I see a lot of guys preaching TSI, Prescribed Fires, food plots etc...
But how many of y’all utilize trail camera surveys, weight every deer and pull every jaw bone of deer killed?
A biologist walked our property back in September and bluntly told me that we can start planting food plots this year, but recommend we kill 6-12 deer before doing much worhigh deer numbers.
We keep records, but I don't pull jawbones, we take a top down picture of the lower jawbone. With a little practice you can tell the deer's age from the picture. The basics of teeth aging are, start at tooth 4, if the dentine is narrower than the enamel it's 2.5. If the tooth 4 dentine is wider than the enamel it's 3.5. If the tooth 5 dentine is wider than the enamel it's 4.5. If the tooth 6 dentine is wider than the enamel it's 5.5.
Whitetail deer herd management is a fickle thing. Food, Cover, Population, Age, Predators, Genetics, Neighbors, and Available Tags. All play an important role in a managed whitetail property, and only food and cover and maybe age structure are easily changed. However, there's one more, what might well be one of the most important factors, and a pretty difficult one to change.
Quoting an Outdoor Life 2016 article;
"antlers are made of soil. One needs to only overlay a soils map on a Boone & Crockett record book map to see the connection between soil and antlers. Watch a deer sometime. Anytime he is on his feet (other than the rut) he is pretty much eating. He eats on his way to dinner and on the way back to his secure bedding areas. He eats when he is hanging out in social areas and when he gets up to take a stretch. He chews his cud when he beds and occasionally sleeps. That’s why native vegetation is so important to a deer’s development."
So what am I trying to say? I can't change the most important thing to grow big antlers, the quality of the dirt in my woods, and I'm not going to lie awake at night worrying about it. We need to manage our properties to the degree that we can find time for, and afford, and not sweat what's beyond our control.
I'm to set in my ways to put up with paying good money to a biologist or forester to help manage my land, because I want to have that fun myself. Researching, planning, and managing my land is part of what I enjoy, and furthermore, my experience has been that every biologist/ forestry expert has a hobby horse that's overemphasized at the expense of all the other management things that could be done.
While there's important areas that cannot be changed, a balanced approach will get you the highest rate of return for your input.