Texas Deer Hunting - what went wrong?

Butch: I wasn't trying to set you up with my last post for the "anticipated" response from you. I thought it an interesting twist of your opening title as many have commented about essentially what went right. I personally don't like mechanical deer feeders... maybe just restrict them during the season like other states? Feed crops are also planted as well for deer and this is done all over the US now. Even some of the Eastern states (agencies) are planting food crops for deer on their own lands these days (example PA which has state game lands).

To be honest, I don't know if the land owner "owns" the deer in Texas or where I currently live (TN). [We have something in common, both states have UT's that have great football teams!] Anyway, certainly some act like they own the deer at times. If someone here knows the answer to that question, it would be an interesting addition to this discussion on deer management and what is sporting and so forth.
 
Now there is a new thought for me. Allow mechanical feeders off-season but ban them during the hunting season? That sounds like a good idea. Where do they do that? Kudos to them! Feed crops don't train deer to show up at a certain time - the hunter is still faced with having to know enough about the deer to have a guess as to when they will show up, which is sporting in my mind. The hunter has to study the deer, scout them out, and know their habits and habitat - things that aren't necessary with a mechanical feeder.
 
In most of the east you can only take a buck. If they did away with feeders maybe the state could let the people in the east take a doe as well? Kinda sounds like a good trade off.
 
I grew up in PA. Lived in Texas (10+ yrs) and currently reside in Tennessee. Yeah, I'm a damn Yankee. Since Impact brought it up, I thought I would add a few details... PA does not allow any baiting of deer during deer season including salt licks. With archery coming in at the end of September, that is a long stretch of time when baiting is not allowed. It is very common to feed deer over the winter there. Used to be in PA, they had a Buck season (opening monday after turkey day with rifles) and there was a set couple of days when a single doe could be taken. Now, they have changed all that to allowing does (more than one by wildlife management area) to be taken during the regular gun season in order that the weather does not have an undue influence over the number of does that are taken for the year. You could always take a doe in archery season there. The state also limits the minimum size (number of points) to at least a 6pt in some areas of PA. This is part of their relatively new controversial herd management policy. Go to HuntingPA.com for long long discussions on the topic.

In Tennessee, they do not allow baiting of deer during the season. The state is divided in wildlife management areas and in the high deer population areas, you may take a doe during "buck" season. In fact, it is possible to take as many as 200+ does if you work it right (so I have read). Who would want all the meat?

I see nothing wrong with limiting the feeding time to before deer season only. Some would argue that planting corn, maze, or soybeans strictly for deer is the same thing. But it isn't really.
 
Butch50, according to the wildlife biologists, a whitetail deer rarely ventures much over a half-mile to a mile from where he was born, absent being chased by dogs or being affected by drouth.

A one mile radius gives you Pi square miles of area, or about 1,900 acres. That ain't a big pasture, in the high-fence high-dollar deer hunting world.

The argument about public/private in Texas has gone on since back when I first came back home to Austin in 1963. The state's attitude is that it owns the deer and only set up the rules and regulations about the HowTo of the whole deal; seasons, bag limits, etc.

Whether or not a rancher lets you on his land is his business. What sort of fence he erects is his business--and only his business.

I note that in the session before last of the Legislature, there was some discussion of how big (or how small) is a "pen". How few acres can you enclose before you're creating a truly captive herd of deer? Envision hands being thrown into the air, because no real agreement is possible. So far, about the only answer is biological: Anything too small to provide habitat for some number of deer, without supplemental feeding. From what I have read, I'm sorta guessing that if you're talking about pastures over a thousand or so acres and trying to call that a "pen", you're gonna find a lot of serious MEGO in the audience.

Howsomever: Say that rancher I talked about earlier has done all that improvement to the land but doesn't do a high fence. You won't get to shoot any deer on his place, anyway, unless you pay his trespass fee. Further, those deer aren't gonna leave his place to go to poorer pasture on a neighboring unimproved ranch; Bambi ain't stupid.

Call Bambi self-penned. :D

Art
 
Art:

I am not a biologist so what I say here has to be taken with a dose of salts.. :) What I know about deer is that they will change their range if the hunting pressure is intense enough and there is a place to get to that has less pressure. They will flow to the area of safety quite naturally. They will also move for food, but here in Texas it seems that food is not often a problem for them. A large pen jammed full up of hunters doesn't leave the deer any place to move to.

