Herd Management Plan?

[PassnItOn]

If you were trying to institute a plan to grow bigger bucks, what would you use as a source of direction? Lots of good info from members but many conflicting opinions.

[panhandlehunter]

Age and protein. You can shoot some culls but you're not going to change genetics. Let your deer get to 6.5 and you will kill bigger bucks.

[SHSU18]

shoot only 8s and smaller for a few years, and feed lots of protein. We only killed 8s for about 3 years, feed about 6000 pounds of protein on our lease and are see lots of 9s, 10s and 10 points plus now. We are going on year 6 so it has worked well. We still kill 8s as culls as well as our 10s. And do not shoot a trophy till at least 5.5.

[BowSlayer]

There are so many differing opinions because every property is different. Get with your local Biologist and let him/her come to the property and point you in the right direction.

[flywise]

if you have 10 young bucks ,2 are spikes, and 8 are 4 point or better ....kill the spikes

[Huggybear]

Shoot doe, plant spring food plots, only mature bucks! No spikes!
You can feed more deer with spring plots the protein stations. I'm not saying don't feed protein but you get a lot more bang for your buck on good spring plots.

[Leemo]

Age

[Aggie PhD]

Age and protein. You can shoot some culls but you're not going to change genetics. Let your deer get to 6.5 and you will kill bigger bucks.

This. And make sure you get a handle on the does.

On our place we had a lot of spike and spike killers. We stopped harvesting spikes, shot more does as a first step. You want a decent buck to doe ratio which will is key for getting does bred in a timely manner. This in itself will reduce you number of late fawns, which will reduce your spike numbers.

Second key is supplemental nutrition (pelleted protein or cottonseed). The greatest benefit is to allow bucks to survive post rut mortality. If they die after rut at 4.5 you can't kill them at 6.5.......
Additionally the supplemental nutrition allows does to produce adequate milk and remain in a better body condition. Which leads to healthier fawns, which leads to fewer spikes and better fawn recruitment. Which leads to more bucks at 1.5.

Every year you will lose bucks in each age class to natural mortality. The goal should be to make sure that you can maximize survival of each age class so that you can get more deer to 5.5+

And as a card carrying geneticist, you will not create enough selective pressure through harvests to increase antler size.

[Mike Murphey]

The first thing you should do is find out several things about your land.
How many deer are on your property? Out the deer, how many are bucks, does, fawns.
A biologist can help you determine these numbers for you once you do this count either through night sights, or helicopter fly over. Until you figure out how many deer you have and what is the ratio between doe and bucks you cannot perform a very good management plan except killing deer that you think need to be killed.
A biologist will be able to tell you how many deer need to be taken out each season to maintain a healthy stable herd. The biologist will also be able to tell you how many bucks and how many does need to be taken each season.

Each ranch is different depending on grazing of cows/sheep/goats and deer density per acres of the ranch.
Supplemental feeding of protein is not always the best option as you can create an artificial population of deer due to pulling them in from your neighbors. someone talked about feed 6,000lbs of protein this year, we have fed close to 100,000lbs of protein to our herd plus 10T cotton seed.
Our criteria for taking a buck, no spikes to be shot until they are 1.5 year old, culls are 7 point or less at 3.5 year old. 8 points less than 124" cannot be taken until 4.5 year old. We have a slot of off limit of 8-9 points 125"-135", and trophy deer are 5.5 year old 10 points 150"+, and 8 points 136"+.
As you can see you need to get started on the right foot in deer management is not easy, but just trying to kill more deer is easy until you don't have anymore deer or inferior deer.

[Mexico]

Age and protein. You can shoot some culls but you're not going to change genetics. Let your deer get to 6.5 and you will kill bigger bucks.

X2 and I wouldn't shoot anything until I figure out my herd, average age, buck to doe. and population.

[rtp]

You asked for a source of information and not opinions if Im not mistaken. I would say the first thing you have to decide is whether you are going to do Trophy Deer Management(TDM) or Quality Deer Management(QDM). Big difference in how you would go about those two.

[MQ32Shooter]

Don’t shoot any bucks under 13” and you should be good.

[Black Ice]

shoot only 8s and smaller for a few years, and feed lots of protein. We only killed 8s for about 3 years, feed about 6000 pounds of protein on our lease and are see lots of 9s, 10s and 10 points plus now. We are going on year 6 so it has worked well. We still kill 8s as culls as well as our 10s. And do not shoot a trophy till at least 5.5.

Some of my best deer were 8 pointers.


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[TheHammer]

Age, age, age. Let your deer get to 6.5+

[Deerguy]

Contact a biologist and spend a few years intensively surveying your deer herd to determine all of the relevant/pertinent herd characteristics. Then plan a harvest according to what needs to be improved. During that lull time, spend as much as you can on real habitat improvements and forget all the supplemental feeding nonsense. Why spend a ton of money until you know if nutrition is limiting? And even then, even if nutrition is limiting, supplemental feeding is simply a Band-Aid approach to hide improper management. You'd be far better off correcting the problems as opposed to making them worse with feed. Improve the habitat and get your deer density down within carrying capacity and nutrition won't be a concern. Now it's just a matter of tightening the sex ratio, increasing the age structure, and using very selective harvest to remove bucks (within harvest prescription constraints) that will never make the top 20% of your deer herd (more complicated than just shoot 8's or shoot deer with no brows, etc.). Good luck.