Central Texas deer nutrition

Just got a new lease in Coleman county directly in the Colorado River always hunted north Texas and although the Grayson county giants have spoiled me I am realistic and know to not expect to have 170in deer on my camer but besides that. What supplemental nutrition is good to feed in that general area as far as things that’ll actually benefit the herd not trying to produce giants.

Hello wwhunter. You'll get all kinds of answers on this one. All the way from "don't waist your time" to "Double Down protein will produce the biggest antlers you've ever seen"...

We go with the basics and it seems to be working well. Corn (Candy) all year long and protein from Jan - Sept.

It also depends on the size of your ranch. If your hunting a few hundred acres and your not holding most of the herd on your land all year long I wouldn't bother. If your hunting a few thousand acres with plenty of cover and your holding the herd you'll see some results from a solid protein feed plan. It will take a few years to see results.

As a general rule: If you not thinking to yourself "Damn this is expensive" your not spending enough on protein to notice a difference.

We have all of our feeders penned so we put out mineral licks as well.

You won't produce giants but you'll will see a marked improvement on both body size and good antler development starting at an earlier age.

Thanks for the reply we are on 1500 acres of valley and thick cover with the Colorado river as our south property line and all adjoining properties are crop field so we do hold a lot of the deer heard in the area. I was gonna feed 16% all year with some mineral sites and that seems to be the way to go from your reply. Thanks I’m excited to be down in the area

You can feed protein all you want and it will help, but don't expect instant results.
If you have good to excellent genetics you can see improvement sooner, which would be increase in body size and weight, and maybe heavier antlers, but it will take a few years of dedicated feeding of protein.
Feeding during stressful times of the year helps the deer make it through those times but unless you have the genetics for large antler growth, it won't do much good in that area alone.