Defining a pen would be a definite tough one. Good luck to the politicians on that endeavor. For me the "idea" of being inside a tall fence that is there for one purpose - to keep the managed deer in and the wild deer out - doesn't sound like hunting and while I know that the larger a ranch is the larger the pen is, I also know that the larger the pen is the more hunters there will be crammed inside of it.

What does hunting look like 100 years in the future? No public land, all managed deer herds on fenced in hunting reserves, and you pay more for shooting deer out of the herds that have better genetics. Genes that have been manipulated to create "super deer". Perhaps there be a computerized system that evaluates the primary genetic code of the different deer herds and you have to bid against other "hunters" based on the value of the genetic code?

Will the average Texas buck that is shot 100 years from now weigh 200 pounds and have a 12 point rack and cost the hunter $10,000? Will the super deer carry imbedded micro-chips to guard against theft and to track them with?

Will that be called hunting? Sounds ridiculous I know, but just look at what changes that have come about in the past 50 years here. What was hunting like in Texas 50 years ago?

If I was still around 100 years from now I would probably be hunting in the small unfenced areas between the high fence ranches for those rare and tiny little 100 pound 6 point bucks that were the last of the direct descendants of the original wild Texas deer.
 
but here in Texas it seems that food is not often a problem for them.
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It was in the drought that just ended for us (for some, it still hasn,t) two years ago. Along a 21 mile stretch of road near here there were 26 deer carcasses, each representing a deer eating the only grass it could find (in the bar ditch)and meeting up with a car along the way (one of them being mine).
 
I note sorta casually that the only money for wildlife comes from license fees and the taxes on guns'n'such. TP&WD has the game wardens, of course. It has biological research going on in many locations around the state in the various wildlife reserves such as Black Gap and Elephant Mountain and others. It collates information collected by interested landowners. For deer, this information is then disseminated via seminars held regularly around the state. The overall purpose is that there be a healthy deer herd throughout all suitable habitat, statewide.

I don't know how much of the habitat is behind a high fence. I'd bet from my travels around the state that it's miniscule and not worth worrying about.

Given how many areas in central Texas are way overpopulated, I don't want to see any legislation or rule that makes it more difficult for Joe Dumbhunt to "catch a deer".

IMO, the overall system has worked fairly well for a heckuva long time. It's nowhere near broke.

I've watched TP&WD fairly closely for some 30 years. They're not the fastest moving bunch in the world about changes in approaches to game management, but overall they do a pretty good job. I appreciate their efforts to rely more on science and less on politics as they set seasons and bag limits.

One thing for sure, in my own opinion: I'd rather see a high-fenced ranch make a ton of money off feeder-hunters than to see it broken up into "ranchettes" and have a bunch of rooftops where once was a large area of legally-hunted wildlife. The big problem for all wildlife is that the landowner can make a lot more money off of condos than cows.

Art
 
The big problem for all wildlife is that the landowner can make a lot more money off of condos than cows.
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That is the scary truth! So far, my place is far enough from the urban sprawl, that there has not been any "development" too near. I just hope it stays that way.
 
20cows, I grew up at what's now 9000 Manchaca Road in Austin. In WW II the area was 5 miles out from the city limits on a narrow county road. All small ranches and farms, mostly in the low hundreds of acres.

I moved back there in 1967, and ran some cows on the "old family place" as well as working in town--at that time a 13-minute commute.

The last deer I killed there was in 1973. We were "attacked" by Castlewood Forest subdivision, with cars killing more deer than I.

School taxes of $34/acre/year sez to me, "Sell!" and not being stupid, in 1979 I did. (My grandfather had paid $24/acre in 1939 to buy the place. A bit of irony, there.)

Nowadays, the intersection of Manchaca Road and Slaughter Lane is totally surrounded by all manner of houses and shopping centers...

I voted with my feet and moved to Terlingua.

:), Art
 
Art,

Do you think you moved far enough out to avoid the coming urban sprall from Lajitas? :D

Our "old family place" has been ours since 1889. I really want it to stay that way.

