.

We report the date, species, sex, live weight or field dressed weight, who killed it and if it's a WT buck, how many points. We try to include pics too. This is turned into the landowner annually. Not sure what they do with it but our lease provides for a certain number of deer and it shows that we don't kill near as many does as we should.

This is what we did. We had to eject a member for going over the limit on bucks (took a 9 in archery and a 10 in rifle plus 3 does, our rule was 1 8pt or better at least as wide as the ears)

We allowed guests to shoot the longhorn spikes the first two years we were managing it then changed to just does for guests. After 5 years of taking 50 or so does off of 1100 acres and letting the bucks grow up, we started taking some 140's - 150's. And this was in Llano county.

We are going to start a log this year including the weight and jaw tested age of every deer to hopefully be able to see an improvement in health and quality of deer after a few years from all the new management tools we are utilizing like protein and food plots as well as keeps tabs on what all is being harvested.

It takes someone vigilant to keep a log book, or a group of folks that do not mind taking 20 seconds to follow the rules they signed. We have yet to have a group that will get all animals logged in.
My brother has a log of every deer ever killed on his place, date, sex, weight, points, location, etc. It is an awesome history that we look back on all of the time.

We have an annual book that all the whitetail killed are logged in. Each member has a line by their name and they fill out the weight, spread, score, bow/rifle, cull, trophy, doe, etc. For the bucks that are taken, there is a print out of a score sheet. Each buck is scored, weighed, they list the estimated age, pasture it was shot in, bow/rifle, a picture of the animal and condition of the animal.

It is interesting to look back over the old books and see what, if anything, has changed. Also a good way to compare year to year versus rainfall, doe harvest, and body weight.

We use a MLD log off the TPW website and get pics (front and side view)

We are not MLD but we use this form along with at least 2 picture of each animal. I log everything not just whitetails. I just use a separate on for exotics.
https://tpwd.texas.gov/business/permits/...og2015_2017.pdf