Whats the breaking point on feeding wildlife?

[Traildust]

We're gonna start feeding every other day

[Bayouboy]

Going full steam. Corn and Double Down.

[S-3 Ranch]

We are in a terrible drought, so I am keeping mine cranked up 300lbs black eye peas, 300lbs corn + alfalfa each station, praying for rain near eldorado , our deer are suffering bad

Mule deer are living on whatever and then cattle cubes every 2 days in marfa

[txbowman12]

May not be this year, fertilizer preices are in orbit !

I’m gonna plant without fertizer this year, buckwheat on all plots this spring, wheat on all plots this fall. We’ll see.

I'm doing the same this spring except going buckwheat and sunn hemp at 20/lbs an acre each. If I can get the sunn hemp to take I will be set for nitrogen come fall. Gonna leave my cereal rye standing through the summer and cut it for thatch for fall planting of brassicas followed by more cereal rye. Rye is pretty tolerant of less than ideal soil conditions and stayed green for me all year. Deer are hammering it right now.

[TheHammer]

The perfect storm in West Texas unfortunately. In a bad, bad drought out there, so you can’t just cut the protein or you lose all progress made with it. It will come back down, it always does. How much, I don’t know. I’ll still be feeding protein but may cut corn back during the summer months. Times like this I’m glad I have a ton of feed capacity to limit trips to the lease.

[Big Lee]

What will be interesting is how land owners treat this. Most guys I know on a lease (including us) have it written in their contracts that they must feed year-around. I wonder if land owners will give their hunters a break and allow them to stop feeding because of the prices...

at a minimum, I will be cutting throw times WAY down. Basically treating it as an attractant instead of actually being beneficial to the deer food wise.

Let me know when those folks get kicked off a lease.

[doghouse]

Deer are hungry on my place in Mills county. Feeding all we can afford.

[S-3 Ranch]

The perfect storm in West Texas unfortunately. In a bad, bad drought out there, so you can’t just cut the protein or you lose all progress made with it. It will come back down, it always does. How much, I don’t know. I’ll still be feeding protein but may cut corn back during the summer months. Times like this I’m glad I have a ton of feed capacity to limit trips to the lease.

Yep , most likely stop corn and go cotton seed and peas soon after turkey season
Worried that cows will go crazy and getting stuck in feeding pens though

[SabreKiller]

I'm heading out to our lease in Val Verde County at the end of the month to feed and set up a blind to bow hunt from. I was keeping 3 feeders on 2 blinds running, but I think I'm gonna have to rethink my feeding plan. Definitely won't be going out as much so I'll probably set feeders to throw on 3 days a week rather than every day. The current throw time is 4 seconds so I'll leave it at that. I'll stick with the corn/protein mix I've been buying at the feed store and evaluate prices moving forward.

Either way, its gonna be a tough year I think. Especially for deer. Dadgum hogs, not so much.

[Pedernal]

Have you guys considered asking the coons and hogs to cut back on their share

[JB_Archery]

I don't see us skipping a beat, we actually have ramped up protein and cotton seed plus adding more water troughs... it will hurt a bit but we run a "community lease" so everyone is supposed to chip in as we order feed. We're in Val Verde county averaging high 130's on trophies killed. We definitely don't want to see that drop... we have some 140" 6 YO's that made it and hoping we can get them into the 150's this year.

Would love to see some Spring showers to help us out a bit!

[BayouCat]

Tough call for sure. Right now, I'm still feeding mostly protein because I can afford it. We'll see how long that lasts. A month from now, I might be shutting it all down. Who knows.

If gas, food, corn, etc. get too insane and I have to stop feeding year around, I'm just going to take some days off work in October, dump some corn bags out, and hope for the best. Take what I can for the year and be done.

[kyle1974]

we're feeding as much cottonseed as we possibly can, and adding in new stations as we go.

We've invested way too much to just let them die from a drought that's temporary like every other drought. we have 11 members, so it's probably an increase of a few hundred dollars each. it's more, but not enough to stop feeding.

definitely going to back off the corn. It's just the dinner bell for them to get cottonseed anyway.

[AntlerCollector]

The cost of getting there is more aggravating to me than the cost of protein.

[Texas Grown]

What it's costing you in fuel may not be fully felt yet. The cost for delivery of goods to the retailers is not cheap either. This is from a buddy who's BnL drives a smaller haul truck. Just imagine what it cost for a 300 gallon tank for bigger trucks/loads.

Consumers haven't even begun to feel the full effects of why prices are going up on everything. Common workers have to pay more to get to work. Businesses pay more for production. Shipping costs more for the retailers who pass the cost on to consumers, who are the production workers trying to get to work.

It's just spiraling upward.

The fish are biting, and there's hogs to be kill-t. Gotta go!