Quote:
Originally Posted by Sugarmaker
Todd,
Do you have room for any more hunters where you hunt?  Those are all awsome deer! The mounts look great in your deer room!
Thanks for posting!
Regards,
Chris |
Well Chris, if I did I would let you know
the land we have was what my grandfather bought back in the early 40's for 25 cents an acre, (how strange does that sound?) it's not alot, 180 acres, but that also includes ag-fields, not all wooded.
I, my wife Nancy and our hunting buddy hunt it. We started to do the deer management thing back in 1996, harvesting does and passing 2 1/2 year old bucks, it was doing well with the cooperation of the neighbors till about 2008 and the neighbors stopped shooting does and our deer population took off for the moon again.
So the bucks in the area lost their prime bedding, and everything became over browsed, not enough food through the winters to sustain a higher deer population, all the bucks food intake went to just survive, not to grow their antlers. Plus the bucks suffered because of the preasure on them to breed more deer, antler production went way down over the last few years also.
Granted, their out there, but not in the numbers we had say three years ago, used to be our 3 1/2 year olds would dress in the area of 200 - 225# in the prime time of the year. Our does used to go 125 - 140# now if one hits 120# you're lucky.
See, the neighbors thought by doing the management thing one could harvest a mature buck every year, and if they didn't see ten deer on each sit, there were none, so they just stopped shooting does and passing the younger bucks, years of work went right out the poop shoot. I guess it's the truth, times change, I for one hope it changes again soon.