Good, Better, Best

By Charles J. Alsheimer

Do you know what a good, better and best deer management program is all about? Arguably, because of tradition, lack of knowledge and greed, getting one’s arms around just what is good, better and best deer management can be difficult. However, I believe there are clear differences. In my near 50 years in the deer woods I’ve seen about every form of deer management known to man. The difference between good and best is a world apart.

Good

What constitutes good deer management is in the eyes of the beholder. In its most basic form it can be summarized as the deer management philosophy nurtured in the 1900s. It is often referred to as traditional deer management and used to this day by more than 95 percent of states as their deer management program. For the most part, Traditional Deer Management places varying controls on the doe harvest while allowing any legally antlered buck to be harvested.

Though the majority of America ’s deer herds are managed this way, slight changes are being seen each year. Certainly, hunters are becoming more and more educated as to what a whitetail’s nutritional needs are through publications like Whitetail News. So, unlike 20 years ago, when virtually no one was planting food plots, many of today’s hunters have become food plot practitioners. This is good but it takes much more to progress to the next level.

In defense of TDM, it was a great way for whitetail populations to be restored after the herd’s crash in the late 1800s. TDM worked, and in most parts of the United States , the deer populations were totally restored by the 1980s.

Because Traditional Deer Management is pretty much the only “official” deer management program being practiced in America , most hunters can categorize it as good. One of the things that deer hunters want is to see a lot of deer when they take to the woods and TDM has certainly delivered on this point. In some parts of the Northeast, it’s not uncommon for a hunter to see more than 40 deer a day. Unfortunately very few of them are antlered bucks, and when one is sighted it is often a spindly-racked yearling.           

While TDM worked the first 100 years it was practiced, it has started to run into problems during the last 20 years. TDM’s primary demise has been that hunters demand that there be more deer in the woods. By exerting pressure on political officials, they’ve gotten their wishes, causing whitetail populations to explode. In the process, natural habitat, as well as agricultural resources, has taken a huge hit. With too many mouths to feed, the whitetail’s food resources have been overwhelmed.

Too often, landowners and deer managers have found themselves behind the power curve when it came to deer management. Today, some areas of the United States find deer populations exceeding 100 deer per square mile. To put this in perspective, most habitats can only tolerate 25-40 deer per square mile.

To “right the ship” various plans and programs have been attempted by state organizations and landowners to control deer populations, while at the same time trying to keep deer hunters happy. Some have worked, while others have encountered severe political pressure.

The politics of managing whitetails has kept many good deer managers from striving for a better deer herd for fear of losing their jobs or upsetting the masses of hunters. The view “more is better,” is keeping most state deer management programs from taking their deer programs to the next level. Sadly, many good programs have not been able to become better.

Better

Wherever a good program has been made better, the underlying reason has been that people took a look at what they had, saw what could be done, then set out to make it better.

A classic example can be seen in Imperial Whitetail’s founder, Ray Scott. By the end of the 1970s more and more people were beginning to envision better deer herds. Scott embraced the quality deer management philosophy and began examining how he managed his Alabama property. He recognized the relationship between antler growth and factors like age, nutrition and herd dynamics. He was the first to encourage using food plots as a nutritional boost and allowing bucks to “grow up.”

Today, antler restrictions bring forth all kinds of reactions from deer hunters. As can be seen from the state mandated antler restrictions in Mississippi , Arkansas and Pennsylvania , the topic is real fuel for the “deer management fire.” Some love it and some hate the thought of any state imposing an antler restriction rule on hunters. In spite of the controversy one thing is clear, it has worked to better balance the deer herd sex ratio and buck age structure, wherever it has been tried (time will tell if antler restrictions actually promote trophy potential). The trick is selling the concept to hunters.

The primary argument for antler restrictions is that they allow a certain number of yearling bucks to survive to the next age class. It not only makes a herd better but it is also good biology. A host of benefits become evident when older bucks comprise a larger portion of the whitetail population. Unfortunately, in the past, states never allowed antler restrictions to be implemented so their programs have remained status quo.

