Category: Whitetail

The primary purpose of the Texas Deer Association (TDA) is to increase quality deer hunting opportunities for all Texas hunters. To achieve that goal, the TDA advocates wise wildlife management practices, promotes research and technology regarding improvements to deer herds through the practice of controlled breeding and genetic improvements and recognizes that hunting and wildlife management are lifelong enterprises.

The TDA also seeks to be a repository and resource of accurate, high-quality information and to improve the image and awareness of deer management and harvest through public education. The TDA shares all of its research findings, management techniques and harvest strategies with its membership.

The Texas Deer Association is the only non-profit organization in Texas solely dedicated to improving the quality of Texas deer herds. Founded in 1999, TDA promotes and cares for the welfare and health of our deer herds and seeks to improve deer quality and the hunting experience in Texas.

As the unified voice of deer enthusiasts throughout the state, TDA is also a tireless champion for wise management practices on high- and low-fenced private
properties.

From hunters looking for bigger racks to landowners working to provide an improved habitat, everyone benefits from healthier deer and better harvests. Everyone benefits with TDA.

Many hunters and landowners may not realize that the TDA organization is still young. Their official office only opened in 2001, and just since 2004 has TDA operated with more than 3 employees. Relatively speaking, they are doing a great job of representing property owners and white-tailed deer, from commercial deer breeding operations to free-ranging deer herds.

As State Senator Leticia Van de Putte told said of TDA: “This is an exciting industry. You have a story to tell. You are on the cutting edge. You are making a positive difference in our state. Get out there and tell your story.” If you’re interested in whitetail, herd management and deer hunting then give the Texas Deer Association a look.

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The weather in Texas can be hit or miss on any given year, but it seems this year has really been a strike-out in the rainfall category, especially in South Texas. But then again, that region of the state is rarely known for abundant precipitation. It is, however, known for fantastic white-tailed deer hunting. While the area boast extremely high coyote populations, the heavy brush habitat provides excellent whitetail cover and high quality deer foods in the form or browse.

Many of the counties in South Texas can only expect 21-25 inches of rainfall on an average year, so the habitat and the deer in the area will survive this drought, but that still does not make it great for deer hunting this fall. The best way to mitigate for inevitable dry conditions any South Texas property will face is to focus on the wildlife management goals and practices for your property on an annual basis.

First, always think habitat. Good habitat is the corner stone of healthy deer, turkey, and quail populations. Always maintain a minimum amount of ground cover. If possible, one to two feet of herbaceous cover through all seasons is desirable. This residual grass is for fawning cover and quail production. Leaving herbaceous cover for the next rainfall event provides healthy plants that offer the necessary food and cover for many wildlife species. A landowner can not expect to have good quail and whitetail deer hunting if there is no food, recruitment or cover.

The ability to leave standing cover for habitat means having a plan to reduce livestock numbers in the pasture and/or move livestock to irrigated crop land or improved pastures. During extended droughts, you may be faced with removing livestock all together. Along with cattle, keeping whitetail deer and hog populations within the habitat’s carrying capacity will help reduce the potential for damage. By reducing the number of consumers on the land, you can maintain the minimum desired grass cover.

Since surface water is important for most wildlife species, maintain as many effective wildlife and livestock water locations as possible, especially in the hot, dry months. A desirable density would be one wildlife watering location every 400 acres. Although this may not be always be possible, the even distribution of water will spread wildlife evenly across the landscape, allowing for better use of the available habitat.

A popular option many ranches use to maintain a consistent deer population from year to to year is through the use supplemental feed. Though good vegetation through habitat management is best, extreme weather years such as this one mean that supplement feeding will be really important for buck antler growth and fawn production and recruitment. Keep in mind, however, that the ability to feed wildlife (and livestock) may reduce the impacts on habitat, but prolonged supplementing will cost both you and the habitat found on your property.

As far as deer hunting in South Texas this fall, I think we have all seen better years. That being said, there will be some good bucks out there as usual, especially on properties that limit buck harvest, have a good cull buck strategy and maintain a healthy buck age structure. Ranches with good habitat and decent surface water that are feeding protein pellets to deer should barely skip a beat. It’s been a horrible year for quail, but the dove hunting should be good around tanks come September. Send me your reports and or photos!

White-tailed deer in Texas have become a big business. Simply stated, big whitetail bucks can be turned into big bucks in the pockets of those that sell them. As with anything that involves money, someone was bound to get caught abusing the system. After a lengthy four year investigation a 77-year-old Cherokee County, Texas licensed deer breeder has pleaded guilty to smuggling deer in the Eastern District of Texas and then lying about it to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent, announced U.S. Attorney John M. Bales.

