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Help Needed: Land Usage Data

RedCloud

Super Moderator
Super Mod
17,381
193
North Central Ohio
WHat time of year was that photo taken??? IF I remember correctly it was winter and there was a fair amount of snow on the ground. One thing we didnt have this year was good cold weather with a lot of snow. THe deer didnt "yard" up like they normally do this time of year.. So your odds of seeing 20+ deer in an area that is typically inhabited by 5-10 deer isnt likely.... CHances are good these deer stayed in their normal home range because food wasnt scarce this year and they didnt need to herd up and find a single food source. THe likely hood of those 20 deer and all their offspring being killed in one year to the point of only having 5 deer on your property is highly unlikely....IF they did get killed, you have bigger problems than a wildlife bilologist is gonig to be able to fix.

The picture was February of last year and amazingly enough the largest group thus far was also in February almost a year apart from one another. Only a week difference. According to Rex it doesn't matter if they are yarded up or not since does will stay in a very small home range right ? 900 acres isn't a small plot of ground either. A biologist might not be able to help but only because he doesn't listen to the people that beat feet and are in these woods and fields everyday and doesn't want to change things so the deer can rebound from whatever is going on out there. If you ever want to come and walk the 7+ miles of fence with me sometime your more then welcome to do so. Come sit on any of my properties to hunt and see what you can find.
 

mrex

*Supporting member*
439
79
brock ratcliff;134I 169 said:
have no idea where the deer went...you don't either, nor does Tonk. However, I am not the one repeatedly saying "Kill more"...that is your friend Tonk. "Take a Doe" - ring a bell? So yes, I can blame the DOW. The deer project manager has been claiming we've had more deer than ever, and we NEED to kill more does...he is wrong. I won't go so far as to say that bag limits, too many opening days, or any other liberal "kill em all" crap the DOW has put out there is singly to blame. I don't honestly know how much of a factor EHD, over-harvest, or predation has affected the population. What I do know is the population is down - something Tonk has not recognized or acknowledged. He is the ONE that is supposed to be on top of this situation. He is the ONE you insist I should have faith in. Yet he is the ONE that continues to preach we have too many deer, and where I am that is BS.

More good points...and that's why Fayette Co moved from zone b to a...nobodies listening.

brock ratcliff;134I 169 said:
BTW, in my chat with your close personal friend Coonskinner today, I mentioned again that I will be lurking around Athens come bowseason. He said the light would be on, and I thanked him. I did say however that I would not be staying in a cold, leaky tent on the WN as I fully intend to be crashing at the Rex residence and enjoying my evenings in your hot tub. Won't it be nice to have so many new flatland visitors to your neighborhood? :) Will there be a party on Halloween? I have an adorable Chip -n-Dale costume that is sure to be a hit!

Here's your first scouting report...Thursday night on my way home from the hospital around 2:00 am, I saw 22 deer in 3 separate groups feeding next to the road on a 3.5 mile stretch of WNF. If you just like to kill deer, we've got them...and I will also leave on the light.
 

brock ratcliff

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
24,834
247
Hot dang! That's what I like to hear! Keep track of 'em. I've been showing restraint up here for the last several years. I'm feeling like a 30 yr old virgin on the day before his wedding...I'm about to pop at the prospect of shooting and stacking deer!

BTW, the light is on here for you too. If you like the idea of hunting really well fed, heavy antlered bucks, whiles staring at leaves for days on end...head this way!:)
 

brock ratcliff

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
24,834
247
Mrex, how much do you think that change (B to A) will help rebound the herd in FC? Just looking for a prediction. I really don't know, but hope for the best. I don't think it will help much, but is a step in the right direction.
 

hickslawns

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
39,721
248
Ohio
The picture was February of last year and amazingly enough the largest group thus far was also in February almost a year apart from one another. Only a week difference. According to Rex it doesn't matter if they are yarded up or not since does will stay in a very small home range right ? 900 acres isn't a small plot of ground either. A biologist might not be able to help but only because he doesn't listen to the people that beat feet and are in these woods and fields everyday and doesn't want to change things so the deer can rebound from whatever is going on out there. If you ever want to come and walk the 7+ miles of fence with me sometime your more then welcome to do so. Come sit on any of my properties to hunt and see what you can find.

