Habitat Management | Buck Manager

Increase Browse for White-tailed Deer

Browse for Deer

Deer and deer habitat varies considerably between the northern and southern parts of the white-tailed deer’s range. The available browse for deer can, too. In the southern U.S., starvation of deer is generally not a problem. Mild winters in the region means deer browse is often available. However, late-winter is still a stressful time for whitetail in terms of food quantity and quality. It’s more stressful when deer density is above the carrying capacity of an area.

When it comes to winter and native deer foods, browse plants are the most important ones on a deer’s menu. In fact, browse plants are of utmost importance during all stress periods, especially summer and winter. This article discusses habitat management activities that can increase browse for deer. Ideally, the information here will take your native browse production and deer management program to the next level.

Talking Deer Browse

Like us, deer eat the best foods they can find. Whitetail consume a plethora of plant species. In fact, one study alone recorded over 400 species consumed by whitetail in an area! However, natural forage is limited to browse, cool season forbs, and hard mast (such as acorns) in the winter. During years of good hard mast production, deer use this forage well into the winter.

However, hard mast availability varies from year to year. As a result, deer turn to alternative food sources. Cool season forb (tasty weeds) availability also varies by latitude and is almost non-existent in freeze-prone areas. Locations at the northern part of the whitetail’s range often come up short on cool season forbs. Likewise, southern latitudes suffer a similar fate during winters with low amounts of precipitation. So how can deer managers increase browse for deer?

Importance of Browse for Deer

Browse plants are the most stable component of a white-tailed deer’s diet. Year-in and year-out, browse is a reliable staple in a deer’s diet. Why? Well, browse consists of the stems, twigs, and leaves of woody plants and these species tend to be long-lived perennials. Think about trees, shrubs, and vines, all of which provide deer browse.

Many woody plants lose their leaves in winter. Then, these deep-rooted plants consistently grow new leaves each spring and summer. This makes plants such as elm, hackberry, poison ivy, green briar, and other small trees and shrubs important browse for deer. They serve as great emergency summer time forage if a lack of rainfall fails to produce warm season forbs.

Perennials, such as trees and shrubs, with established root systems have an advantage over short-lived forbs. Woody plants can access water deep within the soil. Annual plants need consistent rainfall at very specific times of the year. In addition, some browse species–such as important juniper species in the north and live oak in the south are evergreen. These browse species are available for deer during the winter as well as the summer.

Enhancing Browse for Deer

Habitat management that increases browse availability is not very expensive or time consuming. As such, the practice should be a component of every white-tailed deer management plan. Increasing available deer browse is a simple, straight-forward task. It only takes a little work to increase the best trees for deer on your property. In turn, those new browse plants produce additional foods and attract more deer.

Thinning small, 2-5 acre blocks in forested areas is one way to increase browse production and availability. Removing some of the older trees or hinge-cutting them allows sunlight to reach the ground. And blocked-shaped openings are the way to go here. Narrow strip-thinning will not permit enough sunlight for optimal browse growth. Sunlight is needed to allow browse seeds and tree seedlings to take off. This favors some of the best trees for deer and creates more forage for local whitetail.

Alternatively, dense woodlands with totally enclosed canopies offers little for deer in terms of browse, except along the edges. Instead, open up the canopy and allow increased sunlight to spur browse plants and forbs. This increases plant growth, food availability, and ups the number of deer the area can support.

Enhancing Deer Browse

Thinning for additional deer browse is just the start. Another way to further increase browse production is through the use of fertilizer. Adding fertilizer to recently thinned patches substantially increases the productivity of browse plants. Imagine a garden with fertilizer; it does much, much better! In addition, use fertilizer along wood line edges to boost established browse plants, too.

In fact, fertilize the edges of wood lines, along roadways, and even along utility easements. Not only will plants be much more healthy and produce bigger, darker leaves, but deer find fertilized leaves more palatable. It’s just like an unfertilized food plot versus a fertilized one. Deer prefer fertilized areas because they can literally taste the increased nutrition.

In closing, browse is an important food source for whitetail, especially during stress periods. Use these habitat management tips and techniques to increase native forage and browse production on your property. Managing plant communities to increase browse for deer is an important part of a deer management program. Healthy habitat means browse plants that produce year after year, and especially when the deer need them most!

How to Manage Whitetail Deer: Don’t Count Natives Out

Want to know how to manage white-tailed deer? Deer management is about herd improvement coupled with habitat enhancement. Although many hunters doubt the antler potential for native whitetail bucks in their area, in every area where white-tailed deer exists bucks exceeding 170 Boone and Crockett inches can be grown.

In fact, I have seen native 190+ inch bucks come from every region in Texas. And Texas is not alone. Of course, in free-ranging, native deer populations the majority of bucks will have their antlers max-out anywhere from 120 to 150 inches at maturity (5 1/2+ years old). These are good bucks. At maturity, most bucks will be good deer.

How to Manage Whitetail Deer

With that said, most deer hunters have never harvested a whitetail buck exceeding 130 inches. Why? For starters, most hunters are hard-pressed to find well-nourished bucks. Often times, habitat is in poor condition from livestock operations or there is simply a lack of deer food/habitat. This is often the case in farming communities where the only available habitat is low-lying land, untillable areas where woodlots have developed, or along creeks and rivers.

Deer Management: Managing Native Whitetail Bucks

Deer can forage on most row crops, but only during certain stages of growth or at maturity. The remainder of the time the crops are not consumed or the alleged “habitat” is plowed dirt. Well-nourished bucks need good habitat throughout the year.

