Northern Brown County what’s the deal?

[PSE-Madman]

Me and some buddies got on 1600 acres that is in far north brown county in between cross plains and rising star. The property has elevation,
Mesquite flats, lots of wheat, 12 ponds and a wet season creek. We are also feeding corn from10 feeders.

We have put a lot of time in this season including bow season and have not seen a single buck older than 3.5. We also have cameras everywhere and have only seen two bucks that we think would go 4-5 yrs.

What’s the deal? We are hunting it right and not joy riding, shooting beer cans, or acting like newbies. Lots of 3.5 year old bucks , tons of does, and your regular mix of spikes and fork horns. We see rutting activity but nothing to shoot at.

Is this common with the area? If so I’ll be shopping for a new property soon. Lots of money spent on lease fees,campers, corn, and everything else this year with zero results aside from a few does. 2700ea and Six hunters for reference

[skulleton]

You probably should move on and give me the keys...
They are there. Sorry for your timing.

[bossbowman]

Might give it one more year but if your gut tells you to move on after one do it, there are dud properties in even traditionally fantastic areas, sometimes its all about location.

[Shane]

Sounds like the previous hunters shot all the bucks young. Gonna take a couple years to let them grow up.

[JBJTX81]

I'd give it a yr or 2. These things take time to build up. I used to hunt 2500 acres on the brown Comanche county line. It wasn't much when we took it over. I hunted it for 10 yrs my dad for 19. I personally shot 2 140s and a 150 off it yrs 6-8. There aren't tons of places that are instantly successful. Sometimes it takes years and passing lots of good deer to have real success.

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[BTLowry]

Sounds like the previous hunters shot all the bucks young. Gonna take a couple years to let them grow up.

This was my first thought too

[Tbull9]

I’m on a 2k acre lease on the Brown/ mills county line and this is our 10th year. We’re seeing the same results. The very first year we had pictures of better deer Than we have seen since. Most of us feed protein year round with corn. The biggest deer killed off our place in 10 years is a 150” 9pt. It has he scratching our head for sure. It seems like every year it gets worse and worse with quality of deer. We are only allowed to kill off our tags so that doesn’t let us cull many deer that need to be culled which I think is our problem. We have quite a few 3-4 year old 6pts running around. But this year I haven’t seen a deer over 4 which is strange for us.

[PSE-Madman]

Yeah that’s what we thought also. Figured it got shot up. Found out that the previous group didn’t take a buck the past two years. Two of the hunters are still there. My group is four of the six. Im perplexed. Got off a great place and have some regret now. The plan is to start looking after the season for a new place. If we don’t find anything we will renew though and give it a second season. The neighbors hunt but according to what we have found out, not very hard. They have fairly large tracts also.

[Tbull9]

Also our land owner hunts their 1700 acres right across the fence from us and they told us years ago they usually don’t start hunting until after the first big freeze because there’s so much for the deer to eat out there. We usually start seeing better deer at the feeders towards the end of season.

[PYBUCK]

Ya'll need to see if the land owner will apply for MLDP. Even the harvest option will probably get you enough tags to each take 1 trophy and a management buck. First think you need to do is let the young bucks with potential walk so they can get some age on them.

[PYBUCK]

Also last year's 100 year freeze coming at a time when bucks are trying to recover from the rut and are run down probably didn't help. Might have lost some mature bucks then.

[Kurtproy]

Hunted 1500 acres in the southern edge of Stephens county north of you for 3 years. Sounds like you are experiencing what we did. Though we had a beautiful property that looked the part, turns out we were in a pocket that had a pretty low deer population so at least you’re seeing numbers. Biggest and oldest buck we killed in that time frame was a 140”, 4-5 year old. We had cameras on feeders, on trails, everywhere and the oldest deer we ever got a pic of was maybe 5. In those 3 years we had maybe 5 deer in the 120-140 range at 4-5 years old. Maybe hunting pressure is to blame. I’ve heard that Brown, Eastland, and Stephen’s have pockets of good deer. The rest of it is hit n miss.

[deerdynasty]

maybe put some cameras up to see whats really there... we use timed feeders now and it works... feed them from 7-5... just a thought.

[El General]

If it is free range, reduce the total population by shooting a **** ton of does.

[Tomkat70]

Sounds like you have way to much for them to eat between the natural grazing, the wheat, and the 10 feeders. I know it was pretty green out in that area this year and I agree I feel like the freeze took its toll on the older deer. We are in between Brady and Mason and aren't seeing any truly mature deer only young ones. It was looking pretty poor until Saturday when we finally started getting some non resident bucks moving in on our doe.