I don't know your answer Adam. Honestly though, I do feel the point Zach made was valid. This winter compared to the last three is not a fair comparison. Last year was probably the longest stretch with a deep snow cover. The two years before we had a blanket for a week or so at a time, but last year it stayed cold and that snow blanket didn't leave for months. I do feel this is some of the reason I have not seen as many deer in groups this winter. I still feel the numbers are down, but I am trying to stay open minded.

Moutaineer- I just can't agree with you in your statements. What you miss in the private land equation is the extreme factor. Public land= any hunter that wants to hunt it. Private land= either more hunters per square mile than public land receives or zero hunting. There aren't too many areas where one or two guys are the only ones with access to a large tract of land in my area. Most are either pounded or untouchable. Then there are the trespassers and when they come they often come in groups to push the areas. If you have access to one of these "good" areas, better hope you don't have 6-8 guys come push out your woods while you are sitting in a tree.
 

Mountaineer

Banned
661
0
WV
Hicks..

If i were to ask Mike if i could hunt his land. He would say "NO". I would bet money on that.:)

Your right..Some privatelands are hunted hard. Privatelands have alot easier access where as publiclands dont..which would mean less pressure on some publiclands because hunters have to walk to their spots which could be a mile or more. That is true.
 
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Lundy

Member
1,307
127
Controlling hunter harvest is easy on the property you hunt but you have no control on what the neighbors do.

I have access to a pretty big piece of property in Athens. There are 3 of us hunting this land and we take 3 deer per year, 1 each, that is all we can eat a year. I have in years past brought down a few guys to take some does off of one side of the property during bow season. That side is separated by a road from the rest of the property and the population density is vastly different on one side to the other. Some does needed removed there because there really isn't any hunting pressure on the adjoining properties on that side and there were just stupid numbers of deer over there.

I have never felt the need or pressure to harvest extra does to control the population on the biggest section of the property, the neighbors harvest plenty enough every year to keep the local population in control.

We do have some deer that never seem to leave the property or even leave their small section of the property. I run 8-9 cameras and some of these does, especially one piebald has never shown up anywhere but on one camera in one small area. We have watched her raise her two young every year for the last 3 years. She is seen daily in this area during every day of the guns seasons. We have or had a really wide eight point that my son was hunting for 3 years, only shows up on two cameras, never any others. Yet I also have had smaller bucks show up on 6-8 of the cameras in a week.

The land I hunt is a working cattle farm with a lot of open pasture, I can see forever. I watch the deer travel back and forth across the fences, I hear the shooting, I see the drives going on, I see the deer running back into the property I hunt. Countless times over the years I have watched a small buck or some does cross the fence and heard the shot, never to be seen again. It is what it is they shoot deer and bunches of them. I even had a couple of the guys hunting the neighbors hang 2 sets of deer testicles on the fence, on Monday of gun season, knowing I would see them. It was their way of saying something to me I guess. I do admit that I enjoyed it when the GW wrote a citation to a guy in the same group that day for killing a turkey out of season, shot across the fence on the property we hunt. The GW thought the hanging of the deer balls, when he saw them, was pretty funny, so did I. All of the deer blood in the field where he shot it across the fence wasn't so funny.

This year and last year we had a huge population of young bucks, I would see 6-8 a day during the gun seasons, my buddy in another area on the farm was seeing even more daily. Same deer day after day. Years ago I would have thought that that would bode well for the future of the farm and how we let these guys grow up. I have found over the years that the farms carries about the same number of mature bucks every year and about the same number of almost mature bucks. It really doesn't matter how many we have seen the year before. I few years ago we had 3 bucks that were almost "shooters" for us. The following year only one of them every showed again. That same scenario has played out many times over 25 years on this farm. I think (don't know for sure) that so many of the younger bucks we let walk end up moving to places unknown where there is a lower buck density. One might think with how many young bucks we let walk year after year that there would be a buck behind every tree after this many years of the same philosophy, but it just doesn't work like that. If the neighbors and their neighbors are killing a lot of bucks it just makes room for these guys to establish themselves where a vacancy was created. I have had bucks that I have watched for 6 years and many others than I see one year, all year and never see again.

We are not hunting 5000 acres where you can control a whole lot of what is going on, you can just do what you do and hope for the best