Grow the Hunt

Post-season Survey

With deer season coming to an end, now is a great time to conduct a post season survey of your game. The easiest way to do this is by using a game camera. A post-season camera survey of your whitetail herd allows you to see which deer made it through the season, as well as judge the overall health of your herd. Since bucks lose a lot of weight during the rut, looking at the does that you capture on camera will give you a good idea of the health of your deer. Once you’ve gathered this information you will be able to make more informed decisions about your game management programs.

Grow The Bone

-By Brandon Wikman

As antlers are dropping left and right, the only thing I’ve been thinking about is growing the precious bone back! Bigger and better is the name of the game.

Within the next couple months I’ll be walking through my property-pouring mineral around bait sites to help aid the entire whitetail deer herd. There’s really no better time to begin supplementing your herd with nutritious attractants that aid in the development of bone, antler and so many other things within the whitetails amazing robotic body.

I’ve used several mineral products that promise instant results, but quite honestly that isn’t the case. Ever take a gander at the back of that over priced mineral supplement bag your conscious seems to make you buy? Is it the pen raised ultra-racked bucks on the bag that draw you to whip out the plastic?

Most bags of mineral are basically salt. It’s something called, ‘filler.’ Even though these pricey bags of magic claim unrealistic results, you must sift through the nutrition facts first. Before making your purchase, check to see if you’ve bought a bag of salt, rather than the good, solid, vitamins and minerals you really want!

Nutrients can be summed up to be how deer turn their food into living body tissue. Water, protein, carbohydrates, lipids, minerals and vitamins are the essential basics to what a whitetail needs to grow big! Within the mineral, calcium and phosphorus are the big players in bone and antler growth, milk production, and metabolism. Healthy doe’s produce healthy fawns. Healthy fawns grow to be healthy deer. It’s as simple, yet as complicated as that.

Great places to put mineral are near stumps, under logs, or by a deer trail. We’ve all heard of deer literally eating holes into the ground! They aren’t necessarily engulfing the soil, but rather the sodium that drains into the stump, log and soil. Salt is an attractant, as we all know. In my own sense, salt is the primary tasty draw to get deer into the mineral pile. Finding a product with balanced nutrition is key to not only your budget, but also a whitetails health. Next time you buy a bag of mineral, check the back of the bag first. Don’t let graphically cool front fool you. It’s what we as advertisers call, ‘marketing.’ The importance is not what’s on the outside of the bag, but truly, what’s inside.