A few observations from a old man

I keep hearing that WT Deer rub their velvet off. What I have seen is that the velvet dries and falls off. The rubbing and scrapping starts closer to the rut. I see Bucks with the velvet gone and there are no signs of any tree bark or anything that would suggest that the velvet was rubbed off. People complain that they see no Bucks during the Summer. Starting after the Bucks loose their antlers they find other Bucks. They become big buddies during the Summer until Sept. They all hang out together. In Sept. things change. No more buddies. They separate and find their own territories. If you have no Bucks during the Summer that doesn't mean you will have none during the season. Feeding Deer. It may be good during times there is no natural forage. The problem is that most people don't let a Deer live long enough to get to his maximum size. Coyotes. Kill everyone you see. They hurt Deer way more that you realize. In South Texas not so much because there are plenty of rats and rabbits .Anywhere above or west of Hwy 90 shoot them. Raising Exotics. You cannot do both WT and Exotics on the same place and do both of them right. Exotics and Exotics. Unless for hunting on your property pick one and concentrate on it. Leases too expensive. Those saying it have no idea the work it takes to keep acreage at a useable stage. It is a lot different that keeping just a home going. Living on pavement is a lot different than living out here trying to raise animals. Coping with the drought. Fighting coyotes and a multitude of other problems that pop up every day. See this is what happens when things go to pot and you go check snares in the afternoon and take a six pack of cheap beer along.

Beer. Life's too short for cheap beer.

I watched this buck on Sept. 26th thrash a cedar to rub the velvet off. Could never get any pics of him work the cedar due to other deer in the way and just seeing his backend. He had backed off the cedar and was shaking his head in the first pic. This group of about 9-10 bucks came in together and left together that opening day of MLD season. The T-post in the last pic are yardage markers, they were put in before range finders were very common in the late 90's.

Velvet will fall off on its own, but they also rub it off. Sometimes they will be more into rubbing terminal branches where you won't notice rub damage.



You may not find signs of the velvet if they eat it afterwards.

Keystone. Keystone is the answer

One of the best sayings I ever heard was, "you'll start shooting big deer when you quit shooting the little deer."

Hang in there Don. Cool weather is around the corner and fall mornings make being outside worth it.

All too often, we start educating new hunters to shoot little deer. Dad takes little Johnny on his first hunt and dad instructs little Johnny to either shoot the first deer within range, or is coming to the end of the hunt and tells him to shoot whatever shows up. Rarely do we ever see a picture of little Johnny with a 5 year old 12 pt buck as his first kill.

Amen

those are awesome pictures

don k, you should run for Governor.

I agree on coyote/fawn predation. A friend in Indiana set up a cam on a coyote den. He noted over 40 fawns brought in by Mama. However, I'm not sure that Mama Nature, even being the cruel bitch that she is, isn't helping with the balance of nature. I have observed, on my place, that an extended drought is more damaging that predation. And, that same drought hits the predators just like it does the prey. The one thing that never seems affected by man or nature is coons.

Velvet usually dries and falls off on its own. The rubbing is done to (perceived) sharping of antlers.

Hunters make up all sorts of strange explanations. I always got a kick out of the explanation that hogs were "sharpening their teeth" just before getting ready to attack during the process of jaw popping. A variety of animals pop their jaws as a warning when agitated.

I guess folks must believe that since antlers in velvet usually look like they are blunt on the ends, but pointy after the velvet comes off that the deer sharpened the tips, but the tips simply emerge from the velvet pointy already, LOL.

Kill more coyotes, have more deer. But I have talked to some quail managers that say keep the coyotes because they eat many of the quail predators. They argue, keep the coyotes and kill all coons, possums, feral cats, bobcats, etc.

Data from the states of Texas and S.C. from a few years back both said that 60% of fawns born in the spring would be dead by Fall due to coyotes. I shoot em.

I don’t have any quail, and haven’t since I’ve owned the place (15 years), so there’s that.

I figure for a person, a healing scab is about as close as we get to knowing what antlers coming out of velvet could possibly feel like. I don't know about y'all, but my wounds can itch something fierce about the time they are all healed up.

