16
05, 2014
9
05, 2014
Rate Your 2013-14 Deer Season
The results of QDMA's unscientific poll reveal about what I expected--that in about half the country, the whitetail herds are trending in a negative way. Based on the number of deer and the number of bucks you saw last season, how would you vote? Leave a reply below so we can see if the BIG DEER numbers jibe with QDMA's. I'll comment first. I vote "blue down" because the 2013-14 season was one of my hardest in the last 15 years. I hunted from Canada to Wisconsin to New York to Nebraska, and it was tough everywhere. I even had to push it on two Texas hunts to shoot bucks. It's not supposed to be hard in Texas, but it was for me. In the end I shot some nice bucks, [...]
4
05, 2014
Buck Science: Why Bucks Scrape at Night
Every research study conducted over the past 20 years has shown that whitetail bucks make and check scrapes mostly at night. We have always naturally figured the deer do it for the safety factor—cover of darkness to avoid pressure—but one of the country’s foremost researchers has a different take. The University of Georgia’s Dr. Karl Miller believes it’s more difficult for bucks to see and sort out other bucks (and does) at night than it is in daylight. So in the dark, bucks are drawn to scrapes--the ultimate scent-posts in late October and November--to keep tabs on and interact with other deer in the area. Miller says that trail camera photos and videos taken at scrapes show bucks sniffing each other’s tarsal glands more [...]
22
04, 2014
Earth Day: The Ecological Argument for Deer Hunting
On this Earth Day, I point you to a fantastic and enlightening passage written some years ago by two of America’s top deer biologists, Drs. Larry Marchinton and Karl Miller. In the United States roughly 3 million white-tailed deer are harvested each year… This translates to about 150 million pounds of meat. Add to this the amount of elk, turkey, squirrel, rabbit and other game as well as wild fruits, nuts, and vegetables that is consumed. To produce this amount of beef, chicken, or vegetable crops in addition to that which is already produced would be ecologically devastating. Acres and acres of wild places would have to be destroyed to accommodate this increased agricultural production. More wildlife habitat would have [...]
8
04, 2014
Comeback of Commercial Deer Hunting?
At the turn of the 20th century, there were about 350,000 deer left in America. Unregulated market hunting for hides and venison had decimated the herds, and while it seems unthinkable today, the whitetail was on the way to extirpation. In the early 1900s, the first forward-thinking wildlife managers saw it coming, and so they established state game laws and banned the sale of venison. Their vision saved the whitetail, and is our #1 conservation achievement. We have an estimated 35 to 40 million whitetails in the U.S. today. NOTE HERE: In recent blogs I have spoken to reduced deer numbers and harvests in some regions, especially across the upper Midwest, as a result of EHD, predators, hard winters and doe bag limits that [...]