20c
 
Well, if you hunt up how long ago the Pridgens started farming/ranching around Thomaston (south of Cuero), 1899 is sorta new. :) I guess I'm starting my own "old family place". What the heck, I'm old, anyhow.

La-hideous sorta keeps to itself, over there. All those millionaires ain't interested in us Plebes. Hard to believe anybody is dumb enough to stick $75 million into a hole-in-the-wall right on the Rio. http://www.lajitas.com is the URL if you want to see stupidity in action...

Most of the "newbies" stay fairly close to the pavement and the electricity, so I still have my back-country to rat around in for my huntin'. Or I can get lazy and stake out my trash pit. :)

Art
 
1889 was when this place was acquired (great grandpa had just arrived from Alabama). Other multiple-greats were here in 1835. I think you and I are both proud of deep Texas roots.

Your assessment of Lajitas matches my observations. We spend a lot of time between Marfa and Alpine and venture into your neighborhood periodically.

20c
 
I hunt over feeders in the Texas hill country but I have also shot deer and elk in Colorado. I really don't see alot of difference. Whether in a blind or sitting on a ridge, I was shooting an animal that didn't know I was there and they end up the same way in Colorado or Texas... in the freezer, on the wall, ect....
 
Jim - the difference is in the chase. If you are happy shooting deer that have been trained to come to you, then so be it. Lots of folks are happy doing that.

I can't see it myself though. Might as well go shoot goats in a pen.

Just my humble, if irritating, opinion.
 
Well, Butch, I reckon a lot of us like cross-country hunting, or playing sneaky-snake in suitable country. To me, though, the deal is the proverbial "different strokes for different folks", and what others do never has seemed to me to be any of my business.

As far as type of fencing, or private/public property, or who owns the wildlife, I just don't see it as being important. So far, the Texas system has worked to let lots of people kill lots of deer.

Really, I see two problems: For a lot of western Texas, the mule deer herd is too water-limited while there seems to be adequate food in their habitat. A lactating doe generally remains within a mile of a water source, which limits her territory. The other problem is in CenTex, where my observations have been that there are just too many deer for the habitat, mostly due to under-hunting by whatever means. As near as I can tell, it's purely a private-sector and sociological solution--if anything ever does happen...

FWIW, Art
 
I do realize that there are many different ways to hunt, and most of them are legitimate. But there are ways to hunt that are legitimate that aren't truly sporting, which is all that I am trying to say. If you hunt over a mechanical feeder and shoot deer that have been conditioned to show up at that spot at a specific time it just doesn't fall in the category of hunting as I see it. But if you do shoot deer that way and feel good about it, then more power to you I guess. It is definitely legal and even customary here in Texas.

Hypothetically speaking: I guess if spotlighting deer at night was legal and customary I would get much the same arguments from the people who had grown used to doing that too.

I have no knowledge of mule deer so won't speak to that at all - never hunted them but would like to some day. They look to be a challenge.

I know what you mean about the abundance of deer in the hill country, I have seen herds of them down there. I saw deer well inside the city limits of Kerrville during daylight hours eating out of flowerbeds. But doesn't it seem reasonable that if the deer were over-populated in those counties, that TPWD would open up the bag limit and expand the season to reduce the herds? Have they ever done that?
 
Butch, don't know if you've read about the infestation of deer at Lakeway, but it's a good object lesson about the politics of Bambi. TP&WD tries to liberalize the limits and other regs in some areas, but the big problem in places like Kerrville is access to any hunting grounds at all. Bambi-lovers won't allow hunting: "Shoot them? No! I like to *watch* MY deer!"

A lot of this over-population stems from the chopping up of the land into ranchettes. Elk and mule deer aren't nearly as sociable as the white tail when it comes to living around people.

The Legislature authorized County Commissioners to outlaw firing any gun on tracts of ten acres or less. Bandera County has done this, along with a few others. With no predators besides people, you can imagine what this sort of thing does to the deer herd.

Art
 
I moved back to Austin in 1963 after booming around the world for a dozen years or so. 1963 was one of the drier years on record, other than 1956. The winter was rather cold, comparatively, as well as dry.

TP&WD estimated that in Llano, Mason and Brady Counties, the hunter deer kill for the '63 season was some 15,000 deer. The winter kill was some 17,000.

Art
 
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