I can only imagine 165 inches of velvety itchiness needs a good tree trunk or fence post scratchin' once in a while to knock the fuzz off.

Yup, I'm sure they itch like crazy...

I may be wrong but a dead bone should not have any feelings.

Good points here. There is no substitute for age, so I encourage youth, and even myself, if I am meat hunting to shoot does and let the young bucks grow up.

Pure wisdom.

wth, father takes son out for first hunt, "now son don't shoot till we see a twelve pointer" that's bull chit, let the kid shoot....

thank you don k

Yes, there are some buzzkill men who are more concerned with showing everyone with how much they know and how "management minded" they are, instead of just letting a kid have fun.

Then there's the guy that constantly harps on shooting nothing but really mature deer...until HIS family is hunting.

If there is blood, then they are still at least partially vascularized and if so, still may have some active nerve endings. Around the pedicles, this may be especially true.



It's sort of a problem, isn't it? You want to teach the kids to hunt, you want mature bucks, but then if you let the kids shoot just whatever, they don't learn big buck conservation, but if you have them wait on a big buck to teach them conservation, they may not get a chance to learn about deer hunting.

If you want to try to conserve for big bucks, but still let the kids have a lot of fun, take them hog hunting - big, small, shoot them all.

I get kids here. I tell the parent to let them shoot any size Deer they or you want. I am not in the so called trophy or mature Deer business. I just deal in numbers of animals I think I need taken. And it is amazing that the largest 3 Bucks have not been shot the last 3 years.

To each their own for what you decide for your kids hunting.

My take on it and the way I taught my daughter was starting out with smaller game and smaller calibers. How to observe and connect with nature, study her quarry before hunting it. Turkey and hogs is what I started her on and I waited for her to express a desire to kill a deer. I told her because we are not dependent on deer meat to eat we should be selective in how we decide to kill the deer. No reason to kill young ones, let them grow to middle age or older if possible. She agreed. Her first buck was a mature buck with attitude that never grew much of a set of antlers but was a bully to the other bucks and always broke up his antlers before the rest and ran off all the bucks around the feeder.

That’s all fine & dandy, but how many people got to shoot 2 year old bucks before there ain’t any older bucks around the few years?

What about the 35 year old man that shoots every buck that just meets antler restrictions, every year? And he has been doing it since he was big enough to hold a rifle. For thousands, there is nothing wrong with that. What puzzles me is the person that does that, and always has done that, and then bitches that they only have small bucks.

Took my son out for his first legal hunt here in Idaho at age 12. Shot a nice eating size forked horn mule deer, and happy as a clam. Went out the next year and he was a little tougher and heartier. We hunted all day in a snowstorm and high winds. Took a 31 1/2" 4x3, and he said he wasn't going to shoot another buck until he beat that! Took a couple years for reality to sink in, and now he takes mature deer and doesn't worry about size and score.

Dang man, you have some freakin deer. That is awesome, cool pics for sure!

Pitch said it pretty good. Ill add on. Definitely start em off shooting a bunch of stuff(other species) that all look the same, meaning no "Trophy" or potential Trophy. If everyone on a lease is on the same page with their goals then do whatever the group wants and I wont judge you. Hopefully your harvest isn't so outa line you hurt your neighbor but not a lot can be done if its legal. What I don't get is those that say they want bigger/older bucks but don't do what it takes. Where the kids come in on that is that if you are doing the right thing on your harvest guidelines then there should easily be enough bucks in the older age class to allow for the kids to take an older buck that just doesn't have a Trophy caliber rack.
On our lease I would say that we do not have a real INTENSIVE management plan but if you REALLY do the basics itll take you most of the way there. What we do is put as few hunters on the place as we possibly can afford. Then hopefully not everyone always has to kill a buck. Then for sure try hard not to ever kill a buck before his prime. If you do those simple(theoretically) things then you should usually have a good many bucks in the older age class and even though they wont all be big you at least put more numbers out there so you up your odds. Circling back to the kids, if you have decent numbers of older bucks then they should be able to find a genetically smaller older buck (which probably needs killing anyway, to keep your overall numbers down.)