Harvest Management | Deer Hunting & Management

Deer Habitat Should Provide Deer Foods

Each landowner or property manager must recognize the habitat needs of white-tailed deer on a continual basis and direct management towards meeting those needs. Since white-tailed deer have a relatively small home range of about ½ to 1 mile in radius over an annual basis, all of their needs for growth, reproduction, and cover must be met within this unit. Deer management is about food management–as in habitat.

Whitetail will seldom move from within their home range to meet their needs, even though better conditions may exists in the surrounding area! Deer are very versatile in their feeding habits and will eat a wide variety of items, including fruits, browse, forbs, agricultural crops, and even small amounts of grass. Deer “perform” best in habitat where a great variety of preferred food items are present. Continue reading “Deer Habitat Should Provide Deer Foods”

Managing White-tailed Deer on Fragmented Land

In general, white-tailed deer generally live within a home range of approximately one square mile. However, this range can increase during the breeding season, especially for bucks. Unless your property is high-fenced, a deer’s daily movements within that home range throughout the year often results in movements into habitat found on more than one adjoining landowner.

As a result, it is important to understand that landowners share individual animals. For this reason, the potential for successful white-tailed deer harvest management diminishes as landownership size decreases. It makes sense that as the size of individual ranches continues to decrease throughout an area, effective and meaningful management can be a challenge.

Fragmentation of habitat often results when changing land uses occur on adjoining tracts of land that were once uniform rangelands or woodlands. The increasing cost of land and the desire for folks to have just a small “piece of heaven” only increases fragmentation issues. Continue reading “Managing White-tailed Deer on Fragmented Land”

Harvest Rates for White-tailed Does

A deer herd should be managed as two separate populations. The female segement of the herd must be managed to maintain productivity. The number of new deer added to the pre-hunt population is a function of the number of fawns born and their survival until until the fall. The number of fawns born is primarily determined by the number of does, but the survival of fawns, however, is mostly dependent upon the physical condition of does, although predation is certainly a factor is some situations. Continue reading “Harvest Rates for White-tailed Does”

The Question of Harvest Rates for White-tailed Deer

The question of how many deer to harvest and in what proportion is asked in developing all deer management plans, but seldom is answered in an objective manner. Ideally, a deer manager would know exactly how many deer of the proper age and sex should be present to best meet the management goals for a particular ranch or tract of land.

With accurate information on herd size, the buck to doe ratio and fawn survival, and with considerations for rainfall, habitat conditions, and hunting on neighboring property, the manager could then prescribe the percentage of the herd that should be harvested to optimize management objectives. Situations such as this where all pertinent information is availalbe are, of course, very rare in deer management. Continue reading “The Question of Harvest Rates for White-tailed Deer”

Proper Harvest Essential for Good Deer Management

Harvest really is a key management tool required to manage white-tailed deer populations. However, remember that successful management must also involve proper habitat management. The basic strategy for deer population mangaement, which involves harvest, consist of the following:

1. Deer numbers must be maintained at or below the carrying capacity of the property to maintain excellent body condition and maximum antler growth. It’s kind of like cows in a pasture. You can have more, but body condition and overall health will suffer.

2. The desired sex ratio must be achieved for proper recruitment levels and desired harvest quotas. Maintaining too many does will require harvesting many deer each year. Too few does and recruitment may not be adequate to replace deer harvested.

3). The harvest rate of bucks must be established to attain the desired age structure of bucks available for harvest (which includes spikes and other culls as part of the buck harvest quota). A lower harvest rate keeps more bucks in the older age classes.