Deer Observations

As a general rule I refrain from publishing crappy, blurry and otherwise poorly-composed trail camera photos.  That’s mostly what you get anyway.  The really nice ones are the only ones worth saving.  Today I’m publishing three not-so-good Moultrie trail camera photos because I want to share a few observations and words about the local deer herd and make a post-season point with my report.    

Everyone around here hunts deer.  Everyone has been successful killing multiple deer for trophy purposes and wholesome table fare.  The crew I hunt with killed eleven deer during the 2019 season.  In our own attempt to manage the growing numbers of deer all of them were girl deer.  The lives of all the little bucks were spared.     

Nevertheless, the anecdotal scouting record supported by trail camera documentation is that there remains a large, localized population of deer on the landscape.  To be clear - this is solely anecdotal inasmuch as it is physically impossible to perform a census of each and every deer.  Now that all the crops are off the fields and the deer are now concentrated in the natural cover for winter there is an added measure of validity even for anecdotal observations as the photographic evidence is indisputable.       

Consider this:  There are a great many 1½ to 2½ year-old bucks.  These range from spikes, forks and sixes to big, mature 3½ year-old eight-pointers.  They’re easy to count as their movements cover predictable territories and they can be distinguished from one another by their headgear.  There’s a large number out there so the buck hunting is going to remain robust – even in the unlikely event no more bucks are born next spring. 

Furthermore, does and fawns are abundant.  If you could paint a number on each they would be easier to count.  But when you spot groups of four at a time...

And possibly five at a time.....

You can build a rather convincing case that there are plenty of them on the landscape.  And there’s a high probability most of the females are now pregnant.  Yes, farmland deer can become pregnant before they are a year-old.    

So in closing I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the deer hunters around these parts are going to continue to enjoy better than average success rates.  Unlike the Wisconsin state legislature smart hunters like the ones around here understand that whitetails are not uniformly distributed across the landscape of our great state.    

Raising a toast to supportable deer numbers and healthy sex/age ratios.