Great thread. Great insight. And great pics of great bucks! All of this is so encouraging for my place. We purchased it three years ago. 250 acres in far western Kimble County. Low fence. It had been pretty heavily hunted without much though on conservation from the previous owner. From a property management standpoint, we have not done a deer survey, but we did add two cisterns plumbed from the well. We feed protein spring / summer along with alfalfa here and there in the summer. This summer we added a turkey feeder. We have whitetail, axis and turkey. Hogs are sporadic.
From a hunting standpoint, we saw a few smallish bucks in year 1. And a decent amount of doe. We harvested two whitetail that season. My son shot a cull buck (4.5 year old 4-pt, his first buck) in year 1, and my BIL shot a doe. Year 2, we started seeing better deer and more of them. I shot a decent 30" axis buck that summer, and my wife shot a doe. That was it. This year, my BIL shot an axis doe, and I shot a doe. We may take one more doe next weekend. As a whole, the deer herd seems to be plentiful. The last hunt we were on, we counted 22 whitetail and 7 axis. Honestly, we probably need to shoot more doe. We were seeing some much improved bucks before the season, and started to see some irregular points here and there which was fun. Based on game cams and what we saw from the stand, I would guess that our buck to doe ratio was probably 30/70 this summer. So, not ideal. And, once the season started, we see probably 90% doe. Which leads me to my question...
What's the thought on impact of adjacent properties for a smaller place like ours? We have three neighbors total. Mostly decent sized (600+ acre) ranches, with some hunting pressure from what we can see. The smaller place (200 acres) next to us is pretty heavily hunted. And the guy's a dick. We've talked to him and the two other landowners sparingly. One leases it to hunters, the other doesn't but said he and his family hunt quite a bit. No conversations about conservation, but my guess is, based on the disappearance of bucks (both on cameras and from the stand), that they're probably shooting immature bucks without any regard for longterm herd improvement.
Also, any idea what the target deer population per 100 acres is in that area?
Ultimately, we're seeing wildlife improvements, and I'm optimistic that we'll continue that trend in coming years. I'm going to upgrade our protein feeder situation this spring. We're early in the process. And, we're going to talk to the neighbor this spring about potentially purchasing his property. We bought the 250 acres from him, and he indicated when we bought that he'd be willing to sell. That would mitigate some of the conservation issues if we can pull it off.