Few have studied the antler restriction issue more than Pennsylvania ’s Dr. Gary Alt. His conclusions led to a statewide antler point restriction in 2002.

“What we are trying to do is have a more natural antlered-buck-to-adult-doe-ratio and a more natural breeding ecology. We feel that reducing the number of adult does and increasing the antlered buck population is in the best interest of the deer resource,” he explains.

“Scientists told us that to fix our Pennsylvania problem we needed to save half of our yearling bucks. This is why we collected information on 73,000 bucks in the four years prior to antler restrictions. We learned that in order to save half of the yearling bucks, the majority of counties in Pennsylvania needed to restrict the harvest of bucks with fewer than three points on a side. Had we not done the research on our yearlings, we wouldn’t have known this.”

“Prior to antler restrictions, only about 50,000 Pennsylvania bucks survived the state’s annual deer season, and just one in one hundred survived to age four. With antler restrictions, we’ve been able to save 75,000 to 100,000 bucks the first year.

“Launching 75,000 to 100,000 bucks into the next age class tripled the number of bucks age two or older,” notes Alt. “This tripled the number of bucks with eight or more points in just one year, so a by-product of antler restrictions is that hunters have been able to see more and bigger bucks. To offset the killing of less bucks we knew we needed to harvest more does by the same number and we’ve tried hard to accomplish this.”

Have antler restrictions made things better? As more states consider antler restrictions, it’s appropriate to evaluate whether such limits are an effective management tool. The first state-mandated antler restrictions were implemented in Dooly County , Georgia , in 1993. State deer coordinator Scott McDonald managed the groundbreaking program.

“Antler restrictions were instituted in Dooly County at the request of hunters and landowners. Initially, we planned to keep antler restrictions in place for three years, and then review the program to see if it should continue,” explained McDonald. “The restrictions put in place required that a buck have at least a 15-inch outside spread to be legal. We felt that this would protect all the yearling bucks and some of the 2 1/2 year olds. When the program was evaluated after the third year, it had an 80 percent approval rating, so the restrictions remained in place. Dooly County ’s success has encouraged other areas to adopt similar programs.”

Mississippi initiated a statewide minimum in 1995 by requiring that bucks have at least four total points before they could be harvested. Larry Castle, the leader of Mississippi ’s deer program, recalls how it began.

“We got into antler restrictions in a round-about way. In the early 1990s, we conducted an extensive survey of hunters to see if we could increase our antlerless deer harvest. We knew we were harvesting too many yearling bucks and continued to mention this fact over and over in our writings and seminars. It wasn’t long after this that the state legislature passed antler restrictions as a way to cut down on the number of yearling bucks being harvested.

“After these many years of the four-point minimum, I can say that our hunters love it. By the third year of the program hunters were seeing more big deer than they had ever seen before. The limitations on the buck harvest have also enabled us to kill more antlerless deer, which was one of our goals when the program began. So, overall the restrictions have been good for us,” Castle states.

Bettering the antlered-buck-to-adult-doe-ratios: With each passing year, states that have implemented antler restrictions have seen the benefit of having a better antlered-buck-to-adult-doe-ratio. Many studies conducted in Texas reveal the benefits of restricting the buck harvest and liberalizing the doe harvest. When the adult-doe-to antlered-buck ratio drops to two to one or three to one, the majority of does are bred on time, enabling fawns to be born during the optimal time frame. Balanced sex ratios also place less stress on the buck population.

Reducing the number of does and increasing the number of bucks in the rutting mix intensifies all aspects of the rut. Rubbing, scraping, chasing and breeding behavior is maximized in fine-tuned herds where mature bucks are present. When such conditions exist, the hunter is the big winner.