Manage Whitetail Bucks for Maturity

Maturity. Show me a mature buck and I’ll show you a deer that more than one hunter is willing to put on a wall. Age, nutrition, and genetics combine to determine the potential for any whitetail buck’s antlers. Without a little age, a buck will never reach his true potential. The short answer for this maturity phenomenon is that it takes 3 years for a buck to complete his long bone growth. After this time, valuable minerals can be put toward antler growth, not skeletal growth. Bones also help store minerals prior to and during antler growth.

Mature bucks are easy to talk about, but few hunters will let a potentially great deer walk. And it’s not because deer hunters do not have patience, it’s simply because most of us do not have enough land to ensure that the buck we pass this hunting season survives into the next season or the hunting season after that. It’s difficult for anyone hunting on 30 acres, 100 acres or even a few hundred acres of land to let a young 140 inch deer walk through.

Sure, that buck may end up being over 200 inches at maturity, but what are the odds that your neighbor let’s him walk, too? And your neighbor’s neighbor? This is why the best thing small landowners can do is form deer management cooperatives with their neighbors, form some bylaws so that everyone is one the same page, and stick to them.

Managing Whitetail Deer Nutrition

So proper deer nutrition and age are very important, but genes, of course, play a part. I mentioned earlier that most native bucks will likely never exceed 120 to 150 inches, even at maturity. However, habitat that provides proper nutrition with or without supplemental feeding can add another 10 to 20 inches, but genetics still determine how big a whitetail buck can get.

A buck with “superior” genes for antler growth will outperform bucks with “normal” genes for antler growth under the same conditions. Exceptional bucks are just that, exceptions to the rule. This is where the management part must take place for the whole deer management concept to work.

Whitetail Management: How to Implement

Take any group of bucks on any property in any part of the country and some deer will have larger antlers than the others. Regardless of the bucks a property owner has to start with, the best whitetail bucks on the property are the very deer that a hunter should be managing to increase the quality of the bucks found in the deer herd. And in this case, management involves NOT shooting them young, rather providing them and their offspring with good habitat to survive and thrive in.

The other bucks should be culled, harvested, and removed, if possible. Culling is not a must. A property can still produce good bucks in the absence of culling. How to manage whitetail deer on your property is up to you. As mentioned earlier, most mature bucks are good deer. Culling is best applied to deer herds when excess deer need to be removed to keep the population in check with the habitat that is available.

In short, if a bunch of deer need to be removed from a property during a given year or over a series of years do not shoot all of the best deer or all of the mature deer, but focus on taking some trophies and then cleaning up some of the “lesser” bucks found throughout the age classes.

Managing Deer Takes Time

Repeating this process methodically year after year while keeping the herd size at an appropriate level for the habitat will SLOWLY improve a deer herd. It’s difficult to change the genetic composition of a deer herd but culling will allow the native bucks that reach maturity to be the best bucks that the property can produce.

It’s a mistake to over-focus on the culling of bucks as THE way to manage a deer herd. Managing for good deer herd nutrition and allowing bucks to reach maturity will go further towards reaching your goals. Research has shown that fawns that start off in good shape end up being bigger, more healthy deer. For that, you need healthy does with plenty of food. And as for bucks, with proper nutrition and a little bit of age, most hunters would be quite surprised at what a native white-tailed buck can do. And more than happy to put it on their wall!

The Best Whitetail Deer Food Plots

There are as many different kinds of food plot mixes on the market as there are days in a year, but a lot of people do not realize that the best food plots for white-tailed deer actually grow naturally! In my opinion, natural foods are the best food plots.

I guess by definition what I am writing about today can not really be considered food plots, but more like techniques to provide additional foods for deer. But I believe habitat management is the first step in deer management!

Disking– This is a simple technique that can be implemented (get it) during both the spring and fall. There is nothing magical about how disking works. The only thing necessary is that you use a disk to disturb the surface of the soil so that forb seeds can become “exposed” and germinate.

To promote warm season forbs for deer, disk the selected area before spring green-up. To promote cool season food plots simply disk the area where you would like your native food plot to be during late summer. In addition, to promote more edge and diversity you can alternate disked and undisked strips (strip disking). Continue reading “The Best Whitetail Deer Food Plots”

Habitat Management Can Be About Timing

Good habitat management is the cornerstone of a successful deer management program. But providing good habitat is more than just planting a couple food plots, setting up some protein feeders, and hoping it rains. In fact, none of that stuff is habitat management. Those things can help with available food resources, but they do little to address big issues for the plant communities found on your property.

Sure, food plots and free-choice feeders do provide supplemental food, but habitat management is a whole other issue. Habitat management is not as straight-forward as placing out food for deer to eat, so many people shy away from it. Habitat management is actively creating or restoring processes that impact habitat and food production at several levels – and they can have long-term benefits for deer rather than just over a single season or year.

As time consuming as habitat management can be, not all techniques are difficult to implement. Although I touch on different techniques from time to time, today I just want to talk about timing. Timing, as in life, really is everything! Continue reading “Habitat Management Can Be About Timing”

Habitat Management and Supplemental Feeding Work Together

Managing for proper nutrition in white-tailed deer is important for good body condition, good fawn production and recruitment, and maximum antler growth. Good nutrition can be accomplished by doing three things that involve proper habitat management, supplemental feeding, and the planting of food plots. If you want to kick your deer management program in to high gear, I recommend sound habitat management practices in addition to supplemental feeding through either protein pellets or food plots.

Most everyone is familiar with the benefits of supplemental feeding (high-protein food, often pellets), but it can be expensive and it promotes the urge to artificially maintain excessive numbers of deer. With that said, supplemental feeding is not a bad thing, but it must be combined with other sound deer population management practices. Continue reading “Habitat Management and Supplemental Feeding Work Together”