Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Pics from the farm

Are you successful in finding their sheds each spring? I would imagine they would be close to your feeder area. I can only imagine what kind of damage one of those sheds could do to a tractor tire.

Precisely, not to mention a lot of good venison, pellets make good eats.

We found every single shed last year, not including the yearlings. Half were easy. 30% not too bad. 20% took many hours. Gave up with one missing (one as in one side, not the pair), just so happens it was from the first deer pictured in this thread. The cutter blade later found it.

An interesting point is that it was rare, if ever, that we found a pair in close proximity. That was surprising to me.

Interesting to me too as I hardly ever, I mean ever, find matching sheds close to each other, within hundreds of yards in the wild, coues and mulies..

So all the instagram pics of matching sheds lying there together are fake. Go figure.

Clint,

I’d like to suggest with your high quality bucks and excellent photography skills. A calendar would be cool that showcases your accomplishments each year.


🦫

Clint, thanks for the thread. Can I ask how many acres you have fenced and what your target population is? Are you at your target population and just tuning the doe to buck ratio?

Kingston, finally the million dollar question. The target population is mostly based on two factors: food supply and objective.

Food supply - Alabama has long growing season and lots of rain. According to the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, the ideal cattle stocking rate for a pasture is 2-4 cows per acre, average in our state (yes thats correct, cows per acre, not acres per cow). Our grass and forage freaking grows, the natural density is high in this area. With herbicides the forage composition can be manipulated to your advantage. Kill the grass and scrub. With supplemental feeding, you can run basically as many deer as you want, think cattle stock yard. So how much do you want to spend?

Objective - Do you want it to look like a cattle stock yard?

Our target is one mature deer (defined as 2 years old plus) per five acres. This does (does as in the verb, not the critter, stupid English) not include fawns and yearlings (though yearlings can breed). So 10 bucks and 10 does per 100 acres. Its hard to keep track of the does, and not scientific, just a guideline we theoretically try to maintain. For reference, the free range density in our area is a thick, 45+ per square mile in the last data I've seen, call it one deer per 12 acres outside the fence.

I have found pellet consumption the best measuring stick.

Theoretically, once the balance is achieved, the crop of bucks birthed in a given year, adjusted for die offs, is the number of bucks that require harvest.

Photos skills aren't required. More than you want to spend on a lens is required.

Full sun also helps, but these deer are still deer, and their exposure to full sun is rare.

Outstanding specimens and photos too. If you yourself aren't into subjects for a trophy deer calendar, lots of folks are. I just got my Bill Kinney's Trophy Whitetail Deer Calendar for 2023 in the mail yesterday and I'm sure that a guy like that would be interested in using some of your photos.

I'm kind of ambivalent about the deer shows, pens, articles, videos, calendars, scoring and mounts that show these gargantuan trophy bucks. Though we can all dream, that isn't the real world for the vast majority of the hunting public. I see these wide eyed 12 year old kids wandering around at a deer show and wonder how they'll react to the spike or fork horn that they are most likely to see out in the woods?

It is true that I had the same concerns. What we have found is the opposite, a visit to the property stokes the fire. When a kid leaves, he's ready to go hunting. The inch counting crowd is a lot smaller than we think. Of course our local buddies give us hard time. One came with his son to harvest a doe. The boy had peanut butter on the end of his barrel. Thats what friends are for. The boy later limited out on bucks (3) at their hunting lease, much to the father's chagrin, as they werent all "shooters" according the club rules. But the kid's rules were different. I've been coues deer hunting twice since the fence was constructed, and a 100" coues is BIG. I personally am not a trophy hunter and this has not changed my opinion on that subject one bit.

I have always had buck fever. It has cured that, which could be argued to be both good and bad.

I am not a shed hunter, and hardly go out of my way to pick one up if I happen to trip over one, though even I realized this was a rare site.

Too bad they were chalked up a bit. They were not chewed on though.

Cool! Just how I envisioned it.

Mr Smith; thank you so much for an interesting and informative post and wonderful photographs. I congratulate you for finding and following a passion with such clear focus.

I find the deer density you quoted for Alabama mind blowing.

As best I can recall or find quickly to hand, our prairie WMUs (Wildlife Management Unit) run somewhere in the range of .7-.8 combined mule deer and whitetailed deer / km2 (2 to 2.2 / mile2) those are deer only numbers elk and moose would increase those numbers somewhat. The parkland WMUs should have higher deer density due to increased shelter and food probably in the 1.3 - 2.0 / km2 (3.6-5.5 / mi2) again deer numbers only, moose and elk would be additional. The foothills / big timber WMUs should be lower than the prairies.

Of course there is significant error in these numbers as they are from aerial surveys and there is of course some level of massaging necessary to get zone wide statistics. Of certain numbers within a zone vary significantly.

The difference long growing seasons, milder winters and abundance of rainfall can make is pretty clear with your density in Alabama.

Thanks again for your photos, details and comments.

T_Inman: cool picture with a cool rifle.

Don’t eat privet? I don’t know anything about inside a fence,but they hit it pretty hard,at times,outside of one in SE Bama.Those are some outstanding bucks you have there…

Amazing property and looks like a lot of fun

I’m curious as to what kind of natural mortality you experience? If I’m reading the data correctly you’ve got a very high deer density. I’m curious if that makes it worse. But more curious about how your mortality rates translate to an unfenced area. Assume you have no predators in the area? This is very interesting and I’ve got tons of questions but I’m more focused on that old deer that you know survives the season that you never see again

In my grandfathers time local rancher imported a couple of big mule deer bucks into the San Diego county backcountry. Our little 135 lb dressed out bucks grew bigger bodies & huge forks.

He & my uncle killed 4 bucks that dressed out over 200lbs. With nice 4x4 racks. About 75-100 years later the mountain our family place has been on since 1885 still has larger bodies & more mass than neighboring mountains. The biggest issue we have is mountain lion overpopulation since the popular vote years ago that makes them protected. This despite them being way too numerous.

Shortmag, our natural mortality is very low, knock on wood. It has to be lower than in the wild. Deer just aren't dying. Its not uncommon to find dead fawns, but I can count on one hand mature deer that have been found dead in four years. I attribute it to a thick native gene, the lack of stress, and the lack of predators.

The fence is buttoned down tight. We were very particular in the construction of the water crossing as it relates to predator proofing. The standing fence has "predator wire" which is nothing more than a 48" fence laid flat on the ground and wired to the standing fence. Grass grows through it and you dont even know its there, the grass also locks it down tight. A determined coyote will aways find a way in, but there's yet to be any signs of a determined coyote.

We currently are getting one'ish fawn per breeding doe, that survives the first year. Much higher than in the wild.

The most unnatural part of our arrangement is the feeding station and deer's conditioning to it. So far there has been no shy buck that has avoided the feed station. All that is required for a good inventory is holding feed back for several days. That is by design, we could make smaller feeding stations dispersed around the property but as of now we have chosen one central location so that it is easier to keep track of the deer.

What an awesome, unusual & interesting thread !!

Thank you for posting.