What Are The Best South Texas Whitetail Deer Management Tactics
South Texas is a tough place in the US. Everything will either bite you, stick you, or sting you and it’s hot all year round. That being said, there are some huge Whitetail bucks that can be hunted if you find a place that practices quality white-tailed deer management tactics.
The Top South Texas Quality Whitetail Management Tactics
Set Management Goals
The first step in creating a quality deer management system is to set management goals. There are three separate management strategies for whitetail deer management in South Texas.
Traditional Deer Management
The first is traditional deer management. Traditional deer management is prioritizing buck harvest instead of dow harvest. This generally leads to a higher number of overall deer but not the biggest deer.
Quality Deer Management
Quality Deer Management is the goldilocks approach for deer management. This is the promotion of healthy deer populations in a more natural state, before more modern hunters affected their populations. Therefore the goal is to mimic the natural state of sex ratios and leads to an increased state of rutting bucks.
Trophy Deer Management
Lastly Trophy Deer Management prioritizes antler growth and older bucks over everything else. To do this, it requires intense work for all stages of buck development. You must provide great food, habitat, and a lower overall population of deer.
Make Good Harvest Decisions
Once you have your management goals in place, you must then make good harvest decisions to ensure the population sex ratios and age classes are in line with your management strategy. This means keeping track of all the age and sex of deer harvested during the season and then using other tags to reduce deer population to create balance. It is a lot of work but pays off in the long run.
Habitat Improvement
One of the best ways to improve South Texas Deer Management is to pay close attention to the habitat required for growing larger deer. Supplemental feeding of deer is expensive, and unless properly done, it is of little or no benefit to the deer. The most efficient means of insuring adequate nutrition is through a good range management program that provides sufficient cover and a variety of browse plants as well as forbs. The South Texas Brush Country protein content in forage varies from season to season but maintains a higher annual average than most other areas of the State.
Predator Control
The last way to control your deer population is to perform predator control. This means primarily targeting coyotes & bobcats in South Texas. While natural predators are an integral part of an ecosystem, it is sometimes desirable to control their numbers just as it is a deer population.