Interesting spike study

[Blackmouth]

My thoughts are to:

First, get the deer population down to what the land can support

Second, work on the sex ratio to what is natural

Third, then begin working on genetics by culling the lower quality animals.

I'd bet most places haven't made it through the first 2 steps.

[Snowflake Killa]

I'm out on shooting spikes in most cases its his first set of horns. We had a white spike buck that turned into a 140 8pt that's all the study I need

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[glen]

I’d like to see this 140 inch plibald 8

[Greenheadless]

My thoughts are to:

First, get the deer population down to what the land can support

Second, work on the sex ratio to what is natural

Third, then begin working on genetics by culling the lower quality animals.

I'd bet most places haven't made it through the first 2 steps.

This right here.

Range conditions/food should be #1. And that doesn’t mean putting a bunch of protein feeders out necessarily.

Need to add in there age class management as well, before ‘genetics’ modifications.

As for the TPWD studies, if I remember correctly, those were all high fenced, controlled conditioned studies at Kerr and were from the 1970’s and 1980’s, 40-50 years ago.

Plenty more free range ‘real world’ research has been done since then.

[Greenheadless]

I could very well be wrong, but I think MSU had a podcast discussing this exact thing. Deer of a certain age, I think it was 1.5, with less than 6 or 8 points die. In less than 10 years there were almost 0 bucks left.

Now that I think about it, maybe it was 1.5 with less than 6 and 2.5 less than 8.

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I was fortunate to hunt a high fence operation that has been managing since the 1960’s (under high fence conditions).

If it wasn’t an 8pt by 1.5 yo, it was taken. Needed to be 10pt by 2.5 yo.

They consistently grew book deer to over 200”, all native stock. And they had been doing this for +40 years when I hunted there. They are well known in the Los Cazadores contest, consistently at the top end most years.

All depends on you conditions, management strategy, and plans of action.

[BarBBar]

The MSU Deer University podcasts are interesting, and free for the listening. Take them to the gym or track when you work out.

[lazuras_dc]

My thoughts are to:

First, get the deer population down to what the land can support

Second, work on the sex ratio to what is natural

Third, then begin working on genetics by culling the lower quality animals.

I'd bet most places haven't made it through the first 2 steps.

Curious what your metrics are for the first two steps ?

[glen]

Lazuras- if you really want to know have a range manager come out and inspect your browse. They can tell if you’re overpopulated. If you do good surveys the same person could recommend carry capacity for your land. It makes a big difference on everything when browse and numbers are right.

[Matt_C]

my thoughts are to:

First, get the deer population down to what the land can support

second, work on the sex ratio to what is natural

third, then begin working on genetics by culling the lower quality animals.

I'd bet most places haven't made it through the first 2 steps.

^^^^^^^^^^
yep...

[Tx.Fisher]

The guy should have been shot three years ago.


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[ShoootLow]

This is a 2.5 year old spike that I snot a few years back. He was 135# and obviously wasn’t a normal spike.

[ShoootLow]

[lovemylegacy]

8 month old 7 point. Hmmm

Im strictly going by size of the animal. It may be 18mths old. All of these younger bucks are the same size, Im assuming they are the same age.

Read the material presented above. Very interesting stuff, but its all in a controlled arena. how much of that will apply to wild deer in an free range habitat? The best part, in my opinion, was the importance of Phosphorus in the deer diet or their diet in general. That is the one thing we can have an impact on.

[mdnabors]

I've never looked it up, but this got me thinking...has any study or HF breeder ever taken wild ranging spikes and put them in a pen with other genetically modified deer and seen the results after years of same nutrition, less stress, etc... to see what those wild spikes grew into when reaching full genetic potential? I think that'd be interesting...

I'll second the MSU Deer Lab podcast...it's a real good listen. I'm from MS so I'm partial...just not to MS State! Ha

[LivinADream]

I was fortunate to hunt a high fence operation that has been managing since the 1960’s (under high fence conditions).

If it wasn’t an 8pt by 1.5 yo, it was taken. Needed to be 10pt by 2.5 yo.

They consistently grew book deer to over 200”, all native stock. And they had been doing this for +40 years when I hunted there. They are well known in the Los Cazadores contest, consistently at the top end most years.

All depends on you conditions, management strategy, and plans of action.

I think someone is lying to someone here. Not exactly calling you a liar, maybe you were lied to. Maybe they were decades into their management plan before starting that, but they didn't start like that I can assure you. If you started a property that way, you'd be out of bucks almost as soon as your first year of 1.5 yr Olds were mature. I bet in most any given wild herds right now less than 15% of 1.5 yr Olds have 8 or more points. Of course I could be wrong but I doubt I'm too far off. Or maybe I just hunt crummy properties, who knows.

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