It should be noted that some initial studies show that antler restrictions may actually decrease the genetic potential of the herd. But these studies are still young and are not finalized. In the meantime, antler restrictions continue to be looked upon in a positive light by most biologists.  

Best

As good as antler restrictions are, they are not the end all. They are only a step in the process of getting from better to best. More is needed to raise deer management to the highest level possible. The mindset required for the best deer management program is what I like to call top-end quality deer management. In nearly every case, I’ve found that a higher level of QDM is embraced and practiced by hunters and landowners who understand the importance of incorporating the most up-to-date, cutting edge quality deer management concepts available. There are three primary components to this. 

Increased antler restrictions: The majority of QDM practitioners practice some form of antler restrictions. In most cases, either point or spread restrictions are used, but seldom will you find both in place. In order to take a quality deer management to the next level, a minimum spread and point limit should be present. These kinds of restrictions often vary with property size and region of the country.

By way of example, for a buck to be legal on our QDM property it must have a minimum of 8 points and an inside spread of 16 inches. In the majority of cases this allows the yearling and 2 1/2 year old bucks to keep from being harvested. Here in the Northeast small acreages are the norm and hunting pressure is very intense, so our goal is to get bucks to age three. By getting bucks to 3 ½, we are able to hunt mature bucks in the 125-140 B&C range. In other parts of the country, like Texas and parts of the Midwest , goals are often different because acreages are larger.

Increased doe harvest: Of all factors involved in an intense quality deer management program this is the most difficult to accomplish. The reason for this is that deer wander and unless a landowner has more than 1,000 acres, it is difficult to get a handle on a property’s deer population. One can come close to knowing his property’s deer population by incorporating visual and habitat surveys but in most cases the estimate will be lower than reality.

The proper number of deer per square mile of deer habitat will vary by region. In our farm rich area of New York State , biologists would like to see no more than 35-40 deer per square mile. Unfortunately these numbers haven’t been seen for more than two decades.

In our QDM program we typically harvest between 8 and 12 does per season on our 200 acres. This is a bit more than the normal recommended harvest of 45 does per 1,000 acres, but we harvest a few more than some might think we need to because some of our surrounding neighbors do not believe in killing does.

When taking a QDM program to the next level the goal should always be to reduce the number of mouths to feed so that quality natural habitat is greater than the deer’s demand for it. 

Ultimate Feed: For starters, understand that every deer on a property needs between 1 1/2 and 2 tons of food per year to thrive. The percentage that needs to come from natural browse or food plots will depend on the mix of forest and farmland. However, if a property does not have at least 5-10 percent of its acreage planted in nutrition rich forages it will be tough to take a property’s deer herd to the next level. This is because the natural habitat, though needed and essential, cannot provide bucks and does with the high level of nutrition required for optimum lactation and antler growth.

On a good day during the antler-growing season, most natural habitat can only supply 4-10 percent levels. For optimum antler growth, bucks need foods offering over 16 percent protein. For this reason, forages like Imperial Whitetail Clover, Alfa-Rack, Extreme and PowerPlant (with protein levels exceeding 25 percent) are just the ticket.

Of course, close attention must also be paid to soil maintenance. It is critical that a food plot’s pH level be as close to 7.0 (neutral) as possible. This may not be possible in sandy or rocky soils but with adequate liming 6.3 or better is possible. I’ve seen some very good Imperial Whitetail clover grown on soils in the 6.3-plus range.

So there you have it – good, better and best. Each level of deer management is present in America . For decades good deer management was good enough for hunters. This is no longer the case.

In the late 1980’s, a movement began in this country toward having a better whitetail environment than past generations had. Now, with more and better resources available hunters and landowners are demanding the best. The future looks bright and the end result can only mean good things for both the hunter and the whitetail deer.

Editors note:  The Whitetail Institute of North America is a big proponent of the “Best” deer management with the exception of new hunters and especially kids. Let kids enjoy success and they will grow into active hunters and proponents of the “Best” deer management.