I think a big part of that is 133 acres. It doesnt even begin to contain a deers home range.

With the advent of deer feeders I think you would be surprised about some Deers home range. I have deer I see at feeder every trip. Resident does I see in the yard every time I drive up to the house.

I think some deer roam about but others live their lives in just a couple hundred acres. My buddy has 35 acres and watched the same buck Every day in his yard for 6 years before it Disappeared.

Interesting

Redchevy, my point was about the change, not the numbers on just my place. The entire region was affected and has never gone back to the "good old days".

But, I saw more deer, actually herds, on my place than I now see in the region. I know they werent resident on my place but wandered around the area. All the neighbors and the game biologist agree.

Dave, im kind of confused by this. Are you talking about the drought 8 or 10 years ago. I know the drought was worse in some places than others but I dont feel our lease or our area had a die off at all. Im not saying you didnt but even if you did the reduction of mouths on the land should of caused higher reproduction and recruitment and the numbers should of bounced back in pretty quick order. Im no expert but it seems to go against everything I think I know. But I dont know much. I would be curious to know more.

Im in the same boat as freerange. The drought in those times is ancient history in deer years. They should be back in force.

Honestly our deer never need to venture further than a few acres to get what they NEED. There is a free choice protein feeder, water station, and corn feeder plus 80 acres of good natural browse in every 1/4 of our place. We have deer that routinely hit all of the feeders, some that hit just one of them then during the rut will hit several of them and we have deer that come and go every year.

Deer arnt much different than people.

Some will travel the world and not stay long in the same place. Others are content to live their lives in the same area never venturing from what’s familiar

My good bucks appear to be "rolling stones".

The biggest we have taken and the biggest we have seen on our place traveled quite a ways from their normal homes.

We have a couple of our better ones that were the biggest homebodies I have ever seen though.

Neighbor and I each removed a doe this weekend. Saturday afternoon I had 30 different deer in a 50 acre area (12-acre central oat field). 6 bucks, 14 fawns, 10 does. Lots of deer, I saw some of them walk 800+ yards to get to the oat field. Despite recent rains/snow, they're keeping it too short to put sheep on.

edit. sorry guys i just posted on wrong thread or something so I erased.

I have no real idea why they haven’t recovered to pre drought times. I talked to the TPWD biologist not too long ago. He has been there quite awhile but was not there when the “good old days” and the 4 year drought occurred.However, he did talk to the previous guy who confirmed the changes.

The only real change that has occurred regards cattle. Back then, there were a lot of actual ranchers. I was one. That meant a lot of fertilized winter wheat and oats. Now, if I plant wheat the pigs pretty well root it up. So, we don’t have the winter browse that we once had.

Drought plus high deer numbers means the habitat has not recovered.

isn't that contradictory?

Because they are moving so much to find food?

To many deer. Severe drought hits. To many deer eat habitat till it is damaged severely. To many deer die off to a few deer. Does not rain for a while. Habitat does not recover due to long term stress. Habitat now only capable of supporting so many deer. Deer numbers do not recover due to what is now poor habitat.

STx, I know this may be too complex to explain in this context but i wish you could elaborate on how this situation isnt always true across our State since most of the State experienced drought in those years.
Im aware that good deer and land managers can, should and do keep their populations in check with the carrying capacity.
I just believe that the vast majority of our State wide deer habitat is NOT aggressively controlled to match the carrying capacity.
So my question is WHY didnt more areas experience the big habitat destruction/damage that you mentioned? Or did they? The theory of some areas being population dependent versus population independent may come into play but I never have grasped that concept in a real world concept. Our area in NW Tx did fine during the drought without making a major push at killing does. Fawn crops/recruitment cut back but adults and habitat did not seem to be hurt in any major way. I have always thought in our area(and others) that other factors controlled any potential to over populate to some extent.
Bottom line, I guess--why can some areas of State get away with not killing a lot of does and make it through a drought "ok" and others have habitat severely damaged, along with a die off and then a very long recovery(if ever) of the habitat? Anyone else besides STx, of course, is free to comment.

Require members to take 2 does before a buck is taken?

Could it be that you now have too many pigs? Pigs will run deer off.

We had open feeders that fed hogs and deer. The hogs dominated the feeders and the deer sightings went down. I would shoot hogs multiple hunts in a row many times. We penned the two feeders we saw hogs at the most and hog sightings plummeted and deer sightings skyrocketed. About 3-4 years down the road, we rarely see hogs, only 2 were seen the entire season long on our place.

One down side is it seems with the absence of the feral hogs, the javalina have come back in force.

Yep shut down the soup kitchen the freeloaders will stop showing up.