bigbulls

I wouldn' t open it to everybody but I would probably open it to a certain number of people each year without charging them. First come first served. It would depend on the land, the carrying capacity and other factors as to how many people. I understand where you are coming from though. If you opend it to every one then your land would get destroyed and you would have no more deer.

I used to live in Katy Texas, just outside of Houston, for eleven years. It really sucks that if someone or their family doesn' t have the money or know someone with land to hunt then they are S.O.L. The only reason That I got to hunt when I lived there was due to my mother working for B.F.I. and they leased 15000+ acres in south Texas and all we had to do was sign up for the dates we wanted. I always wanted to do some snow goose hunting when I lived there but the rice fields were always leased up and they always wanted too much money.

Colorado has a program that the CDOW pays land owners in the state to make their land accessable to public hunters for phesant hunting. All you have to do is buy a $20 stamp to access this land. Big game is a non issue due to the ammount of mountainous public land available.

whitetails & muskies

I' ve heard this same thing many times. People will nearly crucify a person for putting a small amount of bait out, then go talk up their food plot efforts. If the fields are planted for the sole purpose of attracting deer, and NOT harvested, I would clasify it as baiting. Otherwise it' s farming. I am by no means trying to support baiting, just looking at the big picture. Many people also talk about privatization of the deer herd with regards to bait. Then, all you need to do is look at how biologic, antler king, imperial etc., etc., are advertised. Just read their adds..." attract and hold deer on your property" , " grow your own big bucks" etc., etc., Mmmmmmm, gotta wonder?

I' m the first person to NOT try and take away anything from us hunters....it can be a slippery slope. Personally....in the back of my mind, I don' t think B&C, P&Y, or Safari CLub Intn' l should allow deer harvested with mineral suppliments or foreign high protein food to be eligible for the books. But I' m sure as all heck not going to go out and try to ban that practice.

buckmine

Texas hunter58 you made a statement that your deer herd would decrease to 15 deer per square mile if you allowed the public to hunt.

What is the best deer per square mile number?

In MN it is as low as 5 to 10 or as high as 20 per square mile. And I still see quite a few deer with those numbers.

txhunter58

The best deer per square mile is............... whatever the carrying capacity of the habitat is! That is different for every location. The habitat in my area will comfortably support anywhere from a deer per 5 acres in some areas, to a deer per 15 acres in other areas (43-128 deer per square mile). We actually try and keep our ranch population to a deer per 10-12 acres (58 deer per square mile). That is why some refer to our area as the " deer factory" of Texas. Body size is not big, but good numbers and decent antlers.

I suspect that your habitat could easily support more than 20 deer per square mile, but you would have to reduce the harvest substantially to do this, something I suspect most are not willing to do. However, winter is probably the limiting factor, so you may actually be at the carrying capacity of the habitat, I just don' t know.

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timbercruiser

Big Bulls make that two deer per day in Alabama, one doe and a buck or two does(in most areas). Legally you can take close to 200 per year.

BOWFANATIC

You could say we over grew our herd. In my early years of hunting you could only shoot a buck unless you were lucky enough to have drawn a doe tag. Back then a doe tag was refered to as a party permit and it was drawn through lottery and the chances of getting one were slim. That was done to grow our deer herd. Problem is when you dont harvest even 10% of doe out of your annual total deer harvest and this goes on for over thirty years , what do you thinks gonna happen? Yes they grew the herd like they intended but it grew at a rate faster than they anticipated and in fact when I started hunting they didn' t even try to estimate our deer herd. They started doing that when things started getting out of control. Now the last 10 - 15 years they' ve had to concentrate on decreasing the deer herd with generous amounts of antlerless tags , earn a buck , zone t units , etc.
Hope this helps answer your question.