Whitetail breeder Billy Powell pleaded guilty on June 14, 2011, to the felony offense of smuggling at least 37 whitetail deer, over a 3 year time span, from Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio into Texas in violation of state and federal laws. Powell also admitted that he made a false statement and submitted a false document to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife special agent who was looking into the matter. Powell has agreed to pay a $1 million fine, to be deposited into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Lacy Act Reward Fund, as well as $500,000.00 in restitution to Texas Parks and Wildlife, on his sentencing date.

Powell’s agreement with the government calls for Powell to serve 3 years probation with six months of home confinement which will be monitored with an electric anklet. During the term of probation, Powell will be prohibited from participating in any manner in commercial deer breeding. Additionally, Powell must forfeit any illegally imported deer, any progeny of those deer, and any biological material derived from said deer, which would include any semen, antlers, mounts, and cloned deer. Powell has already forfeited over 1,300 straws of frozen semen valued at approximately $961,500.00 to U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

According to information presented in court, on at least four separate occasions, spanning from October 2006 through June 2008, Powell knowingly imported at least 37 live whitetail deer, many of whom came from captive deer farms in Ligonier, Indiana, into the state of Texas and to his “5-P Farms”, high fenced deer breeding facility in Cherokee County Texas. These deer included bucks known as “Fat Boy” aka “Barry”, “Silver Storm” aka “Hit Man”, “Y 009″, “Eagle Storm” aka “BJ”, “Thunderstruck”, “High Five”, and “Primer” aka “Spikes”.

At all times Powell knew that Texas law prohibited any person from possessing a deer acquired from an out-of-state source. In spite of this, Powell agreed to participate in the above-described transactions in which whitetail deer would be secretly transported from Illinois, Indiana, and/or Pennsylvania, to Texas in order to evade Texas laws and regulations.

Powell acknowledged that the fair market value of all of the illegally imported, whitetail deer exceeded approximately $800,000.00, that the value of the illegally accumulated white-tailed deer semen exceeded approximately $961,000.00, and that the value of the progeny exceeded approximately $290,000.00.

Powell further admitted that he lied to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Special Agent during a voluntary statement at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tyler, Texas. Powell told the agent that he had illegally imported approximately 35 white-tailed deer into the state of Texas when in fact he knew that he had illegally imported no less than 41 white-tailed deer, including 6 white-tail deer fawns.

Findings of the investigation also prompted the Wildlife Division of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to conduct an epidemiological investigation in consultation with veterinarians and wildlife disease experts from Texas Animal Health Commission, Texas Department of State Health Services, and Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and accredited veterinarians actively involved in the deer breeding industry. This process was carried out in three separate phases.

Ultimately all 334 deer contained in Powell’s deer breeding facility were euthanized to facilitate testing for chronic wasting disease (CWD) and bovine tuberculosis (TB). This process was necessary in order to provide an acceptable level of assurance that neither disease was prevalent in Powell’s deer breeding facility nor in any deer breeding facility that had received deer from Powell’s facility since October 2004.

Introduction of these diseases into Texas could have a detrimental impact on the longtime cultural tradition of deer hunting, which generates an estimated $1.2 billion in retail sales and has a total economic output of more than $2 billion in Texas each year. Disease monitoring is also necessary to protect legal deer breeding activity from risk of disease exposure. Furthermore, bovine tuberculosis could have a significant impact on the Texas livestock industry.

Since no live-animal test for CWD exists, TPWD consulted with trained experts to ensure the most humane euthanasia method and treatment of the animals was used. Many deer breeders in Texas do not agree with killing deer for testing, but there is no other way. Texas Parks and Wildlife officials are presently awaiting the test results for the tissue samples submitted to the Texas Veterinarian Medical Diagnostic Laboratory located in College Station, Texas.

This whitetail deer smuggling-transport case was investigated by the Special Operations Unit of the Texas Parks and Wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It’s a shame that these deer had to be put-down, but it’s all because one guy broke the law. These laws are in place to protect people, livestock and the natural resources that are important to all hunters, as well as non-hunters. CWD and TB are no joke, but as the numbers in this case suggest, deer are worth big money. Hopefully the countless others that are bound to be out there smuggling, doing the exact same thing as this guy, will get the message.

The white-tailed deer hunting season may be months away, but that does not stop hunters and landowners from pondering deer management issues. One of the most talked about management practices involves the culling or selective removal of bucks from the herd. There are two reasons to cull bucks. Most hunters cull because they believe that removing inferior bucks allows the more desirable, larger-antlered bucks to breed.

