crzy_hunter89

I was wondering what were some of y'alls favorite methods of building the whitetail herd in your area. Do you have any things lying around the house that u use for deer such as peanut butter that you have tried feeding your herd? I am currently just feeding them corn,peanut butter and salt blocks and i have a few mineral licks. Any tips will be greatly appreciated.Thanks alot

little-d

THE WAY TO BUILD A HERD IS TO NOT SHOOT DOE'S OR YOUNG BUCKS,FEEDING THE SWEETS AND CORN WILL NOT REALLY BUILD ANYTHING YOU MIGHT PULL A DEER OR TWO IN BUT IF YOU DONOT HAVE THE NATURAL FOOD SOURCE YOU AN'T DOING MUCH FOR HERD GROWTH.

bwhunter501

I will have to disagree i think you have to take some mature doe's out of the herd to make the buck to doe ratio right and make sure it doesnt go outa whack.

James B

You have to shoot does where I live. If you don't there will be a population explosion that will wipe the herd out. It happened several times in my life time. They now issue many many many extra doe tags in our area. It has not phased the population yet. I can take a drive out to my place this time of year when the deer are out on the winter wheat fields and see hundreds of deer in the 18 mile drive. About a 20 to 1 ratio of does to bucks. Most of the does have twins and several mild winters has boomed their numbers I bought 8 doe tags Mule Deer and filled them all. Could have shot 40 more if I had wanted to and had enough tags.

rost495

Do I understand right? Build not manage. Building you stay away from does and young bucks as mentioned. What the rest of ya'll are posting is management of a current herd. Two totally different things.

crzy_hunter89

thanks for helping out but what kind of "treats" can i feed the deer to attract them to my hunting location

little-d

"treats" are you wanting to hunt over the treats or in the area, if that is legal fix up a feeding spot in some thick stuff away from the open where they fill safe. Fix a hanging barrel with a big square in one side and hang it off the ground high enough to keep the coons out put a overhang on top to keep the rain out also .Then put horse sweet feed ,some more corn,hang some carrots around ,and put a few apples at a time in there also ,put out some taters they like them and pears,buy a bag of wheat,oats. Then back off about 75 yards and put up a ground blind or get up a tree ,if you put out that for deer they will be standing in line to eat. Start feeding them now then back off a little during summer then late summer start putting the goodes back out and by hunting season they will be coming there every day and night.

James B

Its not two different things. If you build the herd past it ability to find food then you will have no herd to manage. Manageing the numbers in the right way will build the herd. You can;t seperate the two.

young_gun

yah i will agree with you on that. I hunted north of jamestown in unit 2k2 (i think) on family land with my uncles this last yr and we didnt have problems finding does, but bucks were the tricky part. and coming back from my grandmas in Grafton Nd, we saw atleast 20 every 2 miles or so. I noticed that in unit 2k2 they gave away like 15,000 tags or so wasnt it?
i know that there were atleast 8,000 left over at the third drawing.


but anyways back to the subject. Shoot mature does.

rost495

James

Well yes and no. Someone referred to not shooting does as bad. I was pointing out he is like me(I think) is trying to build the herd up. That requires management but that management includes little if any shooting and of only mature deer. Certainly not does or young bucks. So yep you are right, but in so many threads management refers to working with a herd that is at or above the lands carrying capacity, something I think is not the case here. Certainly not with me anyway.

So it is seperate yet the same.

Jeff