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Hill Country Deer vs. South Texas Deer?

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    #46
    Originally posted by DirtNap View Post
    What about East Texas? I would argue just as big, if not bigger deer can been found near Toledo Bend and Rayburn than down South. And plenty of water can be found in East Texas for obvious reasons.
    Deer in east Texas are generally thriving to a lesser degree because of tree cover. East Texas has much better soil and rainfall which leads to better potential, but that potential ends up producing tons of tree cover that reduces browse within reach of the deer. And generally areas that are cleared of tree cover are growing hay etc for cattle, which is useless to deer.

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      #47
      Originally posted by Quackerbox View Post
      While it grows them bigger they also dumber

      Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
      This couldn’t be farther from the truth about the deer down south.

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        #48
        Originally posted by TalonErickson7 View Post
        So you think you could have 5,000 acres in South Texas and 5,000 acres in the Hill Country and produce the same quality of deer on each place?


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        Absolutely.

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          #49
          Originally posted by TalonErickson7 View Post
          So you think you could have 5,000 acres in South Texas and 5,000 acres in the Hill Country and produce the same quality of deer on each place?


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          No way. Go look at Los Cazadores low fence. All over 200” Webb, LaSalle, Dimmit. I bet there wasn’t one low fence 200” deer taken anywhere in the hill country.

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            #50
            I agree with you. He thinks otherwise, I believe South Texas not only grows every thing high in protein but I believe genetically the deer down there have much more to offer.


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              #51
              Originally posted by 88 Bound View Post
              This couldn’t be farther from the truth about the deer down south.
              Maybe easier to kill is a better?

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                #52
                Originally posted by Bdub25 View Post
                Guajilla and black brush


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                This.

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                  #53
                  Everything that grows in South Texas is high in protein.
                  Yup.

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                    #54
                    Shot 2 does in northwest Texas on TPW hunt. Both 2.5yrs old, but had a 25# spread on body weight and considerable size different. Different subspecies is my bit as they looked different but both WT.


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                      #55
                      Originally posted by panhandlehunter View Post
                      No way. Go look at Los Cazadores low fence. All over 200” Webb, LaSalle, Dimmit. I bet there wasn’t one low fence 200” deer taken anywhere in the hill country.
                      How much you want to bet? I know of a 200". Along with 187" and a 193". All three were in NW Hill Country and low fence. Its notnthe norm but it happens.

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                        #56
                        Originally posted by Longue Carabine View Post
                        Bone structure is a product of nutrition over multiple generations. There was a great "common garden" experiment done in South Dakota that addressed this.

                        https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd/392/
                        Without reading all of that, I can see how nutrition plays in a role in survival of the fittest where the healthiest, largest deer survive to produce more large, healthy deer. Over several generations, you would have a population of bigger deer. Small, unhealthy deer are more likely to succumb to malnutrition or fall victim to predators.
                        However, genetic factors largely account for the body size. You could take a bunch of Llano county fawns and drop them in a high fence in Webb county. At full maturity they would still not rival native South Texas bucks. Even when maximum body weight and antler size are achieved, genetics are a limiting factor, not just antlers but skeletally as well.

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                          #57
                          Originally posted by Sika View Post
                          Without reading all of that, I can see how nutrition plays in a role in survival of the fittest where the healthiest, largest deer survive to produce more large, healthy deer. Over several generations, you would have a population of bigger deer. Small, unhealthy deer are more likely to succumb to malnutrition or fall victim to predators.
                          However, genetic factors largely account for the body size. You could take a bunch of Llano county fawns and drop them in a high fence in Webb county. At full maturity they would still not rival native South Texas bucks. Even when maximum body weight and antler size are achieved, genetics are a limiting factor, not just antlers but skeletally as well.

                          Agreed, no different from Humans.


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                            #58
                            Originally posted by Quackerbox View Post
                            Maybe easier to kill is a better?

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                            I still strongly disagree. Maybe it’s relative to individual experience. For me, the deer in South Texas are the smartest deer I have ever hunted. Especially when compared to the hill country. LF of course.

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                              #59
                              Originally posted by Sika View Post
                              Without reading all of that, I can see how nutrition plays in a role in survival of the fittest where the healthiest, largest deer survive to produce more large, healthy deer. Over several generations, you would have a population of bigger deer. Small, unhealthy deer are more likely to succumb to malnutrition or fall victim to predators.
                              However, genetic factors largely account for the body size. You could take a bunch of Llano county fawns and drop them in a high fence in Webb county. At full maturity they would still not rival native South Texas bucks. Even when maximum body weight and antler size are achieved, genetics are a limiting factor, not just antlers but skeletally as well.
                              The key to understanding this is something called epigenetics. Epigenetics can manifest in a single lifetime or over several generations, and to varying degrees in between. I will summarize what happened in South Dakota because it answers EXACTLY the question posed by this thread, and your hypothetical example. Whitetail deer in the black hills were small in comparison to the whitetail deer in the southeast of the state. So much so that many suspected they were different subspecies. So they designed an experiment to find out. They created two enclosures in the same place, one for a population of black hills deer and one for a population of southeast whitetails from SD. They lived in identical conditions, were fed identical feed, had no predation, etc. Within one generation, the size difference continued, but during the second generation the black hills deer began to close the gap, and by the third generation they were about the same size. There are two hypotheses about why this happened. Both could be true or just one of them may be true. The first is maternal nutrition. This theory says that the future potential off the offspring in adulthood is determined by how healthy the mother has been her entire life and the positive effects that imparts on the fetus. Each generation of lifelong excellent health contributes to added benefit (up to a plateau). The other theory is epigenetics, which are changes that your genes can exert on you IN RESPONSE to external stimuli. This can happen in many ways and diffent ways depending on species, but in this case it's all about size and cost vs benefit. If a deer lives in the black hills where nutrition is less abundant than the SE of the state, then it is disadvantageous to be big because big bodies are more expensive in terms of food. So being unable to keep a larger body well fed would lead to a less successful, fatigued, disease prone individual. So their genes regulate body size based on food available. And because it is a life or death commitment, the genes won't commit to dramatic size increases skeletally unless that increased nutrition has been consistently present over several generations.
                              Last edited by Longue Carabine; 12-25-2020, 11:36 AM.

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                                #60
                                Think it is not genetics Its high protein and managing herds. There is hunter on here that is growing 200 class deer in Louisiana with natural genetics using food plots feed and letting deer reach proper age class. I bet the average age deer killed on most ranches in hill country are lower than STX.

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