This should allow the better bucks to pass on their genes, and the overall genetic composition of the herd to improve. This makes sense to most hunters, but the facts are not clear. In fact, there has been much discussion, even outright arguments, around the removal of alleged cull bucks, particularly spike bucks. Some well-known whitetail deer researchers even suggest that genetic improvement through culling will not happen in most free-ranging situations.

But genetic improvement aside, the other reason to cull is to simply harvest bucks to manage for the carrying capacity of a property. To some extent, the planned harvest of any buck is considered culling, but the term cull buck still usually refers to bucks with less than desired antler characteristics. If hunters look at culling as a way to keep the deer herd in check with food resources, then from that perspective culling really is a good management practice. But the argument over culling continues…

Source: “What has fueled the debate to some extent is that the research hasn’t always found the same thing. In fact, it has actually caused the rise of two different schools of thought on culling. The Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute has been involved with two extensive culling research projects. One completed just a few years back was an eight-year study done on the King Ranch. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) designed the project, which was overseen by Mickey Hellickson, then chief wildlife biologist for King Ranch. The study area was low-fence, and researchers had to take into account young buck dispersal and the movement of bucks in and out of their normal home range during the rut.

One of the criticisms of the study was that culling wasn’t intensive enough to make a change. Dr. Randy DeYoung, of the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Institute, disagrees. He says that while certain parameters could not be controlled under low fence, the culling was extensive and intensive. He attributes the lack of progress to the fact that with culling alone, genetic change is extremely hard to accomplish.

Nonetheless, the results of the King Ranch study led to another intensive culling study. This one, which is now five years in the making and has another five to go, is being conducted on the Comanche Ranch near Carrizo Springs. This study was designed by ranch owner Dan Friedkin and ranch biologist Donnie Draeger. There are three study areas, two high-fenced and one fenced on three sides. Together the study area encompasses more than 25,000 acres.

TPWD biologists designed the most intensive of the two culling treatments; the third area is a control with no culling. On the King Ranch study the culling was done the old-fashioned way, by gun. However, on the Comanche study, culling is done via helicopter capture. All bucks captured are measured for a host of different parameters. Those that don’t meet the culling criteria, which by most standards would be considered extremely strict, are euthanized; those that do are tagged and released.”

By any account, it would seem that culling via helicopter would have to be intense enough to see noticeable change, right? Well, despite their efforts, after five years researchers have yet to show any real genetic improvement in whitetail bucks in the treatment areas. They plan on continuing the project into the future, but regardless of what they find, many hunters and managers may find that five years of intensive culling is proof enough that culling bucks as a deer management technique does not work. Deer season is still several months away, so just a little something to think about as you’re filling feeders this summer.

There is nothing that hunters look forward to more than the opening day of the white-tailed deer hunting season in Texas. It’s a day that many hunters start looking forward to as soon as the previous season ends. We are lucky enough to live in a state that literally has a Texas-sized deer population, estimated at between 3.7 million and 4.2 million animals by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department White-tailed Deer Program leader, biologist Alan Cain.

Cain recently stated that the huge deer population is sure to have an impact on the habitat conditions this fall. The drought has already put pressure on deer habitat, but with many areas of the state near, at or over the deer carrying capacity of the vegetation, deer numbers will only add to the problem they and other wildlife species are facing.

“If the dry conditions continue through the rest of the summer we will see poor fawn recruitment this fall, whitetail will probably readily come to deer feeders as a result of less than desirable range conditions and hunters should have pretty good harvest rates,” he said. The deer hunting should be good this year, but poor fawn production could hurt hunters down the road. “Landowners and managers need to encourage hunters to meet their harvest goals for the ranch, regardless of drought or wet conditions.”

Cain pointed to a key theory to deer management, one directly relates to overall deer population numbers. The management of deer is based off of controlling age, genetics and food availability. Habitat should provide most of the food that deer eat, and deer must be kept at appropriate numbers for the vegetation. Landowners should never count on food plots or protein pellets, but only used as supplements. Proper deer density is a concept that has especially has come into focus this year.

“Keep your deer density at a level that you would during tough times and even during wet years,” he said. “Therefore, no matter what the conditions are, plenty of native vegetation will remain to support the whitetail population. It goes without saying that with too many deer on the range, especially during poor habitat conditions, animal performance suffers and buck antler quality decreases as well as reproductive success. If the dry conditions continue this year, I would encourage hunters to try to fill their tags and for those hunting on managed properties try to meet their harvest recommendations this deer hunting season.”