Big Deer Blog

Mineral sites or “licks” provide hubs for your trail cameras and allow you to gain critical intel on bucks for months. You take pictures and watch them grow all summer, which is fun, and you start to pattern and narrow their movements as bow season approaches later toward fall. On one of the farms I hunt in Virginia, my friend Jack and I have 8 licks scattered across 800 acres of woods. About 1 strategically placed mineral site for every 100 acres is about right. We normally begin lining these sites with minerals sometime in May, and the deer visit them immediately. The bucks on this farm know where the licks are and have been hitting them regularly for years. [...]

We celebrate the beautiful little creatures being born right now! --A fawn weighs 4 to 8 pounds at birth; its weight doubles in 2 weeks. --A fawn has a unique smell that the mother recognizes. --A fawn can walk hours after birth. --A newborn fawn spends its first weeks mostly alone and in hiding; it interacts with the mother doe only twice a day and nurses 2 or 3 times. --A healthy fawn can outrun you when it’s only days old, but it takes 3 to 6 weeks before it can elude most predators. --A fawn has about 300 white spots. --25% of twin fawns have different fathers. --"Multiple paternity" was found in triplet fawns at Auburn University. Three fawns [...]