Originally Posted by
Topgun 3006
First question---What do you mean by a "small group of hunters"? What is the number?
Second question---Whoever this guy is that came up with a buck ranging over 20-30 miles is nuts! Many deer don't roam more than a mile if the habitat and forage is appropriate for the number of animals. A mature buck may go a mile or 3 to breed does if there aren't enough on his home turf, which generally isn't that big of an area. Your property is less than 1 square mile, so if you do have that many does then by all means a bunch need to be taken out of the herd, preferably the oldest that may not be producing any fawns and are only eating forage that the younger animals need. I am for taking spikes out of the herd unless you know for sure a particular animal was born so late that he needs a year to actually show his potential. In good areas with the proper number of animals and good forage a buck should never grow spikes. What state are you in and what is the terrain in that 500 acres you have?
3 members. Allowed 2 guests each. The area isn't over hunted, but they come in every weekend. Sometimes they have 2 guests, sometimes just 1.
I was thinking the same thing on the 20-30 mile area. Although, I do know of a record buck killed a few years ago that was seen on camera by every club within an 8 mile radius. It was killed about 4 miles from us, and we had him on our cameras as well. (just a side story).
In Louisiana, in one of the best deer parishes in the state. Property was designed by ducks unlimited as a wild life habitat. We have small ponds, big ponds, thick timber, light timber, oak flats, small ridges, shallow bottoms, 24 acres of food plots... damn near everything a deer would want or need - although we're not the only club in the area that was designed this way.
As far as taking the does, that's what I was thinking. More on the conservative side of 6 or so, but I'm no expert and currently I cannot confirm the exact number of deer or does (as stated above) - just going by what they've told me. Does on our property are pretty large too, 150-170lb is not uncommon.
We do have late rut here every year for some reason. Back in the 70's they imported deer from other areas hoping to change the rut cycle. It didn't help. They were rutting last year into late january, and that's pretty much every year.
As far as the spikes go, all 8 that I watched last year had to be born late, because they were very small. That's what had me wondering that if they stayed around, and produced their first real set of horns, we should have at the very least 8 basket racks roaming around the area. And they should show up on most of our cameras. I can accurately estimate we had around 15 of these type of deer on the property last year that were seen by hunters. I may be jumping the gun thinking they're gone since I only just put out my cameras last week - but if they don't show up, then I'd tend to believe a change in strategy could be in order.
EDIT: These spikes I'm referring to are basically button bucks. The only way to tell they were bucks was to put a scope on them. This is how young they were.
I have 1 long horn spike on camera from a few days ago. From the side, they look to be about 8-10 inches long and straight (this is just a guess). Looking head on, the horns have grown straight up 3inches or so, and have a slight outward curve to them. Pretty sure this is the first set of horns, but I accidentally deleted the picture before really looking at the details to attempt to size its body. There were no other deer around in the pictures to compare it to.